#speculative taxonomy

[anonymous-witness777]

[Image ID: a speculative phylogenetic tree for all living things in Minecraft, including mobs and any "plant" or "fungus" lifeforms. The phylogenetic tree is illustrated using images from the game. The three highest domains are: Gramina, including grasses, vegetables, and most trees; Prismata, including creepers, slimes, and squids; and Velamina, including all fungi-like lifeforms, most animals, symbiotes (Wither and golems), and flowering plants. /.End ID]

Minecraft evolutionary tree of life, inspired by this one by NitroHydroRay. But in this one, life evolved very differently than it did on our world (it is UNHINGED). Click to zoom.

The clades are all invented, and I tried to name most clades (the ones lower than the three highest domains) according to the zoological guidelines: purple = superfamily, blue = family, green = subfamily, yellow = tribe, orange = subtribe.

[filurig]

needed to do a little refresh on gnomes/tomtar in pareidolia cuz i decided. There will be ptarmigans. more info about the different factions mentioned in the second image below..

as mentioned, tomte society is usually quite decentralised and local, spending the most time together in small groups within major dispersal groups during certain times of the year, with no centralised leadership. their gatherings during winter almost resemble family reunions in a way. however, there are two more "centralised" gnome factions which work together year-round - the mountain front and the midlands front. these are relatively "new" factions which only arose when major territorial disputes began between trolls and gnomes after gnomes started collaborating with humans to a noticeable degree a few hundred years ago.

the two fronts organise to fight against the trolls and try to take territory and defend their own from them. as trolls and gnomes used to share territories and collaborate in the past, their current conflict is partly driven by tales of "betrayal" carried down through the generations in tales, on both sides. another part of it is the increasing industrialisation, and with cities growing and the human wood industry homogenising forests causing old territories to become less hospitable, many gnomes, especially the gnomes of the mountain front, are driven to try to retake old historical territory of theirs in the mountains. both fronts are driven by a council, usually elected based on their strategic prowess and leadership skills.

[translunaryanimus]

The Colliers

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

Which ape do you think bigfoot would be most closely related to? How far back would you need to go to find a common ancestor between humans and bigfoots?

Bigfeet?

Bigfoot, singular, like moose and fish?

You know what I mean.

[selkra-souza]

Spooky Scary Fun Fact: Nedal and their fellow vertebrate friends have hollow skulls and backwards ribs.

[kaijuthespacemaniraptorian]

My own MH Theropod cladograms!

some of the placements are a bit iffy and its mainly just speculation as il admit some of them are very hard to classify but hopefully this all works!

but i had fun doing it while listening to GU Glavenus theme!

[iamthekaijuking]

It’s finally here! The new and improved 2023 version of my Piscine wyverns, most leviathans, and true elder dragons phylogenetic tree.

There is quite the substantial difference between this version and the older ones. Each species profile is also more in depth than my last tree, the flying wyvern tree, because there’s a lot more room for speculation in these monsters. A lot of this is also recontextualizing and reworking many outlandish traits some of these monsters have and basically giving a lot of canon/what some of the hunters guild tells us the middle finger. Some of the scientific names for the families were made by my friend TheCuriousOne. They came up with the names for their own tree and allowed me to use some of these names too.

Because the written description is almost 100,000 characters long, I had to put it in a google doc that you can read here! I even added a chapter index so you can skip to the families you want to read.

This is probably the most in depth monster hunter cladogram on the internet

[evanesce-art]

So I’ve been designing a taxonomic system for dragons… This is a little guide for head & face morphology for my sona’s species! She’s the one in the middle, called a Variegated Mourning Dragon (Voxingensis luctus luminosus). A subspecies of the Common Mourning Dragon, luminosus are much more flashy in colours and decoration. Mourning dragons, also called Howlers, are named as such for their calls, which sound like the wails of someone in mourning.

The four ears were from a mutation thousands of years in the past, and although it causes poor hearing (due to cramped ear canals and echo issues), it wasn’t detrimental enough to impact reproductive fitness and the ancestral species was prone enough to the mutation that it ended up becoming a permanent morphological aspect.

I’ll probably end up doing lots of full body and headshot morphology sketches like this as I’ve been listing all my dragon OCs’ taxonomy in a document. It’s so fun fr

[jomindraws]

I think I'm finally done with biological orders.... good gravy....

1,845 total orders, and because im silly silyyyyyy I made a graph to show how much of each of the 9 kingdoms of life represent percentage of the total volume and holy I underestimated Animals.

[sagan-4]

Clade of the Day: Siderobiota

Welcome to Clade of the Day, where we cover different groups of organisms on the collaborative project Sagan 4. Today's clade is the kingdom Siderobiota, which includes the iron flora and the iron fauna.

(sources: x/x/x/x/x/x/x/x)

Siderobiota is among the few kingdoms of organisms on Sagan 4 to produce both fauna and flora. They are unique for how they use iron--in that they oxidize it as part of their respiration, yet they can only obtain it from their diet. Floral species exist in soils as macroscopic counterparts to iron-oxidizing bacteria; fauna are typically armored, using excess iron in their exoskeletons.

Among the iron flora is the largest single, non-colonial organism recorded on Sagan 4, the orbit voltflora.

98 species are recorded. Siderobiota reached its peak diversity before the snowball event. In its aftermath, the few lineages that survived suffered heavy losses as their native continent, Barlowe, sank until all that was left were a few islands formed from mountain peaks. Most living iron fauna are parasites, surviving the sinking of their home continent by obtaining all the iron they need from blood.

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[pterodragons]

creature time: dinosaurs (sorta)

Despite being a non-earth world with specbio, there's still lots of earth fauna and similar mass extinction equivalents (for my sanity - I'm not trying to reinvent the spine or anything). And the one i've been thinking about the most is the good ol' KPg extinction! And the exceptions to it!

While I don't have names for species or families yet (hence the goofy labels), I do have names for the two main clades of non-avian dinosaurs: Feroxaves and Pseudornithoptera.

Feroxaves ("fierce birds") is an avialan clade closely related to true birds, although they retain more primitive traits. They have clawed forelimbs, teeth, and long tails like other non-avian theropods, but also have beaks at the ends of their jaws. Those with more "fearsome" appearances are colloquially considered dragons.

They are found throughout the world's continents, even alongside their true bird cousins. Many take on niches of small insectivores or terrestrial foragers, but some mid-sized scavengers may grow brave enough to ambush prey from above. Larger species lean toward a more cursorial and omnivorous lifestyle. In south Aenucoya, there are the long-snouted piscivores that wade in water to catch fish much like a heron.

Pseudornithoptera ("false bird wing") is a clade originating from burrowing ornithopods, similar to Oryctodromeus. Their name comes from the feathers on their backs, which can lay flat or raise into a tall mane. From afar, when combined with the leaping agility of smaller species, it gives the illusion of feathered wings.

As niches were left open post-extinction, they diverged into several main groups. In the tropics of Dreodora, they are the dominant megaherbivores. In Aenucoya, they are skittish browsers and foragers that avoid competition with ungulate grazers. There is also a carnivorous clade, whose burrowing forelimbs have become tools for grappling prey.

[transingthoseformers]

Possibly controversial opinion ahead?

In contrast to IDW and TFP, I don't think TFA Cons came from the oppressed. So I don't think Megatron was ever a miner. Possibly a gladiator, but that was something he would've wanted to do. Just for fun, basically.

I like the idea of the transformers being created as a servant race, with the Autobots intended to fulfil non-war duties, and the Decepticons were made for war.

... I guess if I were to make a comparison, I'd compare it to modern humans and neanderthals? Can interbreed and create fertile offspring, but not the same species.

Okay I've got my own opinions about the definition of species because of the fertile offspring detail, but I'm gonna shut the fuck up about that because that's nitpicky nitpicky taxonomy politics because science is full of debate bullshit like that especially the world of evolutionary biology

Buuuut that's me going on a tangent, I'm legit gonna just say I don't think they're separate species: I think they're at most subspecies of C. cybertronii, but at least different frametypes. But that's me being petty and going biology brain. Considering how inherently morphologically dynamic cybertronians are in every continuity, it'd take a lot for me to outright say they're different species. Especially with the fact that they occupied the same place at the same time with no population separation we usually see happen in cases like this, and there's a wide enough middle ground that we see in canon with the divide possibly being mostly artificial and— okay I'm getting off track

What I was gonna say was because I haven't read much of the canon lore on TFA from the Allspark Almanac, because rn we're poor as hell and barely making groceries I can't afford a rare book online and Jesus fucking Christ that's. That there are some numbers. Goddamn. Goddamnnnnnn.

Anyway what I was gonna say is that I'm not educated on TFA lore enough but have there been indications that stuff was off before the war? I mean shit was definitely fucked by the time the end of the war followed, because I'm thinking quite a lot of the autobots in TFA in the present timeline are xenophobic. Not the majority, mind you, perhaps a loud minority, but from what I can see most of the autobots were apathetic to whether they were accepting of non-autobot entities because they just hadn't had any exposure to them so they had no reason to think about it. Sure maybe my example of Cybertron is tainted because when we see Isaac and Ratty go there shit was going belly up fast because of Sentinel Prime being in charge.

Basically: I don't have enough information to determine whether warframes were oppressed before the war or not, most of the tfa noncanon works tend more towards the oppressed angle but idk if that's them drawing off of canon or off of the other continuities to make up for the limited pre-war information we get in transformers animated

[he-who-needs-to-be-silenced]

Aight so I did some digging into the archives and

These things are Aerotheuthis

And this thing is an Aerotheuthid

[uranias-observatory]

Fontaine/ Genshin 4.0 Spoilers under cut

◇Really like how Ann calls Narcissus the 'Fell Dragon' even though they visually looks like an oceanid and another Rhodeia clone. Especially since it reminds me of a very silly headcanon I have about lochfolks, thunder manifestations and other potential sea angel-adjacent elemental beings.◇

◇Basically, I like to imagine that lochfolks, thunder manifestations and any similar beings (with exception to seelies and Paris) belong to a family which I call Manifestatiadae. Yes, it's most likely me being a speculative biology fan but eh.◇

◇Anyways, there's other members of manifestatiadae that aren't in the same Genus as lochfolks (Oceanid Sp.) , True manifestations (Manifestio sp.) And thylaflights/ Geo Manifestations (Geomanifestio Virgata). And there are a type of basal (I should mention that I HC Manifestations' ancestors to be vaguely Western dragon-like beings) manifestiadae known as Dracomimus, which are, of course, known as Dragon Mimics or Dracophius.◇

◇And one Dracomimus species is called Dracomimus Hydro, or Hydrophius. They're long, almost Eastern Dragon like manifestatiadae with large wings, long tail with many fins and lobed talons. And that fits Narcissus quite well! So now I want to doodle Narcissus as one of those guys... as well as U.N. Oceanid.◇

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

Hi, can you help me come up with a scientific name for a Harpy, Wyvern, Dracolizard and Dracoturtle? I'm a little lost on how to go about it. In my world wyverns and dracolizards aren't dragons but are a closely related cousin species but I don't want to use the Latin or Greek root words for dragon since I used those for my actual dragons and I don't really know what to do with dracoturtles which are, well, turtles with very minor and diluted dracolizard blood. And harpys are just really weird birds that evolved to lure in humans due to their progenitors developing a prominent fondness for human preys.

{Sorry if this just turned into a infodump}

It's a little hard for me to help you there without knowing more specifics about your creatures, but I can give you the resources I have turned to when making taxonomic names for my own fantasy creatures!

here's a wiki page about taxonomy

here's a multi part article series about taxonomy. part 1 is just a short bit of history on taxonomy. part 2 actually gets into how the taxonomic naming works. part 3 lists some common suffixes. part 4 is about taxonomic terms related to body parts. part 5 is about using habitat in taxonomy. and the final part 6 is about behaviors in taxonomy.

and using my own older posts as an example, let me explain some of the taxonomic title choices I made. (it got long)

on the goblins: Hadebufo, hades-frog, based on the real life Beezlebufo, meaning devil frog. this is a way to use taxonomy words by combining two words into one. bufo here basically means frog, and I simply smushed another word in front of it. Same goes for the next one, Manibufo, where "mani" means "hand", so it's the hand-frog because it had prehensile fingers that allowed it to grab things. from there, I made up the title "goblus" to represent the whole goblin family tree. it's just a vaguely latin sounding alteration of "goblin". I named the modern goblin "goblus goblus". usually in two-word taxonomic titles, the first word indicates the genus (that's the broader family they're in) while the second word indicates the species. so having them doubled like "goblus goblus" or "rattus rattus" usually indicates that they're like the archetypal species of their genus, the defining group. the two goblin ancestors before goblus goblus had different names; goblus troglodites (taking inspiration from chimpanzees, pan troglodytes.) troglodyte means "cave dweller". the other one is goblus textilis, or "goblin of textiles" because this is when they became very good at weaving baskets.

on the orcs: i took inspiration from prehistoric boars here. hyotherium means "pig monster" with "therium" being a common suffix to indicate a very large creature. I also used mongolian-based words for the first two in this line, since many prehistoric boars and similar creatures' fossils have been found there. which gave me hyotherium khurtshud (pig beast with sharp teeth, remarking on it's more carnivorous diet) and vounotherium sureganchin (mountain beast which hunts in packs, remarking on the evolution into a wolf-like hunting style). from there, I started to make up new terms, this time stealing words from tolkein. Uruk Urukhai, a direct reference to tolkein's strongest orcs. Uruk then became the genus name. From there, Uruk Orci is the modern orc ( could have sworn i made updated names, but i cannot seem to find any updated charts in my files lol) and I have a bonus there for Uruk Korri, taking the second title from Korrigan, a type of small fae from european mythology, often associated with hills and caves. This is a branch species that experienced island dwarfism and then split again to create the mountain dwelling Uruk Gnomi (gnomes) and the burrowing Uruk Hobbi (my version of hobbits/halflings, which I call Haufin).

on the elves: I went for the -pithecus suffix which is common for a lot of primates, including some human ancestor species. so alfipithecus, alf being an alternate word for "elf", and then sylvapithecus, referencing the word "sylvan" which i then used to make the genus name "sylvus". It's a word heavily associated with elves, especially in DnD where Sylvan is like a more ancient version of the elvish language. from here, sylvus arborea, "tree elf", and then the branching species split into sylvus arachne, "spider elf" for drow, and sylvus draculan "dracula elf" for vampires. (this needs an alteration, i'm not sure i want to call them vampires anymore). sylvus sylvan for "true elves" and sylvus hominid for modern elves that have changed with the addition of human blood in their ancestral lines (thanks to supernatural intervention while humans were going extinct)

these are currently the only evolutionary lines i have worked out, and so the only taxonomic names I have come up with so far! i hope that helps you decide what features you want to use as a base for your own fantasy taxonomy! have fun!

[selkra-souza]

Wanted to prioritize a Spectober/Spectember post before getting to asks.

The masaka share their evolutionary tree with countless species of four-legged (sometimes two legged) small invertebrates, adapted to all sorts of ecological niches. They have their brains and eyes on their posterior side, and the cephalothorax with mouth on their anterior.

Donelja's a big fan. Their career in desert conservation on the terraformed masaka moon largely involves studying how the insects are doing (insect herbivory, population surveys ect.)