#gplates

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the state of the world map at 0 MY (the massive blank space is part of a plate which is too big for gplates to render)

The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that not only is this an entirely different map, but that I'm starting from an entirely different method. Instead of starting with a super continent which splits apart - like in Worldbuilding Pasta's method (link to his blog here) - I've started from the oceanic plates first, essentially starting the world from scratch. The map at 50 MY will be seen when I reveal the name of the first time period.

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This list is very tentative but most likely will stay the same:

Animals:

Operculaurisichthys

made up fully pelagic Grimothea species

reef building oysters

scallops

copepods

made up Argyroneta species

clam shrimp of marine and freshwater varieties

made up thalattosuchian genus

made up starfish genus

made up Ptychoceras species

made up Squalus species

made up lanternfish species

made up pycnodont species

Plants:

Zostera marina

indeterminate algae

Valonia ventricosa

indeterminate phytoplankton

Fungi:

marine lichens (I know these aren't true fungi but for simplicity's sake they're here)

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Operculaurisichthys pelagicus, the type species of Operculaurisichthys (yes that's the name people, write it down write it down!!!)

Enter Operculaurisichthys, the 'eared operculum fish'. This entire project only exists because one night I sat down, drew a made up fish (this one) and thought to myself "what if I started a seed world with this fish?". Now this figure is actually slightly innaccurate now but not noticably so to most people so I think it's fine using it in a crelog, updated figures will be used in its dedicated taxon article anyways.

I wanted to talk about it because 1. it's awesome, and 2. phylogeny.

As many of you know, I created this fish without any intention of clade in mind, that said however, I very much had pachycormids on my mind at the time because they sparked my fish anatomy hyperfixition (fish people will know why I've shot myself in the foot doing that). This means that I unknowingly made its anatomy nearly identical to a generalised pachycormid as pointed out by Sky Jung in a VC (check him out on twitter: @HBivittatus and insta: @teleostei_art). Jumping off of that observation, I created a modified phylogenetic character matrix based on the first matrix in Cooper et al., (2022) in Mesquite.

A little look into the character matrix within Mesquite, 130 characters and 30 taxa in this one

I'll go more in detail in its dedicated taxon article about what exactly was modified in some sort of phylogeny section probably.

After sorting out all the characters for the Operculaurisichthys spp. (yes there are multiple species, more about that in a future crelog probably) I imported the .nex file into TNT which I used to create the majority rule consensus tree you see below.

Everything before Euthynotus spp. is part of the outgroup, so I wouldnt pay them much attention, as you can see, this majority rule consensus tree is the result of 24 most parsimonious trees

The inclusion of Operculaurisichthys didn't break Pachycormidae to my surprise, which is incredibly impressive for a fish that was made with no clade in mind. As you can see its firmly nested within Hypsocorminae in a polytomy with Simocormus and the more derived hypsocormines, which I find incredibly interesting for the afformentioned reason.

Anyways that's all I'm gonna talk about regarding Operculaurisichthys, so if you just came for that now's your chance to leave. Onto GPlates stuff and plate tectonics!!!

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A sneak peak at the GPlates project file, just the sea side tho can't give everything away too early can I now ;P

What is GPlates? I think their website puts it best "GPlates is a plate tectonics program (where you can) manipulate reconstructions of geological and paleogeographic features through geological time." What I'm doing is simulating the plate tectonics through geological time to give my world a realistic look and assure I can keep that same realistic look throughout the course of the project.

I'm using the GPlates portion of Artifexian's worldbuilding series (link to the playlist here) mixed with referencing Worldbuilding Pasta's blog (link to his blog here) which the GPlates portion of Artifexian's worldbuilding series derives from. Artefixian simplifies a lot of stuff to suit his workflow - which is valid - while Worldbuilding Pasta's original method is closer to the level I like, so I cross reference a lot of stuff.

One of the many island arcs on the planet

However one thing I do which is different to both is create the continental shelf portion of my island arcs every 50 million year timestep. This sounds stupid and tedious, but makes sense when you take into account the fact that I'll be making multiple of these maps every 50 Million year timestep or so (still deciding on that). So having that reference and being able to simulate the building of terrain over time is incredibly useful.

Ontop of this I'm also adding an accurate amount of terrain using the equation: (island arc length * age of island arc in MY) / 2 (which is taken from this Artifexian video). This is an incredibly tedious process but imo worth it in the end.

Earlier version of the above island arc showing that it's all one connected element, please understand how tedious this is lmao

So yeah! That's pretty much all I'm willing to reveal right now, hope this gives yall an idea what you're in for and also a look at my creative process (aka my flavour of autism). There will definitely be more crelogs in the future, and more frequently as I continue to make more progress in developing the major parts of the world.