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Description

On one of seeded worlds were only various photosynthetic organisms: cyanobacteria, algae, mosses, ferns, as well as grass. No one was there to consume this limitless food source. Until some time ago.

This world suffered many mass extinctions as everyone was producing energy from a limitless source, but not taking it. So, someone must have evolved to feed on the plants when the world became a bit more established when fungi-like mosses appeared.

Then, 500 million years ago some grass (before that only ferns became tree-like) became tree like, towering above all the other plants. Yet 106 million years after that it found a predator: the herbivorous multicellular cyanobacteria.

Evolution of this pseudo-animals started much before it, though, since it couldn’t develop that fast. Somewhere around a billion years ago (the seed world itself is 2,3 billion year old) some cyanobacteria developed true multicellularity, formed a symbiosis with light-sensitive euglenas and completely lost their photosynthesis. From now on they will be called the cyanophids, or paranimals.

The first cyanophids were much like the ‘planuloid’ Urbilateria: they had a primitive nervous system, a sac gut, and some eyes derived from euglena which can only make difference between day and night. They would be detritivores or herbivores, scraping on algae or in the detritus and by that surviving to another day under their single sun. A bit later, just some 200 million years ago, they would form Ediacaran-like biota with strange creatures which cannot be fully understood by entirely modern scientists and would give rise to many new types of creatures, the three main of them are: the chordobacteria, which have an axochord/notochord-like structure, the hemicephales, or coral, echinoderm, cnidarian, and sponges analogues, the secondarily radially-symmetric paranimals, and the sarcods, the entirely muscular snake-like paranimals, all belonging to more derived Nephrozoa-like clade. The first would become the generalized ‘fish’, developing proper internal skeleton, the second would secondarily develop bilateral symmetry through neoteny and an external skeleton, but the third would play major role in terrestrial ecosystems, becoming the first ever terrestrial cyanophids. They would feed on the green plants until the chordobacteria and hemicephales would also come onto land and take their places. The sarcods would stay in small size niches, becoming mollusk and snake analogues.

While the hemicephales would take up a generalized arthropod bodyplan with some exceptions like the terranemones, the chordobacteria descending from a ‘fish’ with two paired fins and a ‘tail’ (actually an abdomen) would largely be alike with the tetrapods. Though they are viviparous, they would develop other amniote-like adaptations and become ‘reptiles’. Much later, when steppes would spread further and forests would shrink down, some bipedal, mainly ‘tail’-less and, most importantly, intelligent chordate bacteria would take their first steps on the widening distance between trees…

Pictured a basal sarcod. While it lacks a proper jaw, it became secondarily photosynthetic by developing a symbiosis with some largeflower grasses.

Description

On one of seeded worlds were only various photosynthetic organisms: cyanobacteria, algae, mosses, ferns, as well as grass. No one was there to consume this limitless food source. Until some time ago.

This world suffered many mass extinctions as everyone was producing energy from a limitless source, but not taking it. So, someone must have evolved to feed on the plants when the world became a bit more established when fungi-like mosses appeared.

Then, 500 million years ago some grass (before that only ferns became tree-like) became tree like, towering above all the other plants. Yet 106 million years after that it found a predator: the herbivorous multicellular cyanobacteria.

Evolution of this pseudo-animals started much before it, though, since it couldn’t develop that fast. Somewhere around a billion years ago (the seed world itself is 2,3 billion year old) some cyanobacteria developed true multicellularity, formed a symbiosis with light-sensitive euglenas and completely lost their photosynthesis. From now on they will be called the cyanophids, or paranimals.

The first cyanophids were much like the ‘planuloid’ Urbilateria: they had a primitive nervous system, a sac gut, and some eyes derived from euglena which can only make difference between day and night. They would be detritivores or herbivores, scraping on algae or in the detritus and by that surviving to another day under their single sun. A bit later, just some 200 million years ago, they would form Ediacaran-like biota with strange creatures which cannot be fully understood by entirely modern scientists and would give rise to many new types of creatures, the three main of them are: the chordobacteria, which have an axochord/notochord-like structure, the hemicephales, or coral, echinoderm, cnidarian, and sponges analogues, the secondarily radially-symmetric paranimals, and the sarcods, the entirely muscular snake-like paranimals, all belonging to more derived Nephrozoa-like clade. The first would become the generalized ‘fish’, developing proper internal skeleton, the second would secondarily develop bilateral symmetry through neoteny and an external skeleton, but the third would play major role in terrestrial ecosystems, becoming the first ever terrestrial cyanophids. They would feed on the green plants until the chordobacteria and hemicephales would also come onto land and take their places. The sarcods would stay in small size niches, becoming mollusk and snake analogues.

While the hemicephales would take up a generalized arthropod bodyplan with some exceptions like the terranemones, the chordobacteria descending from a ‘fish’ with two paired fins and a ‘tail’ (actually an abdomen) would largely be alike with the tetrapods. Though they are viviparous, they would develop other amniote-like adaptations and become ‘reptiles’. Much later, when steppes would spread further and forests would shrink down, some bipedal, mainly ‘tail’-less and, most importantly, intelligent chordate bacteria would take their first steps on the widening distance between trees…

Pictured a basal sarcod. While it lacks a proper jaw, it became secondarily photosynthetic by developing a symbiosis with some largeflower grasses.