As I wrote yesterday,
I couldn't upload all the new Snaiad images Mehmet Kösemen had sent me in one
go. This post presents the remaining images. The legends, like those of
yesterday, were all written by Mehmet.
Enjoy the images!
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Copyright Mehmet Kösemen: Picozoan A
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| Copyright Mehmet Kösemen: Picozoan B |
Copyright Mehmet Kösemen: Picozoan C; "Three of the many species of picozoans - insect-sized relatives of the large, landliving 'vertebrates'."
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| Copyright Mehmet Kösemen: "A trilateralan - from the phylum of xeric-adapted animals - most of which exhibit radial symmetry." |
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| Copyright Mehmet Kösemen: "Three of the many different 'arthrognathan' fish-equivalents. These common groups dominate marine and freshwater ecosystems, but are almost entirely absent on land. Conversely, the ancestors of terrestrial 'vertebrates' which dominate the land, are represented in the seas by a few very rare species." |
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| Copyright Mehmet Kösemen: "An Adyognathus - member of another kahydron-adjacent family." |
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| Copyright Mehmet Kösemen: "Refurbished and colourised illustration of a motosuchid." |
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| Copyright Mehmet Kösemen: "Colour illustration of a forest-floor-dwelling herbivore that uses its club-like arms for defence, and a muscular tail as a third leg." I |
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| Copyright Mehmet Kösemen: "Colour study of a muppajiform - member of a cold-blooded, herbivorous clade with many unique families." |
5 comments:
ah, very cool - now we can know what a trilateran canonically looks like, along with more of the fishy fishes.
-keenir
Wow! Those fish sure are something.
Hi, long time reader, first time commenter. I have a biomechanics question. In His Dark Materials, one world has ‘hummingbirds’, with a wing behind the head, another one behind the tail, and a pair of legs in between. They fly by ‘sculling’ their wings like helicopter blades. My gut instinct is that this wouldn’t work, or that it couldn’t evolve naturally. Anything to add to this?
Anonymous & Keavan: Indeed; can't add much to that!
Starfish: I am not very familiar with 'His dark materials', but I tried to find the creatures you describe to see if there was more detail. I couldn't find them though. If I understand you correctly, these creatures have two unpaired wings, one in front and one in back. If that is correct, it would probably be difficult to come up with a plausible story to explain how they evolved that way. That same criticism would also hold for creatures like the Mulefa, who are like bicycles driven by stepping, not by rotating pedals. How would that evolution start? But sometimes fiction is enjoyable even when the content is rather implausible.
Can you provide a more elaborate description of the helicopter-like species?
Thanks for this! Unfortunately I don't own the books, and it's been a long time since I read them. I don't think the description was much more than 'hummingbirds with weird wings' IIRC, they were absolutely tiny, about 6 inches long at most.
Regarding Mulefa, I came up with a technical term for their leg arrangement: Axipod.
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