Inspiration from the Paleozoic

moultano

252 million years ago, 90% of all life on earth died out in an event known as The Great Dying. All life on earth today is descended from that remaining 10%. The diversity of body shapes in the Paleozoic was incredible. The sea is already full of crazy alien things. Imagine seas 10x as crazy.

http://www.karencarr.com/portfolio-images/Marine-animals-and-fish/Permian/Flint-Hills-Discovery-Center/Permian-Seafloor/609

http://www.adelaide.edu.au/news/image25801/anomalocaris_web.jpg.html

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/link/hist_04.html

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/link/hist_03.html

http://www.weinmayer.at/index.php?page=hallucigenia-2

http://www.dwmiller.net/


http://dustdevil.deviantart.com/art/Ordovician-sea-185488097

Dictator93

THe paleozoic creatures look almost nightmare inducing in some ways. So alien and so far away from our modern understanding of what "things" that are living look like.

Wonderful post.

KwisatzHaderach

Nice idea! Although, if you ask me, they should keep it plausible in a sci-fi sense. I really enjoy fiction that is based on real life dependancies, such as predator - pray relationships and all the traits that evolve from it. I love strange and alien fiction, but I love even more when I get an explaination why it evolved this way. The explaination can be strange and alien as well of course as long as it makes some kind of sense :-B

Palaeontological lecture incoming

Just some supplementary information:
Most of the depicted specimens you picked go back to the early Cambrian. Some of them like Charnia and Dickinsonia (the feather shaped and flat, round animals from picture #5) go back even further, reaching into the Proterozoic. They where part of some of the earliest complex lifeforms, when there still were so many free niches that life just evolved without much selective pressure (kinda like a garden eden ). They were called the Ediacarian Fauna. They got extinct during either a singular catastrophic event or due to selective pressure of more advanced specimens with hard parts, like Hallucigenia in picture #4 or the placoderm fish (armoured fish) from #6 that evolved much later during the Permian period.

All the basic body plans that are still in existence emerged during the early Cambrian. All of evolutions early creations got extinct either during the Ediacarian/Cambrian or the Cambrian/Ordovician transition.

Here's a chart showing the Big 5 (mass extinction events) during the Phanerozoic. (The Ediacarian period ends where the Cambriam period begins and with it ends the Proterozoic [greek: before animals] and starts the Phanerozoic [apparent animal life] era)


Keep in mind that we are experiencing the 6th mass extinction presently, caused by man.


tl;dr
Evolution rocks, the earth and life is older than 6000 years

KwisatzHaderach

Sorry, nevermind. Pls delete.

CCTEE

Shit looked cooler AND was bigger.
Here's one from my home country:




Better then a ground skulk

Zavaro

I work in a fossil lab. Some of that stuff looks completely alien up close. Sharks with spines, trilobites with massive spines, everything with spines, Permian stuff is wild.

Squeal_Like_A_Pig

Great refs, thanks. Yeah, I've been looking at quite a bit of Paleozoic refs like these, myself. Crazy stuff.

GISP

@Squeal_Like_A_Pig You want more refs? Im sure we could all could provide a ton of images to draw inspiration from

Zavaro

If you need pictures of fossils or mock-ups for ideas, I work in a fossil lab ranging from fish to dinosauria and work a booth at a massive Gem & Mineral Show every year.

KwisatzHaderach

Zavaro wrote: »

If you need pictures of fossils or mock-ups for ideas, I work in a fossil lab ranging from fish to dinosauria and work a booth at a massive Gem & Mineral Show every year.

Fish & dinosaurs + annual gem and mineral show? Any chance you're working at the palaeontolgical museum in Munich?


Sorry for off topic!

Zavaro

Tucson, but we get a lot of Germans. For reference, here is a Lebanese sawfish from my boss. https://db.tt/Qmr0d1OU

clankill3r

The deep blue is also a great documentary about see life:
I couldn;t find an english version:


Developers please get a english version and watch it, you will be amazed. Fish that have lights like an attraction park etc.

zbott105

Nice pictures:)