Welcome to my Metazoic site! This site discusses the existence of the creatures to come along after humans will be extinct. I first became interested in a world after man when I acquired my first copy of Dougal Dixon's After Man: A Zoology of the Future in 1992. However, I unwittingly created creatures that did not exist from the time I was about 8 years old. But it was after I obtained a copy of that book (now a collector's item) that I decided to take these same creatures I created as a child and make them more realistic in an evolutionary sense. Though it may be hard for a lot of us to grasp, humans will soon become extinct. One of the biggest factors of how this will happen is the current overpopulation rate. Which is why I don't contribute to the population. I created this world with little more than mammals fulfilling all ecological niches with the help of some friends. I even gave the era of the age after man a name, I called it the Metazoic, derived from the words for "After-era" (Meta, meaning after, and zoic meaning era). We are now in the Cenozoic era. To view all the animals I have created since I began this project, you can go to the "Meet the Mammals" section of this site. To discuss your own ideas about what you think will happen in the future world, and share your ideas with others, please feel free to leave a comment.
One more thing, some of you may find this site quite offensive, and you have a right to your own opinion. But please respect my right to have an opinion too. I'm not saying there is no GOD, I believe it was HIM who got the ball rolling. But I believe after that, evolution took over. There is so much more evidence of evolution than there is of creation. Even that going on right under our noses. Other than that, enjoy yourself and visit our many links.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Parallel Evolution
I was looking at some of my own animals of the future and noticed I took advantage of this theory quite a bit! For example, the similarities between the family Promonsamiidae and the species Oreolemur. Both are pentadactyls of the Metazoic that take to the water, instead of the trees. They resemble each other in a lot of ways. They are all otter-like lemurs and have flat tails and webbed feet. Though their timelines don't collide, so they don't compete with each other. Though they are both lemurs with many similarities, they are in no ways related. They are separated by about 30 million years of evolution. By the time Oreolemur comes around (about 70-100 million years AM), the Promonsamiidae have already become the family Delphinadapidae. Oreolemur is in a family of lemurs that are all primarily tree-dwellers, like Leptonosoma and Mesocheirus, and actually evolved from a small, cat-like, river-dwelling lemur called Potamailuria. This lemur is a weaker swimmer than Oreolemur, but powerful enough to battle tough currents, crawling along the river floor in search of fish and mollusks.
Then there is the Delphinadapids. They come along during a time when a larger, more well-established predator rules the oceans. This predator is Thalassogenetta. It is the largest of all Viverrids, but they resemble the Delphinadapids in many ways. The tail is made to move in a very eel-like fashion. The main difference is Thalassogenetta has the cat-like retractable claws, and they use them to grasp their prey, even in the ocean. The tail is used to propel them, and the foreflippers are used for steering. Thalassogenetta feeds on anything. Their primary prey is the giant sea turtles in their range. But they do not stop there. They also feed on fish, giant squid, and sea mammals, including the Delphinadapids and Oreolemur. Though Thalassogenetta taking Oreolemur is somewhat rare, as they prefer to prey on larger animals. But this is a great example on how I capitalized on parallel evolution in my animals of the future. And this isn't all, there are several examples of this phenomenon throughout my site.
Many of the animals on my site would even be considered to have evolved parallel to modern animals. Such as the similarity between lemurs like Leptonosoma and the modern sifakas. Both have disproportionately long legs for easily moving through the trees, long tails, and short forearms. But there are some differences as well. Leptonosoma is more slenderly built than the sifakas. This and several other adaptations to their skeletal structure make them much more phenominal leapers than sifakas. They also have larger ears that they can move independently, and they have a more mixed diet. Also, I have the Metazoic versions of camels, apes and hyenas. None are related to the families we have today, but they evolved parallel to the lifestyle of these animals, and when you look at them and their lifestyles in the Metazoic, it's hard to tell the difference between them and their modern counterparts.
2 comments:
Excellent examples, though do you mean convergent evolution, or paralell evolution? Convergent evolution is when two entirely different group evolve along the same lines. Paralell evolution is when the same group produces the same form more than once, albeit through differing members of that group.
Anyway, the whole debate regarding tree shrews is mostly settled. Anatomy and genetic evidence have shown that tree shrews are basal to the clade of Dermoptera+Primates (your pentadactyls), and that they have a fossil record going back at least 65 million years ago. They are probably ancestral to the pentadactyls, but there is no definitive way to prove this.
Well, I thought the meanings were the other way around. Shows how good my memory is. So I guess I meant "convergent evolution". My bad!
Good to hear the tree shrew debate has finally been settled.
Howcome is it I cannot post a comment on your thread?
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