KEKulative EvoLOLtion

The absence of the Qu, who had turned the various planetary colonies of humans into (mostly) non-sapient beasts, gave many such lineages the opportunity to re-evolve sapience and develop civilisations that reached out to their long-lost kin across the Galaxy. Thus the Second Galactic Empire gradually formed, in which each planetary civilisation (or collection of civilisations, if unification across a single planet wasn't happening) was represented visually by a flag incorporating aspects of their way of life, values, history, and/or even their physical features.

The text in the 3rd panel reads:

"Upon what acts of defiance this people�s forebears committed to earn this fate one can scarcely speculate.

With their eyes, ears, and taste buds gone, all they had besides the ability to physically feel their way around with their vestigial arms and shrivelled legs was a heightened sense of smell owing to their nose now comprising the majority of their anatomy. To add further indignity to their torment, the Nosefolk were left to languish on a desert planet plagued by dust storms and pollen outbreaks from the majority of the flora, the most nasally-edible type of which was a legume that gave these otherwise noble creatures severe gas.

In spec evo, there's a concept known as the "seed world" (or seed planet), a thought experiment where a planet capable of hosting life (usually from earth biology) is "seeded" with a few select organisms (and other starting conditions), and potential evolutionary-timescale outcomes of this are then speculated upon. For instance, what if there was a planet that was basically Earth as we know it except there's no vertebrates, and then someone adds a bunch of ducks? What niches would the ducks diversify into? Would any of them evolve into cool megafauna? What would it take for ducks to evolve into avian moles? Interesting stuff. But not what I'm doing here today.

Many of you will say that I was so preoccupied with the starting assumption that McDonaldland characters are species rather than individuals that I didn't stop to think if I should, and I agree. Anyway this is my seed world - "McDonaldland" - about 50 million years after a terraformed earthlike world was seeded with classic McDonaldland characters for an advertising stunt, part of a promotional tie-in with a movie about alien planets or something (records from this era are spotty at best). This stunt directly led to increased sales of McDonald's products for many Earth-years, but once the promotion was over the planet was filed away and forgotten about for around 50 million years.

We've got a towering therizinobirdie having a snack, a bunch of western lowland gorilmaces hanging out on a nice warm rock, and some apex predator descendents of fry kids fighting over a burgersnake, which we can tell is unhappy to be considered a meal. A trio of hamburlugos glide among the treetops, eyeing up the other burgersnakes as they slither away. Sadly, none of the lineages descending from clowns made it this far.