What does a Hexapod gallop sound like? (1)

Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk

 The image above represents one of the very first Furaha images ever, painted way back in the previous century. The planet did not even have a name yet, and I certainly had not thought much about biomechanics. I just tried to paint an interesting and pleasing picture. These primal hexapods were fairly insect-like, with a stiff-looking body. The details where the legs join the body suggest exoskeletal parts as much as they could represent skin flaps. I can show the painting here, as it will not feature in The Book: it doesn't fit anymore. 

But I still like the scene very much. In my minds' eye, I can see a large herd of these impressive animals ('handlebars' or 'handlebar-horns') enter the scene from the left, advancing towards the right, until they turn towards the camera, wheeling like cavalry. That scene deserves to be done again, with new and updated handlebars. The update does not only require revising their anatomy, as part of the Great Hexapod Revision, but their gait as well. After all, if you paint a fast-moving hexapod, you should have an idea how its legs should be positioned. Imagining six-legged walks is apparently not something that comes naturally to all illustrators: many, including brilliant artists, fell back on on four-legged locomotion patterns, and simply added additional pairs of identical hind legs until the required number of legs was reached (see here, here, here and here). I never liked that, even though I realise that doing otherwise asks a lot of an artist who may not be familiar with the gaits of insects and other invertebrates. 

Perhaps I am being too difficult about this; after all, the viewers are likely to accept the result anyway. When you looked at the handlebar painting, did you think 'I wonder whether that gait is correct?' My guess is you did not, but I still wanted to do better. I like to think that a fairly thorough biomechanical background is a selling point of Furahan fauna; I also do not think I could let it slip anyway... 

Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk

I therefore wrote a suite of programmes to help me design decent hexapod gaits. In fact, I wrote them again, as I had done so once before, in 'BBC Basic' on an Acorn Archimedes. There are still a few animations on the main Furaha website that survived the transition to other operating systems. The programmes did not. This time, I wanted to do better, meaning that the programme should find out how to fold a leg by itself, rather than requiring me to control each minute limb movement by hand. I thought that that would be tricky, and it was... I had to settle for limbs with three main segments, as I could not yet add a fourth one the position of which looked convincing enough. You will just have to imagine the feet. I will use the program as background material to design paintings, and I can add details myself. The programme does allow body position to adapt to the chosen gait, so that part works. 

 

Here is an example of such a three-segment limb. The programme uses segment length, built-in movement restrictions of the joints, and the phase of the movement cycle to control the thigh angle. The other bit of information is where the foot should end up on its motion path. Together, that is enough. The movement is a bit uneven, because the programme chooses from an array of possibilities, and I should have increased the number of possible solutions. 

 

This shows what happens when you vary the choice which joint should 'stick out' the most. The further a joint is from the vertical, the more energy is needed to keep it in that position. You can see here that making life easier for one joint makes it more difficult for another. The middle position looks like it provides a nice middle ground in that respect. In biology, an optimum usually represents a compromise that minimises the overall energy required. 

Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk

 

The basic hexapod anatomy these days consists of six fairly similar legs that all have 'zagzigzag' pattern, (see here , here and here), meaning the most proximal segment ('coxae' or thighs) generally point backwards. I chose that as I could not find a convincing argument to state whether zigzagzig or zagzigzag was better. The legs are not identical, though, and future hexapods will see more pronounced differences. In the pattern shown here, the middle pair of legs is stouter than the front and hind pairs, and their feet are placed wider apart. That latter bit of information is only visible if you look at the 'support diagram' under the beastie. Placing some feet wider apart is a trick to avoid leg collisions, although it is not strictly necessary: Earth tetrapods manage to avoid collisions just fine with similar distances between pairs of limbs. 

 

And here is one complete hexapod in a slow walk. The sounds were taken from sound recordings of horse hoof beats, because I had to use something; it doesn't mean the animal has hooves! Keen observers may well deduce some as yet undescribed anatomical information from the animation. 

So how about the gallop sound? Next post!

Are there dragons on Furaha?

 No, of course not!

Dragons are mythological beings, usually shown as very large scaly reptilian animals with four legs and two batlike wings. Did I mention that they breath fire and that some of them can talk? Of course, there are no such creatures on Furaha, but the human citizens of the planet did not shed their myths when they relocated to another planet, so they brought stories and depictions of dragons with them.

The citizen-scientists duly observed, with great interest, that six-legged beasties had taken to the skies and now had evolved into excellent flyers (‘not long’ should be taken literally: the animals flew around the spacers’ heads the moment they stepped out of their ship). Closer inspection revealed that some of these animals had four wings (and two legs) while others had two wings (with four legs). 

Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk

Later speculation suggested that both groups, the Quadrialata and the Dialata, had separately evolved from animals using membranes between all six legs to glide down from one tree to another. In one group, the middle pair of limbs had increased quickly in size, whereas the front and middle pair of limbs turned into wings in the other group.

While the scientists started studying mechanisms of lift and anatomical adaptations to flight, classifying everything meticulously, the general public took one glance at the four-legged two-winged avians and shouted ‘They’re DRAGONS!’. Now, scientists generally dislike lay people interfering with their subject matter, and protested that the animals were not dragons at all; they were ‘Dialata’, not dragons, and dragons did not exist anyway.

Of course, this resistance was futile, and the concept of ‘Furahan dragons’ was quickly assimilated by everyone except the scientists in question.                 

------------------------------

So much for the ‘in universe’ version of dragon lore. What happened is that the ‘Great Hexapod Revolution’ is in full swing, and I am now working on flying hexapods. The good news, by the way, is that I now think that I only need to do about four of five new paintings to finish The Book. I am aiming at some 140 pages, so you will get your money’s worth (if I find a publisher, that is).  

The unfeathered bird by Katrina van Grouw

 

I am working on my first painting of a Dialate flyer. I took the revamped general hexapod body scheme and thought about how it would need to be modified to become a successful flyer (also see here). Beautiful examples of such anatomical adaptations can be found in the book ‘The unfeathered bird’ by Katrina van Grouw. The image above was taken from that book, and shows the extent of anatomical  modifications.

The elongated hexapod body would have to go, to keep the mass centred. That meant that the frame of the animal had to be shortened, with the hind and front legs bending down towards the middle of the animal. These walking legs also became small and slender, whereas the wings, the middle limbs, increased in mass. The wing skeleton resembles the ‘bat mode’ more than the ‘bird model’, as it has  intact ‘finger’ bones. Of course the toe/finger pattern is not as nicely radial as in Earth’s vertebrates, but flows a Devonian branching pattern instead. The wings themselves are only partly membranous, so they do not really resemble bat wings that much.  

 

Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk

Here is a simple model done with Zbrush. People can achieve amazing results with Zbrush, but I am definitely not one of them (and I am not alone in disliking its complex convoluted completely counter-intuitive interface). The body and walking legs are sculpted and show the by now general zag-zig-zag basic hexapod pattern.  The wings are only shown as a sort of scaffolding (‘Zspheres’). Their Devonian branching is obvious. 

Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk

Here I have given up on making the sculpt follow the scaffolding, so you only see the scaffolding. The scaffolding is NOT the animal’s skeleton, but just a shape placeholder (the bumps on the body just indicate its size). Notice how the walking legs are tucked away against the body. 

Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk

And here is the same animal (Draco umbraferens), clinging on to a reed or stem, looking down to see if here is anything in the water it might eat. It unfolded one wing to provide shade, either to lure animals to the shade, to see better underwater, or both.

I liked that pose, so I developed it further. I am not going to show the painting, which isn’t finished yet anyway, but thought you might wish to see part of it. The Draco will be sitting on a reed in a marsh in bright sunshine. I used Vue Infinite as I often do to compose the scene to help with lighting and perspective, but only roughly. 

Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk

The scene provided a challenge, as it deals with reflections, transparency and shadows. The image above shows a detail of the future painting: a background plant. Panel A shows the shadow the plant casts on the marsh bottom; B shows the part of the plant that is underwater; C shows the shadow the above-water parts of the plant casts on the water surface; D shows the part of the plant that is above water, and E shows the reflections of that part on the water surface. Finally, panel F shown all parts together, with transparency adjusted to provide a realistic image; or I hope so anyway. The Draco and the reed it sits on will be constructed similarly.

That's it; the next post will probably be about hexapod gaits, and will include the sounds of some gaits, including a hexapodal gallop…      

Trying to sculpt a dinosaur (Sauropelta)

This blog and the Furaha project are about speculative biology, so there is no reason to talk about dinosaurs. Then again, you could argue that there are so many unknowns in palaeontology that it is to a large extent a speculative discipline. 

Anyway, I decided to sculpt a dinosaur with polymer clay. Why polymer clay? It is perfectly possible to sculpt digitally, with more detail, and cleaner too. I do so habitually to help me decide on shapes and perspective. And if I would want a physical object, I can order a 3D print. But physical sculpting has its own rewards, and sometimes I would like to have a nice statuette of a rusp or another Furahan animal. 

Why a dinosaur and not a rusp? In the distant past I had used 'Fimo' and 'Das' to sculpt animals, but I was never satisfied with the ease of use or the level of detail. Still, I kept an eye on what people did with Sculpey and similar materials. There are people on YouTube, such as 'Kayakasaurus', who make very nice dinosaurs in polymer clay. I thought that my first attempt would probably not be very good, so I chose something I did not care about that much, which may sound strange. But anyway, that is why I chose a dinosaur. Perhaps foolishly, I chose a material that looked interesting but for which there were not many didactic video's: Cosclay. That is a polymer clay that after baking was supposed to stay flexible, allowing very thin parts without risk of breaking. The video shows that this was indeed the case.

 

The video above shows the result of that experiment. I have also uploaded a version with better resolution to YouTube. 

I will leave it to you whether the attempt was successful or not. Among the things I learned was that I need to have much better control over details, and that means I need a working environment with better light and preferably a magnifying glass. 

The working method was copied from YouTube videos. I started with a nice skeletal drawing by Gregory Paul, from his excellent book 'The Princeton Field Guide on Dinosaurs'. In spite of the title, it is not a Field Guide; how many field guides preferentially show animal skeletons? 

Click to enlarge; copyright Gregory S. Paul

Here is a drawing of a Sauropelta skeleton from that book. I used the trick of printing a scanned image on the desired size, so I would end up with a roughly 1:16 scale model: the model is about 25 cm, half of which is tail. 

 

Click to enlarge; Carpenter K. Can J Earth Sci 1984; 21: 1491-1498

I also had a quick look at some published papers on Sauropelta. Above you see drawings from a formal 1984 paper. Compare the posture and the length of the spikes to the drawing by Paul. The fossils may not have changed much, but the reconstructions certainly do. What I like about the 1984 paper is the emphasis on how close the left and right feet are to one another. I tried to do that in the model, but probably still used too large a distance. 

Click to enlarge; Brown et al Current Biology 2017; 27: 2514-2521

 

And here is a recent drawing of the Sauropelta skin bones that form the large back shield (the 'pelta') . I only found it after I had already baked the final model, so the shield bones on my version are much too big. An accurate dinosaur model would require a large amount of study. Looking at other reconstructions makes me think that most reconstructions rest more on speculation than on science. Mine included! 

But at least I think I am ready for a rusp sculpt now. But first, more painting, and perhaps a stegosaur sculpt, just to be certain.

How global warming changes the future's past in the Furaha Universe

'The Book' starts with some explanations about the planet Furaha, how humanity got there, why anyone would choose to go there, as well as some other background material. The image above gives the reader an idea how large the planet and its two small moons are in comparison to Earth and its large moon. A variety of techniques were used to make it. First of all, for something like this a 'digital elevation map' (DEM) is needed, showing elevation on a grid of longitude by latitude. Such maps are easy to find, for Earth that is, and Matlab's mapping toolbox offers many ways to play with maps. Obviously, I had to make my own DEM for Furaha. The intermediate stage is to make a nice digital map in which colours represent elevation. Second, take a suitable 3D-program and set up a scene with spheres in it. I still use my 2014 copy of Vue Infinite to do so. Then you just wrap the maps around the spheres, set up some light, and you get a nice picture comparing two globes, one representing Furaha, one Earth. However, I increasingly felt that the image I used for Earth might not be appropriate for the future. Mind you, I have never settled on a period in which the future history of Furaha is to take place. Is it the 24th century, like Star Trek? Sometime earlier or later? I do not know and do not care too much. However, the Institute of Furaha Biology is at least some 200 years old, so at least two centuries are needed for that. Moreover, a 'Faster-Than-Light' drive, or an 'Around-Light' drive for that matter, does not seem around the corner, so perhaps we need to give that some time as well. Overall, we are probably looking at at least four centuries. Would the overall contours of the continents look different? The recent report on global warming makes me wonder how much sea level might rise. Humanity is causing global warming, and it is too late to prevent all of it, but part of it can be prevented. If people act in time and wisely, that is. Will they, or will it be a case of too little, too late? The Book is a science fiction project, so the choices are fictional. In the Furaha setting, in that far future, wrong choices were made. All of the Greenland ice melted, and all Antarctic ice, and so the sea rose. By 70 meters. I found that number on the internet as a rough estimate of what would happen if all the ice melted. Wikipedia tells me that Greenland is good for a 7.4 meter 'sea-level equivalent', and Antarctica supplies 58.3 meters, so together they account for 65.7 meters. That is still a sizeable amount.

I took the elevation data and adapted them to reflect a 70 m rise. I then had to edit some areas manually, because the program found some inland areas that it now regarded as 'sea', even though those areas had no access to the oceans. Large parts of the UK are gone, as well as the Netherlands, Denmark, Bangladesh, etc. No current coastal city would escape unharmed. I have no idea how such a change would affect the climate, pollution of the seas and myriads of other matters. In the Furaha universe civilisation endured, because otherwise I would have nothing to write about. But I think these fictional future people would look back to their past, our future, with perhaps some new hard-won wisdom. The citizens of the Furahan Institute of Biology passed a unanimous vote to change the formal scientific name of mankind. They abandoned the old familiar name 'Homo sapiens', meaning 'wise man', and changed it to 'Homo semisapiens': man who is half wise. They felt that wisdom must have two parts: the first consists of the ability to think, and the second requires that those thoughts are acted on. According to the Institute, humanity passed the first criterion, but failed the second.

The great hexapod revolution and Furahan Fishes' evolution

 In the past I had remarked that I was trying to solve two evolutionary puzzles concerning hexapods, the last major animal group needed to finish The Book. Well, those puzzles were solved, so I am now busy with the Great Hexapod Revolution.  I worked on the puzzles off and on, and realised that there should really at least be a sprinkling of plants, small insect-like creatures and mixomorphs. These expanded The Book from 100 to 130 pages. I guess that number means I can safely lower the number the hexapod paintings to keep the book manageable.        

The 'revolution' means that there will be changes to the anatomy of just about every hexapod I ever painted. I will therefore revisit some old paintings and give them a makeover. The process also deciding which characteristics should be included and which had to go. Once I had a list of useful characteristics for terrestrial hexapods, the next problems was of course how they actually evolved.

That meant I went back to the drawing board for Furahan 'Fishes'. (I know that 'fish' can be singular as well as plural, but the English language also had 'fishes', in particular when multiple species are meant,  and Furahan biologists used the term in that meaning. Blame them, not me. )

Anyway, for those who are not up to date with Furahan cladistics, there are six groups of Furahan 'Fishes', numbered I to VI, for which example species had already been painted. The anatomy of Fishes I to III needed a bit of tweaking, and I did not like the paintings much anymore.

Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk

This was the previous, now discarded, image showing Fishes I. The shape is well visible, and the major Fishes I characteristics are there for all to see: two lateral membranes, no jaws, four eyes, and some respiratory openings along the bottom. As an illustration of these traits, it works. But it looked too schematic and a bit boring: a living animal will have peculiarities common to its species or even to it being an individual, and those were completely absent.

 

Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk

So here is the new picture showing Fishes I: there is a background to make the image more appealing, and the animal has more individuality, I think. I leafed through my cephalopod books and was inspired by iridescence and partial transparency of some species. I wondered whether I could pull that off, and think I succeeded reasonably well. Close observers will see that there are now openings on the back of the animal too; well, that is because Fishes I now come with four respiratory canals. It's part of the revolution...

I have never shown much in the way of evolutionary trees, and the ones I did were not meant to be included in the book. However, I thought that I should perhaps include one or two cladograms in The Book, so I made a table showing characteristics of the six groups of Fishes to help with a cladogram of Fishes I to VI.  

Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk

 
Here it is. It has the 'diagonal form' you often see in biology books. When I first encountered cladograms, this diagonal representation really confused me. If you start at the bottom, you reach most species by making some sharp turns, but there is one route up that involved just one straight line. Perhaps it was my strong preference for visual matters, but the relation between the two species connected by that straight unbroken line seemed much stronger than any route that involved zigzagging. But that is not true at all: the fact that there is a split (a 'node') is meaningful, not at which angle the lines depart from the node. It turns out I was not the only one who tended to interpret such diagrams the wrong way: students learning biology have more trouble with diagonal than with 'bracket' diagrams. Well, stop making diagonal cladograms!

 

Click to enlarge: from TR Gregory, Evo Edu Outreach 2008; I: 121-137

That point is well made in the diagram above. The source is free and very readable. If anyone else also has trouble with cladograms, dendograms or phylogenetic trees, including remembering the differences between them, I recommend this paper: it lists the 10 most common misperceptions of such trees. It is very clear. But I cannot help thinking that if there are no less than 10 common misperceptions, there are probably even more uncommon misperceptions, and then I start wondering if there is no easier way to teach evolutionary relationships.

 

Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk

So here is a very similar tree but now every line running up to a node is vertical before it reaches that node, and the two resulting descendant lineages depart from the node in a symmetrical way. It is much more intuitive, I think!

Some of you will have noted that, according to the cladogram, Fishes IV and VI have a more recent common ancestor than either does with Fishes V. In other words, Fishes IV and VI are closer related than IV is with V or V is with with VI. Oh dear! Shall I keep that in, and blame it on a mistake of early Furahan Biologists? Or I could just exchange the labels 'V' and 'IV'? Or I could go back to names I came up when I thought I might still need not just names for the Species and Genus, But also for the Familia, Ordo, Classis and Regnum (the Latin names of the groups of the old Linnaean system): Fishes I would revert to Clavifluitati, II to Gnatha, and III to Penpinnata. I will think of something.

Anyway, onwards with the Great Hexapod Revolution!  

‘Wadudu Castles’, or Furahan 'termite mounds'

I needed a background for a painting.

Every chapter in The Book at present starts with a double page showing a painting supposedly made by someone in the Furaha Universe. These paintings are all about humans on Furaha. Some are portraits of dignitaries, whose illustrious career earned them the privilege of forever having their countenance grace the Halls of Academia. Or, of course, until someone else comes along with even more vanity and money. Such portraits do not need much in the way of background; a generous helping of 'Van Dyke Brown' will do. But other paintings show Field Work, often in a much-romanticised version, and those are the ones that need a background showing some Furahan Biology. This one starts with wadudu. 

Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk

‘Wadudu’, as astute readers may remember, are small Furahan animals, somewhat resembling insects. If not, see here and here. Some wadudu may be communal species and build their own living arrangements, like termite mounds. Some early doodles of possible wadudu castles are shown above: these are ‘Mark I Castles’. The sketches show roof-like outcroppings or ridges along their surface, with a vague idea that they could protect the structure against the sun, or perhaps against rainfall or even snow. Termites are limited to hot regions, but there is no reason to apply that rule to wadudu castles too. 

Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk

I made a quick colour sketch of one design, shown above. This ‘Mark II Castle’ is not that different from a 'Mark I'; it has an elongated shape and is bilaterally symmetrical. The narrow side points towards the sun during the hottest times of the day, to limit the surface area that is directly insolated. The rootlike structures running along the ground are hollow cylinders that function as highways allowing the beasties inside easy access to wherever they need to go. Different castles may be connected by such cylinders, both on the ground and below it, allowing communities to link up and form even larger superorganisms. The overhanging roofs were smooth and white, to reflect sunlight and to protect the castle from heating up too much. 

 

Click to enlarge; From Claggett et al. J Struct Eng 2018; 144: 02518001; DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)ST.1943-541X.0002043

The wadudu would have to produce different materials for that to work, so I had a look at Earth's termites. It turns out that termite mounds can have very different shapes (see above). The paper I copied the images from (Claggett et al DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)ST.1943-541X.0002043) differentiated between conical, dome, cathedral, mushroom and meridian or compass mounds. The differences depend on differing circumstances and requirements to control temperature, humidity and ventilation. 

Click to enlarge; Oberst et al. J R Soc 2021; 18: 20200957;  https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2020.0957

It runs out that termites indeed alter the soil they use to build their mounds with. Termites use grains of sand or other materials and saliva to form 'boluses' that are then cemented together. They may use coarse granules in the centre of walls, and finer ones for wall surfaces. The termites can even mix clay in the boluses to provide water-resistant walls. With all this going on, it would not be a stretch to provide Furahan wadudu with equal or better capabilities to produce different materials, from watertight layers to highly reflective ones. That opens up some really interesting possibilities, so I think I will return to wadudu castles in the future.
 

The bilateral symmetry of the Mark II may not have been optimal. For most places on Earth, the sun will never be directly overhead. The axial tilt of Earth ensures that the sun will generally be towards the South if you are on the Northern hemisphere, and vice versa. This means that a sun shade does not have to be symmetrical in the North-South direction. The smart way would be build a shade that is angled in accordance with the direction of the sun, something that will depend on the latitude (and the rotation of the planet's axis). This is very similar to the way solar panels are positioned. Solar panels absorb light, but the shades should reflect as much of it as possible. They should be smooth and as reflective as possible; a glaring white would be nice. Depending on the climate, the nights might be cold, and in that case part of the castle could welcome the sun's rays early in the morning. That part could even be dark so the castle can warm up. The structure at the opposite end would catch the last rays of the setting sun, so you might think that the castle could do with some warming up before the night. Possibly; I assumed that the castle would warm up during the day regardless of the shades, so the roofs may need to protect against the evening sun too. The roofs could bend down towards the direction of the setting sun to do just that.  

Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk

Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk

I sculpted such a Mark III castle in ZBrush: here it is, shown from several points of view to highlight its asymmetrical shape. Instead of one roof, it has several. Imagine that it is about 3 meters high. The roofs should be white, whereas the rest of the structure will probably have the colour of the sand it is built from. 

The videos above show such a castle. Unfortunately, I could not colour it correctly for the video. I wished to show how it looks while the sun moves from sunrise to sunset in one smooth movement, but that did not work well. I had defined a few positions for the sun, but the software treated them like stops on a train ride: the sun now reaches a place, stops ('all aboard!') , and departs for the next place. I should do it again, but the point was to produce a painting, not a video. And I can now paint that background.
    
By now you will probably be wondering what the castle builders look like. Actually, I don't know yet. I haven't yet decided whether they the castles are built by wadudu, spidrids, or by another group altogether. Shouldn't I have decided that before I designed the castles? I think not: I doubt that anyone could deduce termite anatomy by studying a termite mound, other than that the builders are small, can move grains of sand around and stick them together. That'll do for now.

Zoom interview with Dougal Dixon tomorrow

 I received, courtesy of Dougal Dixon, an invitation from Oscar Salguero, a book curator from New York, to view a Zoom presentation given tomorrow by Dougal. Mr Salguero assured me anyone can register for free. Because time is short I will just pass on the information.

 

 "Mr. Dixon will give a live presentation highlighting some of his most important works on speculative zoology from the last 40 years. This will be presented via zoom and it's sponsored by the Center for Book Arts in NY."

 Friday, April 30, from 1 - 2:30pm EST

That should make 19:00 -21:30 hrs CET, and 18:00-20:30 hrs for people in the UK  

 Here is the event (click on "Register" button to receive the zoom link):

https://centerforbookarts.org/calendar/talk/speculative-zoology-fictitious-examples-of-factual-processes

Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/events/300204934901648

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 After the event

 This is just a short update for those who are curious about Dougal’s work.

In the talk, Dougal mentioned that there would be a 40-year anniversary edition of ‘After Man’, that should be published before the end of 2021. I understood that it will have more material than the books published so far, including sketches.

Another interesting bit of information was that there were Japanese model kits of some of the creatures featuring in ‘After Man’. Dougal showed a box with content of an unassembled kit of the Night Stalker. I was curious and wondered if I could find out more about those kits (secretly hoping I might still order one from some forgotten Japanese warehouse).

 

Well, I found two entries on a site of a company where you can indeed order such things, but the items were sold out. There were a few images, and I chose the one above, because it showed the contents of the box.

 

The two images above are were posted by a collector on a site called ‘dinotoyblog’. Interesting, aren't they? Alas, I found no hidden stores of such models...