Tusked saucebacks have a ring of mobile teeth and arthropod-like sideways jaws. Their "nostrils" are exposed gums which usually correspond to the number and location of the teeth. However they have been misinterpreted as jawless and toothless with nothing more than immobile tusks several times independently, a problem intensified by a horrendously inaccurate sauceback skeletal being placed on the general page without any input from Oviraptor.

By sheer luck, the only saucebacks that have been broken beyond repair by misinterpretation are hagloxes--the rest can be fixed with an edit to their descriptions to clarify mobility or remove mention of gaining it. However, there are a lot of saucebacks, nearly 100 total. I'd like to suggest a mini-project that anyone can assist with to locate all species with mouth misinterpretation and fix their descriptions. Does anyone have additional input?

QUOTE (OviraptorFan @ Mar 6 2021, 07:47 PM)

QUOTE (Coolsteph @ Mar 6 2021, 08:41 PM) Ah---those are Paleozoic/Mesozoic crocodile relatives, aren't they? If so, that's fascinating. They get so little attention. Actually their from a personal project of mine thats 4 years old! Their called Retrosaurs! A lineage of Pseudosuchians that split off early on and ruled over the mesozoic! The group has several hundred families and would likely take months to fully explain everything though..

There's always posting about them on the worldbuilding subforum:
http://sagan4.jcink.net/index.php?showforum=13

I think she just means like, either color the background in too or make it white

Bufforpington do you intend to continue this?

I suggest editing the reproduction section to something like:
Reproduction: Sexual (Very Resistant Spores), Asexual (Budding Prongs)

Edited.

The art needs to be at the top and not be sideways.

Can you try to get a clearer image? It looks like you used a flash; I suggest not doing so, it actually comes out with more even brightness without it.

I see you browsing Nergali's, Coolsteph; I actually started working on this before he started on his, back when it was assumed there would only be one survivor population.

I mean, its ancestors ate cellulosebanes. I assume they have some immunity.

Feral Tuskent (Legnail feralis)
Creator: Disgustedorite
Ancestor: Genteel Tuskent
Habitat: Drake Polar Beach, Drake Tundra, Drake Polar Scrub, Drake High Desert, Drake Rocky, Mae Volcanic
Size: 70 cm long
Diet: Omnivore (Cryobowls, Glaalgaes, Polar Cellulosebane, Grubnub, Burncumference, Hornsniffer, Tileback, Cryocanon, Polar Ukback, Pudgy Ketter, Thornshell, Segmented Carnofern, Dome Crystal, Crested King Limbless, Ringtailed Ketter, Squat Limbless, Purple Phlock, Pudglyn, Shortface Sauceback, Twinecoat, Bashercoat, Glasscanon, Flippskima, Sproutstalk, Grazing Gossalizard, Loafpick, Teacup Saucebacks, Rosybeak Phlyer, Fuzzcoat, Hopping Ketter, Desert Gossalizard, Wutuu, Scarlet Phlyer, Golden Phlyer, Azure Phlyer, Lizalagarto, Indigo Wutuu, Dwarf Pinyuk, Luroot, Tuskcoat, Gutsy Phlyer, juvenile Killcoat, juvenile Leaping Killcoat, juvenile Drake Bubbleskin, juvenile Sprinting Bubbleskin), Scavenger
Reproduction: Sexual (Male and Female, Live Birth)

Millions of years ago, the Tripodician domesticated the Genteel Tuskent. Ultimately, the Tripodician was doomed by the extinction event at the end of the Bloodian period, and most of the Genteel Tuskents died as well. However, the Genteel Tuskent had been subjected to selective breeding, which included the creation of smaller breeds. They outlasted their owners, but in the face of a changing world and with their low genetic variation they became obscure, eventually becoming restricted to a single elusive population. The Feral Tuskent replaces its ancestor, however, finally expanding its range once more. It has taken on a white coloration well-suited to blending in with snow.

The Feral Tuskent shows very little signs of once having been domesticated, as its wild instincts have returned. Perhaps one notable holdover is that it is far more timid than the ancient Imperial Leathershelled Tuskent. It retains the enhanced pack mentality, but this comes mainly in the form of social bonds and protection, rather than pack hunting. It retains the higher intelligence its ancestor gained, but instead of using it for group tactics it uses it to outsmart potential predators and prey and to help identify what’s edible or not. Its cellulase bite can be used like venom to assist in killing plent prey, and it can be used as a defense against killcoats which inevitably attack it when it kills their babies.

Similar to its ancestors, as a consequence of spending time as marine creatures, the Feral Tuskent lacks any form of external ear. However, it can still sense vibrations using the wooden “bones” inside its head. Though it has a pair of crests in adulthood that resemble ears, they do not serve any hearing function. Another consequence of its aquatic ancestry is visible in its limbs. Each limb has six dewclaws running all the way up to its “elbows” and “knees”. Indeed, its “elbows” are actually wrists and its “knees” are actually ankles, its real elbows and knees being fused and completely immobile. The excessive dewclaws keep the hand- and foot-derived forearms and lower leg segments stable during locomotion and can deter potential predators or rivals from biting them.

Feral Tuskent social groups are matriarchal, though their female to male ratio has shifted back down to 1:1. They are monogamous and a female may have several pups at a time. The Feral Tuskent reaches sexual maturity at 2-3 years of age and can live for up to 20 years in ideal conditions.

Gonna put it out that by "recent" I mean after the snowball event. If the knee turned into a heel before week 22 it's not worth trying to revise and an explanation like the one I proposed should be used to justify the "digitigrade" legs.

QUOTE (Coolsteph @ Mar 4 2021, 11:34 PM)

I like the musculature and active pose. I like the art: it looks like watercolor. I noticed the feet are different from its ancestor's. Spondylozoan legs are something up for revision now, so I'm not sure whether it's acceptable.

The issue you refer to is not being applied to bubbleskins due to them being too old to fix. Depicting terran digitigrade legs is accurate for bubbleskins.

Also found BioCat. Huggkruka has also been contacted though he has not visited the site or discord yet, and Clayren is possibly incoming.

There's also a reasonable chance Clarke, Irinya, HuckBuck, and Bonosaber are gonna be on the "found" list, but I haven't seen much online activity from them so there's no guarantee.

Yes, I think your submission is good. Just some odd grammar that Coolsteph will probably comment on better than I can.

...Huh, I didn't know bubbleskins lost their milk. Today I learned.

There's some odd grammar, though I'm not great at articulating issues like that and I'll let Coolsteph handle it. I don't see any issues with the organism itself, it seems like a plausible transition from its ancestor and it has all the detail needed to understand what it is. This is a great first submission.

QUOTE (Coolsteph @ Mar 3 2021, 10:08 PM)

But the Rainbow Marephasmatis is extinct... Is this one of those cases where an organism was erroneously made extinct and was interpreted to survive multiple extinction events, like the Uksip Marfinnus?

Yeah, it happened again. Hydro mistakenly thought it was replaced when it wasn't, it survived gamma ray for the same reason that the green swarmer did, and it got through the rest like it was nothing.

Hi cube! Can you wait a bit on this and repost? The "identical but elaborated" replacement must come first, and the order on the wiki is the order of submission. This also has a few errors from misinterpreting things that I've gotten clarified with help from Yokto.

General: Earth Clones (The Good, The Bad, and The Undone)

Y’all probably knew this one was coming. This is not a discussion anyone likes to have on Sagan 4. But I’m also about to make a pretty bold claim.



The wolf shrew is the most realistic case of convergent evolution that occurred during its time.

I know what you’re thinking. This is literally a wolf, right? Well, what if I told you that it isn’t? While it looks vaguely doggish and has somewhat wolfy behavior, this is not what makes a wolf. The wolf shrew has a proportionally large, muscular head, a short neck, and a long thick tail. The nose is large and not particularly dog- or wolf-like at all. It’s a facultative biped and has an opposed hallux for stability. Whatever this creature is, though it has “wolf” in the name, it is certainly no wolf.

The wolf shrew is recognizable, but not exact. It has decidedly non-wolf characteristics, both intentional and not. It can be likened to a variety of large predators on Earth that are not wolves, such as mesonychids and thylacoleonids, but is not a clone of either of those either. This makes it a far more realistic Earth clone than some of the others which evolved around the same time (and sorry Cheatsy, I’m gonna rip into some of your childhood drawings a bit)...



The hornhog is literally just a babirusa with a sail and plent features. It even has “shock absorbers” that look like nostrils to complete the look. While convergent evolution can and does produce familiar forms sometimes, this is far too extreme--it is incredibly rare for it to produce something like animal X but group Y, especially when novel ornamentation gets involved. Usually, the results of convergent evolution are a mixture of characteristics from multiple familiar groups working together to make something both familiar and unique, something that the wolf shrew accomplished but that the hornhog did not.

So, what about fixing or undoing bad earth clones like that, making them more alien? Well, there’s certainly some completely wrong ways to do it.



The climbing cantro was an attempted “fix” of an alleged earth clone, the cantro. The fact that the cantro was most certainly not any more an earth clone than this aside, the climbing cantro takes the completely wrong approach to alienification. It randomly moved all its eyes into a fragile, skull-snapping position. It lost bipedalism and got small arm-like feet for no reason. Its direct descendant, the chastro, became a foreleg biped for no reason other than to “alienify” it even more. The changes that were made to “fix” it make no logical sense, the organism is even more broken than before and shouldn’t even be able to function, and the changes don’t even do a good job of making it more alien because it somehow looks even more like a wolf than any other dromaeocanid, even the wolf shrew itself.



Another great example of how not to undo an earth clone is the kangatwail. The approach taken here seems to have been to duplicate body parts, giving it three pouches and a forked tail. This is about the same level of “alien” as your average star trek humanoid, and the creature is still fundamentally just a kangaroo with extra stuff slapped on.

So, how does one fix a bad earth clone?

First, let me state that I do not support wiping out earth clones or alienifying them just for the sake of getting rid of the terran characteristics. This is just an example of how it is possible to make something that is not an earth clone from an earth clone with only plausible, natural changes.



In the thaw following the snowball event, excluding an odd offshoot of pipents that was recently retconned to have survived, the Trogagon and its descendants became the last of the non-gundi nodents still alive. The Trogagon has just a single feature that makes it unlikely to produce anything resembling an actual rodent ever again--its incisors basically became a beak for cracking crystal flora and don’t resemble the “buck tooth” ancestral to nodents at all. The majority of its descendants have followed suit, and now have beaked faces rather than rodent-like. This one little change alone makes any plausible elaboration of the species unrecognizable as once having been a rodent clone, as they converged on faces more typical of birds, ornithischians, and turtles than of any mammal.

And speaking of plausible changes resulting in a more alien appearance from non-alien ancestors, we must also talk about tuskents!



Tuskents are also derived from nodents. They weren’t alienified on purpose--they are the result of a natural progression into becoming a marine creature which eventually “unwhaled” back to land. The entire hand and foot had been modified into polydactyl, wooden, claw-based paddles convergent with swimming beetles or those nail-swimming things from Snaiad, and the original elbows and knees became immobile. As a consequence, in living secondarily terrestrial species the entire forearm and lower leg are hand and foot, respectively, and they walk on the two innermost digits of each limb and have a very large number of dewclaws.

All of these things came about as adaptations for the time without intent to make something super alien, just to adapt to new environments and new niches, and suddenly this aberrant branch also became the only survivors of the once mighty pipents. In a sense, they can be thought of as the monotremes of nodents: They’re the most derived, yet most early stem-tuskents are no more alien or aberrant than the lineages leading up to modern trogagons and gundis. It’s unlikely that tuskents will ever produce forms resembling their earth clone ancestors no matter how much convergent evolution occurs, standing as an example of the second way to make non-earth clones from earth clones: by creating a lineage that gets so derived that it’s unrecognizable, yet is also completely plausible. That’s how seed worlds like Serina do it, after all.


(these are canaries!)

Russ1 update: found him

Common Mistakes: Atavism (Evolving Backwards)

Atavism in Sagan 4 organisms is...all over the place.

On Earth, atavisms happen pretty often, on a subtle scale. Some frogs regained teeth on their lower jaw, some formerly flightless stick insects regained their wings, and hoatzins have regained functional fingers with bony claws. However, on Sagan 4, atavism is comparatively crazy. You’ll see a snapper lack hind legs for multiple evolutions and suddenly regain them in a fully formed and functional state, a swarmer which had just one eye for hundreds of millions of years suddenly have three, and a fraboo inexplicably have larvae that look exactly like thornworms even though it makes no developmental or anatomical sense with how much has changed since then.

In real life, outside of losses that are relatively recent (such as the past few million years), you never see whole lost body parts suddenly reappear. You certainly don’t see a sudden shift to a completely different, but ancestral, body plan. When lost body parts do reappear, they’re usually ones that still exist in another part of the body; for instance, frogs still have teeth on their upper jaws and birds still have functional digits and bony claws on their feet. This is because genetic drift will gradually cause lost characteristics to degrade until they reach the point of being impossible to recover; for example, attempts to reactivate teeth in birds fail because genes related to forming them have been mutated beyond repair. The atavisms I described on Sagan 4 are impossible.

Atavisms of long-lost traits with no more developmental basis are not plausible, and should not be submitted or approved. In their place, I would like to suggest convergent evolution--that is, evolving a similar trait to the one that was lost--or simply working with the restrictions the organism has. Constraints breed unique solutions, after all.

(Edit: Since I originally made this post, the rules have been updated to disallow extreme atavisms by enforcing a 25 million year time limit for all future submissions. Nice!)

Common Mistakes: "Atavism Larvae"

I don’t know where to begin with this. It’s such a ridiculously common phenomenon on Sagan 4 that I don’t understand where it came from or why it’s ever approved. I am referring to the bizarrely common evolution of larvae that look like an earlier stage in a lineage’s evolution, such as this especially egregious example:



My best guess is that this originates from a misinterpretation of the fact that characteristics from earlier in one’s evolution appear during fetal development, such as gill slits in many tetrapods and long tails in birds. I could see someone who does no further reading then making the false assumption that an embryo/fetus’s development will resemble an organism’s evolution, and therefore something that’s born or hatched earlier will resemble distant ancestors from even hundreds of millions of years prior.

No. No, it will not.



All it takes is a quick google image search of “embryonic development” to see that this is not the case; if it was, would human fetuses not go through stages resembling our distant ancestors? They don’t even go through “ape” stages, and that’s from just a few million years ago! The only earlier-grade characteristics that show up at all are ones that are necessary for the development of features derived from them, like gill arches that become the jaws, a notochord that turns into the backbone, and a tail that’s compressed into the tailbone. We don’t even grow nubs for the dorsal or anal fins that our distant ancestors lost. Even among tetrapods that have larvae, you don’t see entire long-lost limbs popping up on baby amphibians or marsupials. The genes for them are almost certainly long lost as well, making a return as improbable as it would be for ordinary atavism (which I will also be making a post on).

In short, “atavism larvae” cannot happen, and new instances of them should not be approved in the future. In species with presently-unelaborated larvae, if they are modeled after earlier ancestors at all, the changes that have been made since must be taken into account, such as lost limbs being removed and new or changed organ systems being added.

The reproduction is based on the cellulosebane crystals, which are pretty active. I've clarified that the spores become aeroplankton before they land.

Smooth Map (Cursed)

(Hydro gave me the original psd and of course the very first thing I did was correct the biome colors to actually match the color key. Check out the volcanics!)

That said...many birds climb trees by using their beak as a third leg.

I've already discussed this species with Hydro. The rule exists to prevent there from being something like two fundamentally different organisms with their own ranges that must be tracked; this is a deeply intertwined species complex where the two subspecies have an identical range, which means that the reason the rule exists doesn't apply to this case.