JohnFrog

“Mamma’s Children”, the back cover for Paleocene #6.

To see who’s who, go here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/mammas-children-157840309?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

Bahia Leaf Frog (Phyllomedusa bahiana), BIG STEPPY!!!, family Hylidae, endemic to Bahia, Brazil

ALMOST REAL: A Speculative Biology Zine returns with the ALL-NEW VOLUME 6 and a remastered collection of VOLUMES 1-5!

Back in the mid 2010s, illustrator and Runaway to the Stars creator Jay Eaton incepted the idea of hosting a speculative biology anthology: a small magazine collecting uniquely-made entries from pool of fellow artists and authors who loved all the possibility and creativity that the world of spec bio had to offer. Together with Hye Mardikian, their idea and collaboration brought forth ALMOST REAL: A SPECULATIVE BIOLOGY ZINE's first volume all the way back in 2017. 

In 2018, we took to the skies with our second volume FLIGHT. Volume 3 took you under the waves with AQUATICS, Volume 4 introduced all sorts of inventions from BIOTECHNOLOGY, and legends came to life in from Volume 5's MYTHOLOGY.

Now, in 2026, we RETURN: featuring our sixth volume with 12 new entries all about POP CULTURE and a remastered omnibus of BOOK 1 that collects all 5 of our previous, some out-of-print issues, and we need YOUR HELP to print these books and pay our artists!

Sign up now to be notified the moment we drop!

My specbio take on bigfoot for the Subjectively bigfoot video

"Bigfoot Research Log number 284: I think i am finally getting somewhere. This is the closest i have ever been in all of these years. As said in my previous log, i have travelled to california as more and more sightings of the beast are being reported around here.

One of them claimed to have gotten some bit of fur from the beast, black, dense fur with a strong scent he said, as the professional i am, i opened the ziplock to the conclusion that it is in fact, awfully smelly...

...Other reports from witnesses of Bigfoot activity said that it has some...peculiar habits if i were to tell ya. A woman told me that she saw it eating a raccoon roadkill not far from her semi-isolated house in the woods. An old man said he saw a large, black animal eating crops from his home plantation, and he confidently told me it wasn't any kind of bear, "i would know if it was a bear if i saw one" he said. Another woman told me that she saw *a* bigfoot on a large tree, she even gave me a description of the supposed primate... Which honestly i am beginning to doubt... She said it had a short tail, which is an obvious takeaway from any ape affiliation, but also the long face with a lighter fur or skin on it...How could this be...I am so doubtful of the creature's taxonomic positioning now... What could this bigfoot even be if not an ape as it is widely claimed? A big ass raccoon?? This is the only thing that matches with the eyewitness account i drew my latest conclusions from...I just don't know man...This is getting confusing...End of log 284."

This would be known later, but the thing that everyone claimed to be "bigfoot" was actually a relict population of *Nothrotheriops spp.* a species of ground sloth from north america that went extinct as recently as 10,000 years ago. This is implausible but let's just say they had a small population and habits evolved to avoid humans (for the most part).

Nothroteriops by Joschua Knüppe, as i didn't have the time to make my own reconstruction of the beast.

My second and last art piece for the latest alien biospheres episode>

https://youtu.be/lgtuefqQs1s

A group of neotecton hunters found a lone Procaecoform and drove it to a small forest bordering the plains using spears, there, female Alsophylax wait on the trees for the perfect moment to ambush.

One of the pieces i made for the latest Alien Biospheres video

A female *Alsophylax campestris* hunting some flagelliferans in a Neotecton fortress' trash room.

Mermaid foraging in a kelp forest while her manatees graze.

Manatee herding is the base of the Volodiyan mermaid’s society. Their milk and meat are staples of their diet, alongside small fish caught in traps, crustaceans and shellfish.

Both mermaids and manatees prefer to live on river estuaries, but after heavy raining the pastures might get covered in mud or they could be overgrazed so they need to take their herds to deeper waters, where predation from predatorial cetaceans is a huge risk.

Volodiyan mermaids are also known for carving pools into the coast to use as salt evaporation ponds. Controling salt is essential to their society, as they use it to cook and preserve food, similar to how humans use fire.

Mermaids make their tools out of manatee leather (sometimes processed by burrying it under the sea floor, leaving a result similar to bog bodies), bones, seashells and stone and trade luxury items, like amber or pearls with humans in exchange for crafted goods. Notably no metal items, since they would last almost no time in the sea.

Mermaids normally use no clothes because of the added drag and general husle, but in special ocations they don body jewlery made out of polished seashells that sparkle like fish scales.