HOME | DD

Description

Two years since my last entry, it’s high time that I finish the work I started so long ago, or at the very least made it through all the major entries. May I present to you the final terrestrial phylum – the twoflowers!

The first twoflowers were extremely simple creatures, reminiscent of jellyfish medusa – which is appropriate, insofar as they evolved from Zainter’s analogue of jellyfish, the multi jellies. However, they lived their lives in reverse, born in a short free-swimming state, eventually finding a suitable burrow to dig out, and growing to sessile maturity. These were simple filter feeders, drawing in water and sealing themselves at the first sign of danger, and some additional protection was afforded by the development of a hard shell, plated fins, and sensory stalks that recoiled at the rush of currents. Said fins were eventually segmented, to more easily fold into the shell, and eyespots grew into true eyes that could spot threats from afar.

This remains the general body of modern saltwater twoflowers – some have since learned to cultivate algae on their fins for additional sustenance, and others can swim to find and dig new burrows, but most are still sessile filterfeeders. It is the freshwater twoflowers that began to break the mold, and from which all terrestrial species are descended.

You see, while most freshwater variants are also filterfeeders, their environment provides far less plankton to live off, forcing them to supplement their diet. What results are fairly lively creatures, capable of digging through silt and snipping at bushmats, or even lying in wait to snatch up prey. More critically, many have developed a form of water retention to wait out dry periods when riverbanks went low. For most, this is merely going into a vegetative state, slowing metabolism to nothing till the water returned to signal their awakening, but a few went and dealt with it more actively, dredging themselves along the ground in search of new pools. The dredgers soon found that the land provided more than the water, and spent more and more time outside of it. Those few winters the rivers didn’t return, they were the ones that made it through.

Compared to the other terrestrial phyla, their evolution seems accelerated, but unlike the rigidia and hard worms, the twoflowers did not arise to a pristine land. Their ascent was less than 20 million years ago, following the breakup of the polar supercontinents, a period of immense biological diversification that left both a large number of niches for them to occupy and countless threats that could easily wipe them all out. The dredgers had to learn how to walk fast, and learn they did. Alterations to skeleton and musculature turned the fins to legs, with the general body splitting the plates to create a quadruped that could move more stably. One order has taken this even further, balancing on the hind legs to become a bipedal runner, leaving the front two free to turn into mandibles.

Even these species, for the most part, would not be considered fully terrestrial: while the adults have no need to be submerged, their young remain fully aquatic. This would generally mean returning to a sufficiently large pool to breed, but a few twoflowers have found a way around that. Rather than dump their babies in the water, said twoflowers suck some up into their gonads, sloshing in oxygen and food bits in order to sustain their progeny till they can do without. Hence these may be considered fully terrestrial, if only by a technicality.

For more information, please refer to The Zainter Project gallery, or go to the Speculative Evolution website, Remake of Zainter page here: s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_E…

Description

Two years since my last entry, it’s high time that I finish the work I started so long ago, or at the very least made it through all the major entries. May I present to you the final terrestrial phylum – the twoflowers!

The first twoflowers were extremely simple creatures, reminiscent of jellyfish medusa – which is appropriate, insofar as they evolved from Zainter’s analogue of jellyfish, the multi jellies. However, they lived their lives in reverse, born in a short free-swimming state, eventually finding a suitable burrow to dig out, and growing to sessile maturity. These were simple filter feeders, drawing in water and sealing themselves at the first sign of danger, and some additional protection was afforded by the development of a hard shell, plated fins, and sensory stalks that recoiled at the rush of currents. Said fins were eventually segmented, to more easily fold into the shell, and eyespots grew into true eyes that could spot threats from afar.

This remains the general body of modern saltwater twoflowers – some have since learned to cultivate algae on their fins for additional sustenance, and others can swim to find and dig new burrows, but most are still sessile filterfeeders. It is the freshwater twoflowers that began to break the mold, and from which all terrestrial species are descended.

You see, while most freshwater variants are also filterfeeders, their environment provides far less plankton to live off, forcing them to supplement their diet. What results are fairly lively creatures, capable of digging through silt and snipping at bushmats, or even lying in wait to snatch up prey. More critically, many have developed a form of water retention to wait out dry periods when riverbanks went low. For most, this is merely going into a vegetative state, slowing metabolism to nothing till the water returned to signal their awakening, but a few went and dealt with it more actively, dredging themselves along the ground in search of new pools. The dredgers soon found that the land provided more than the water, and spent more and more time outside of it. Those few winters the rivers didn’t return, they were the ones that made it through.

Compared to the other terrestrial phyla, their evolution seems accelerated, but unlike the rigidia and hard worms, the twoflowers did not arise to a pristine land. Their ascent was less than 20 million years ago, following the breakup of the polar supercontinents, a period of immense biological diversification that left both a large number of niches for them to occupy and countless threats that could easily wipe them all out. The dredgers had to learn how to walk fast, and learn they did. Alterations to skeleton and musculature turned the fins to legs, with the general body splitting the plates to create a quadruped that could move more stably. One order has taken this even further, balancing on the hind legs to become a bipedal runner, leaving the front two free to turn into mandibles.

Even these species, for the most part, would not be considered fully terrestrial: while the adults have no need to be submerged, their young remain fully aquatic. This would generally mean returning to a sufficiently large pool to breed, but a few twoflowers have found a way around that. Rather than dump their babies in the water, said twoflowers suck some up into their gonads, sloshing in oxygen and food bits in order to sustain their progeny till they can do without. Hence these may be considered fully terrestrial, if only by a technicality.

For more information, please refer to The Zainter Project gallery, or go to the Speculative Evolution website, Remake of Zainter page here: s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_E…