Created Creatures

Gellgen, Belly of the Forest

The God by whose gluttony the trees grow tall.

The Macallamas (Hoplolaminae) are a group of American camelids that can be found across North and Central America, with their most unique characteristic being their horns of all shapes, numbers and sizes that adorn their necks. These are used mainly for intraspecific combat, but can be just as effectively used for defence against predators. They are not bony horns like those of bovines however, but composed entirely of keratin, the same material as their hair.

This is a member of the mantelopes (Hippanthropinae), a clade of macropods mostly native to Afro-Eurasia whose ancestors emigrated from Australia during the Australasian Faunal Interchange, and slowly spread across the continent, becoming the first marsupials on Africa and Eurasia. Species in this subfamily are characterised by their unique mode of locomotion, as they run bipedally on a single hoofed toe instead of hopping, using their muscular tail for balance. Their muscular arms are then used mainly as support for when they're grazing on all fours and to access tubers and other vegetable material.

The plains mantelope (H. africanus) is the most common species on the African mainland, being found from the southern cape to the southern slopes of the Ourean Mountains and Arabia, all thanks to its ability to eat the toughest plant materials and survive with very little water.

Another commission completed.

Choerosaurus dejageri, the permian therocephalian with a funny face.

Empress Shellcracker

The deep natural history on 40 Eridani A b has shown a quite strong biodiversity time before the Eridians and the calamity of the astrophage, itself thanks to the much longer existence of 40 Eri A compared to the Sol by 2 extra billion years, enough time that went into the evolution of the same lineage that the Eridians belongs to. Studies on the fossil record of 40 Eridani Ab strata greatly encourage due to our strong alliance between humans and Eridians over the last hundreds of years that have yield the rest of the elusive evolutionary history of the wildlife of the planet, having much more marked waves of diversification and extinction due to the constant volcanic activity of the planet that settled out the best or worse conditions, particularly of specialized predators that succumbed for the changing environment of the planet, but from all of the possible forms that we could have found, there was nothing as marvelous and formidable as it was the behemoth cancrine that is the Empress Shellcraker.

This Faunal Eridian is among the largest macropredators ever found in the planet with an estimated length of about 4 meters tall and almost 5 meters in width, its weight is sort of assumptions as its body density vary depending of the body section, but in total is speculated in average they could have grown as heavy as 20 tons, but some fragmentary individual imply a maximum weight of approximately 40 tons.

Living around 200 to 100 million years ago in a period of tectonic lifting that allowed the surface of Eridani to have much more rich elements and so the lifeforms of the planet had vast resources available to grow, allowing a large food chain to form with different detritivores, chemitrophages, petrophages and so “carnivores” in the sense of the word where the Empress Shellcracker reigned as the apex predator.  

The most remarkable feature were its 3 sets of limbs that projected from the longer part of its body, a pair of normal arms with gigantic claws curving inside that probably forced it to knuckle walk, and the biggest limb which was 1/5th of its total mass, this peculiar limb represent a specialized appendage as it possess at the end a large specialized phalange that faces inside into the arm, both parts have a peculiar arrangement of  protuberances that actually are important for durophagy, along the main phalange, two comb curved ones project side view which probably denote the function of scrapping and gathering the prey crushed in their “hand”. 

It is considered that it was a flexible predator since it could attack small prey or similar sized based on remains found in the same places where these lived, with varied organisms that show signs of traumatic deaths.  The main method of hunting was likely ambush due to the build of giant Eridians is too heavy for agile movements even with their powerful limbs, probably standing still or hiding between rock formations and “flora” to catch unsuspecting prey.

Smaller organisms were always grabbed and quickly crushed with one movement, but similar or bigger size prey were trapped in what could be considered a deadly embrace, and true to its name, slowly and gradually cracked the mineral carapace of its victims, causing them to die from sudden exposure to the Eridian environment. It remains unknown how they ingested their prey, though scientists speculate they may have developed a very basal form of "mouth" that could separate from the body without risking an atmospheric leak, allowing them to absorb more nutrients in a single meal. This hypothesis is based on a specimen featuring a peculiar double chamber in its oral region that lacks signs of active, regenerating cells.

An unique feature that couldn’t have been found by Eridians due to the lack of vision is the impressive opal covered shell surrounding the Empress's body, Initially believed to be a byproduct of fossil preservation it was concluded eventually that the mineraloid coating formed while the Empress Shellcracker was alive, giving it the most magnificent coloration of any large organism found, but of course this didn’t have an effect on its lifestyle as Eridian pentapedals only perceive their world by acoustics.

Its body remains although apparent symmetry is actually only superficial, since internally its organic structure was divided with part of the organs and the colony located on the right side of its body, and a complex system of lungs and chambers dedicated to housing air sacs and a dozen of larger hearts for each leg to keep its limbs functioning on the left side which has been the few organs that have been found within the best preserved shells of small youngling individuals; It remains a mystery exactly how these Eridian megafauna would have functioned, since the same functions that occur in modern, smaller ones do not translate well to larger sizes, such as heat exchange using HCS without overheating due to their size, or their weight due to the dense mass from their metallic based structures, but is speculated that like a copy of Earth’s dinosaur pneumatic skeletons and air sacs, these large Eridians managed to develop complex pneumatic systems that allowed a secondary way to control the temperature of their bodies, probably even exuding the residual heat instead of accumulating it, more evident for the large chimneys like vents protruding in the highest part of its right section of their bodies.

This organism main name receives a long almost angelical as well intimidating tune for part of the Eridians researchers when it was first mentioned between our human researches, but the main name title “Empress” came to be due to some of the first specimens were found with dozens of undeveloped offspring inside their chamber relative to probably a quite effective reproductive rathe to replenish their population.

Is difficult to establish the time that the Shellcracker die out due to the volatile nature of the geology on Eridani, but thanks to recent studies is assumed that around 90 million years ago a great amount of the volcanic activity receded for a while, which caused the collapse of the food chain and so the extinction of that megafauna episode happened, although Eridians ancestors wouldn’t appear on the picture until dozens of millions of years later, this event likely drove the extinction of important lineages characterized by peculiar asymmetrical forms that dominated the planet for a long time, letting the space for more radial shaped forms to take over eventually, the shellcracker though still remains as an important part of Eridani history, as their remains, specially their limbs have been found across the planet in quantities, a reminder for the Eridians of the many predators that vanished so long ago.

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Another Commission finished

This one is playing with the favorite weird extinct goat Myotragus, even though its supposed ectothermic has been debunked time ago, it cant stop me to turn them on poikilothermics based on the few mammals that are capable to doing it.

The Carrion’s Circlehorn (Circuloceratops Carrioni) also known as Screaming Murder Drake is probably the largest Psittacoterror found on Palubolígo. This absolute unit of a dinosaur has the personality of the Honey Badger. While most Paluceratopsians are either herbivorous or omnivorous, the Circuloceratops is an obligate carnivore.

While too slow to actively hunt, these animals are known to raid bird and crocodile nests, eat unacompanied baby mammals and even to bite through the shell of the large water turtles it shares it's habitat with. This scavenger will bully of almost any predator off their kill. The only animals that can stand up to this monster are the biggest of Palutheropods and a few species of dragon. This ferocious animal can hunt though, among its prey are animals such as Giant Sloths and Rhinos.

The Circuloceratops will run at the predator who just brought down it's prey and shake it's head from side to side and roar in very low and high frequencies. If the opponent doesn't back down the Circuloceratops will simply impale the opponent with it's it and horns and eat both predator and prey.

Perhaps surprisingly the Circuloceratops is currently undergoing domestication for exploration purposes by collaboration between the Niikii and the Apokalypsa Research Institute. They are highly protective of humans that raise them and are willing to fight threats much larger than themselves.

ok so first of all lets start with the t rex. her very first moment is the goat leg ending up on the car, but we can see in the next shot that she is very capable of swallowing the goat whole. so how did that leg get there? given evidence that t. rexes were likely social creatures, i like to imagine that the leg on the car was more “here you go have part of my meal because you’re small” for the humans

next is her communication. i want to look at one specific thing, which was actually the thing that prompted the post

to me, that certainly looks like eye pinning. eye pinning is a behavior in birds that signals high stimulation. here’s what it looks like in a bird

it can be positive or negative, but in this case it’s probably not negative, because there’s nothing forcing the rex to stay there. if she wanted to leave the situation she could hit the bricks

the continual roaring also sort of suggests play behavior to me. there’s not really any sense in making a shitload of noise at your prey (unless you’re trying to scare them out of cover, but we know she doesn’t need to do that because we see she’s strong enough to just break into the car) so, especially because they keep screaming, that reads way more like “im making noises and they’re making noises back ^w^” then it does as trying to intimidate prey for some reason

play behavior also makes sense because we know, canonically, she’s crazy understimulated. alan grant says as much when he mentions that they aren’t feeding her in a way that promotes hunting behavior. the way she noses at the jeep and spins it really just looks more like curious interaction than anything, as well as all the chasing people she does

next, the raptors. their really famous scene is the kitchen, but first let’s establish some facts about them. we know from muldoon and what we’re shown that:

- they’re smart enough to use one of their own as a distraction for flanking maneuvers

- they’re good at problem solving enough to wait until the electric fences are turned off to systematically test them for vulnerabilities

- they’re absurdly fast. “60 mph on open ground” fast

- they are absolutely not in a big enough enclosure

- they’re not fed in a way that promotes hunting behavior either

so when you put all this information together and then look at the kitchen scene, i don’t believe for even one second that the “hide behind the counter” routine is fooling those two raptors for any time at all. that entire sequence of loudly scrambling around the kitchen while something that can keep pace with a cheetah pretends it can’t catch you? yeah that makes WAY more sense as play behavior than it does hunting, especially since we see numerous times that there are many things on the island easier to catch and eat than a bunch of skinny humans (this goes for the rex, too!)

the bit with the noises is also true here. more true, if anything. muldoon tells us the raptors are ambush predators, so why on earth would they get into a hunting ground and then risk scaring their prey off with the loud barking calls? “hi we’re here come out and play” is a much more sensible use of a call loud enough to hurt a human’s ears from across a room in that situation

This is the Six-eyed Stinker (Sputtonasus sexophtalmus), a member of the Odorophtalmines, or "Stinkeyes", a group of small to medium sized, generally solitary trunked herbivores descendants of dik-diks that have evolved very specialised preorbital glands, able to not only secrete but spray its secretions forwards. This is often used to repel potential predators, as these secretions are often foul smelling, and predators are overwhelmed by these smells and driven away, allowing the animal to escape.

In the case of the stinkers like S. sexophtalmus however, their secretions not only contain this highly odorous compounds, but they can borrow compounds from the various poisonous plants they like to consume to create a particularly effective cocktail, with the secretion being a highly concentrated mix of these compounds, being able to cause severe skin burns and rashes, necrosis or even the death of the organism depending on the type of compound used and where it lands.

Sure! I’ve changed some things about them since I last posted anything about them here. (You can see more of the workshopping process and other species on my patreon). One of the main things has been in their overall bauplan, in which the core body is now very small and much of the organ mass is distributed across their 12 appendages (one antenna at each end, ten legs). Scaley-winged species still exist, but I think the single-feather-wing forms as shown in the sketch are a more diverse and successful family. In many crawling species, the flexibility is limited mostly to lateral movement, similar to brittle stars. A thin but tough bristle or rod supports the core of each appendage.

Well, I'm happy because I was able to do my first commission as a Freelancer.

Presenting to you The Spear-face, a predatory pack hunting creature from the moon of Llanuras, the third around the gas giant ‘Rocinante’ in the Cervantes (Mu Arae) system

This alien and its world belongs to JackVanB

Main post of the creature and its homeworld as well major information here.

New commission completed, a creature of bulky appearance but quite dangerous to any animal within its range, the Pin Lizard.

The Pin Lizard is a giant armless lizard who descended from the present day Argentine Black and White Tegus and became bigger and evolved to run faster as a result of their newfound bipedal stance and heightened leg muscles because of their weakened forelegs. Much like their ancestors, they're omnivores and will often eat the eggs of other creatures, especially those who nest their eggs on the grassland floor, but their newfound larger size gives them more of a larger appetite to not just swallow eggs whole but to also go after larger mammals, reptiles, and birds. Their newfound locomotion and weakened limbs give these lizards more of the opportunity to chase down prey much like the modern day Cheetah except with a better form and heart rate.

Comissioned by Shrimpington, you can find him on his socials.

Although yellow in color, the suntenna has features associated with black plants, particularly the hairlike microphyll leaves that interlock the way feathers do. The suntenna looks like a retrofuturistic spire crossed with a horsetail. Rings of descending size radiate from the stalk with the shadows cast by the top rings never overlapping the leafed portion of the lower rings. The plant seems to go out of its way to avoid casting a shadow on itself, while other plants utilize wind motion and darker pigment to make use of shaded foliage.

The leaves of black plants are filamentous and served by a single loop of vasculature. These are called microphyll leaves and are found on Earth in lycophytes, some ferns, and some gymnosperms, though their veins do not loop. Black plant leaves have barbules like those on a feather that can interlock with neighboring leaves and even neighboring fronds. They can assemble into structures resembling a complex leaf or hang independently like plume feathers. They can even form down for insulation in cold enviroments or for sun protection in exposed regions.

Suntennas usually angle themselves toward the sun and this is especially apparent in areas far from the substellar point. Plants growing near Ilion's terminator angle themselves to an extreme and have specialized structures for growing sideways.

One group that has perfectly adapted to ensure these winters are the Karanis (Crassopectiniformes). This ancient order of birds was amongst the first to colonize the continent when it first started to thaw, and has found great success through a very unique adaptation. Although they have completely lost their wings, they still retain a fairly robust breastbone that they use not to support large flying muscles. They take advantage of the short growth period of plants on the continent and eat as much as they can, storing all the extra energy in the form of fat that they slowly burn through the winter to supplement the meagre amounts of food they can acquire during it.