Spiny Dwarfjack (Ericimustelus rufus)
Creator: Disgustedorite
Ancestor: Burrowing Tamjak
Habitat: Hydro Tropical Rainforest, Hydro Tropical Beach
Size: 15 cm long
Diet: Omnivore (Clusterspades, Fuzzweed, Marbleflora, Vermees, Snapper Scuttler, Gushflier, Gushitos, Sapshrooms, Supershrooms, Dartirs, Sapworms, Xenowasps, Xenobees, Minikruggs, Pionferruses, Cloudswarmers, Pioneeroots, Silkruggs, juvenile Stowaway Harmbless, Eusuckers, Cleaner Borvermid, False Cleaner Borvermid)
Reproduction: Sexual (Male and Female, Live Birth, Milk)

The Spiny Dwarfjack split from its ancestor. It became very small due to island dwarfism. At its size, its ancestor’s armor wasn’t especially effective, so it has elongated the scales on its back into hedgehog-like quills. These are not as mobile as hedgehog quills, however, and as such it has a quilless belly so that it can mate. Similar to its ancestor, it is a burrower, though it has also regained some ancestral nest-constructing instincts and fortifies the burrows with bits of wood collected from small flora. It can gather these by backing into flora while swinging its sharp tail from side to side, cutting through stems and saplings with ease. It carries the materials back to its nest in its mouth or tucked between its quills. If it has too much to carry that way, it can also walk on its hind legs with additional materials gripped in curled forepaws. It will also use twigs from fallen branches, but it has a preference for fresh material because it is more flexible.

With no endothermic omnivores on Hydro Island, and no omnivores at all within its size range, the Spiny Dwarfjack has claimed a generalized niche eating various small flora and fauna. On occasion, it is known to board damaged or under-construction Seashrog nests and consume the borvermids inside. It is also able to consume iron fauna and flora, though it does not use most of the iron and as such its poop is unusually iron-rich.

The Spiny Dwarfjack, like other tamjacks, is placental. It mates belly to belly, like many spiny animals on Earth. At its very small size, its gestation period is 30-40 days long, and its babies are born naked, blind, and helpless. They are born too large to fit in a pouch, though the pouch is retained to protect the teats when not in use. They take only 2 months to mature, a significant speed increase from its ancestor. The Spiny Dwarfjack can live up to 5 years.

Actually, the replacement has been around for months...

This has to go though a semi-aquatic transitional form before it can jump straight to aquatic.

The Rasp-Mouthed Suckiron is extinct.

There's quite a few old Sagan 4 team members who have since vanished off the internet. Some of them created the ancestors of a few major lineages. And, of course, there's quite a few old members who also just made really neat stuff, even if few are still extant or left extant descendants.

I think it would be nice to find out what some of the older members, now MIA for many years, have been up to these days, even invite some back to Sagan 4 since I imagine many have no idea it's still going.

Wolf Shrew

The eyes aren't little, the dots are its pupils. It has no eyelids and the outside of the eye itself is feathered.

Looks good, though I think the term is saprotroph.

I have a few.

Cantro:


Spotted Sauceback:


Planda, Tusked Sauceback, Pink Pambu (?):


Norat:

A classic norat-like nodent of some sort, perhaps?

The inside is all one kind of surface, so given how much pressure there would be to improve it immediately, developmentally I don't see why not.

Saucebacks actually logically should not be able to exist in snowy environments because the snow absorbs sound and would make them blind. Any replacement sense in this environment would get selected to improve very, very fast.

Lipped Sauceback (Secretorostrum labrum)
Creator: Disgustedorite
Ancestor: Mae Sauceback
Habitat: Mae Volcanic, Drake Boreal, Drake Rocky, Drake Taiga, Drake Polar Scrub
Size: 1 meter long
Diet: Herbivore (Pagoda Crystal, Luroot, Umbrella Plyent, Forest Quone, Forest Venomerald, Lurspire, Lurcreeper, Towering Grovecrystal, Glountain, Crystalfir, Emeraldfir)
Reproduction: Sexual (Male and Female, Eggs)

The Lipped Sauceback replaced its ancestor. A mutation placed its jaws back inside its mouth where they belong, resulting in it basically having lips covering them. It can retract its lips to expose the jaws to bite into flora, or extend the lips to form a sort of proboscis for feeding on softer parts. This has the effect of making its lips incredibly muscular and flexible, even more so than before. It has also gained pinhole eyes derived from two of its scent pits, convergent with the unrelated Hearthead; though it has fewer eyes, not using all of the nostrils has allowed it to improve its sight much faster, and its own eyestrils do not have chemoreceptive capabilities. The spherical shapes of the eyes are supported by chitin. It is able to see a blurry greyscale image of its surroundings. This is very helpful for detecting predators and not giving away its position, not to mention far more useful in the snow which would otherwise absorb the sound and leave it blind.

Being able to see means that the Lipped Sauceback has less need for echolocation, so it could afford to shrink its ears--a helpful change in its frigid home, which is well within the arctic circle, as it reduces the risk of frostbite. Some additional features to help it in the cold include longer plumage, closable slit-shaped scent pits, and broad camel-like feet for walking on snow. The tail spike has been lost in favor of covering its entire tail in a bottlebrush-like layer of fluff.

The polar climate made depending on water for reproduction more risky than it was worth. The Lipped Sauceback has reverted to an earlier state of sauceback reproduction from before the ice age. It lays and incubates 3-8 soft-shelled eggs which hatch into limbless babies, which are already covered in a dense layer of downy feathers. The mother will “kiss” her hatchlings clean, basically lapping egg juices away and fluffing up their feathers, so that they can more quickly withstand the harsh cold. The young grow quickly, but less than half survive their first winter.

Like its ancestor, the Lipped Sauceback is an herbivore, using its beak to chomp through even the toughest flora. It can even chew through wood. It is social, but unlike its ancestor it does not form large herds, as its environment is not ideal for supporting such groups. Unlike its ancestor, it is awake during the “day”, but that term is relative in the northernmost parts of its range.

QUOTE (Coolsteph @ Sep 29 2020, 06:03 PM)

Interestingly, both the Boomcracker and Fisticoat are in the same genus and share the Ramul Temperate Beach (originally Coolsteph Temperate Beach) environment. It's not out of the question they could hybridize, especially since plents' method of mating probably wouldn't make it dangerous for a 50 cm-long (Fisticoat) and 80-cm long (Boomcracker) fauna to mate.

I like that hybrid idea, can I use it?

On Earth, it is observed that on average, life has been getting smarter over time. In the Mesozoic, the smartest animals were comparable to chickens in intelligence, yet now in the Cenozoic that's well below the average and multiple different groups of animals have independently evolved high intelligence and even sapience. One species, humanity, developed sophonce, becoming so smart that it started to build cities.

And Sagan 4, here in its Alpha timeline, is tens of millions of years ahead and has already had three different species reach that same exceptional level of intelligence.

In theory, high intelligence should be all over the place within Sagan 4's biosphere. I myself took note of the odd lack of explicitly smart creatures, which led to submissions such as the Seashrog and the Loafpick, which are each smart in their own ways. However, as I have familiarized myself more and more with the life that already exists in this timeline I have become increasingly convinced that there are also many lineages that already have high intelligence without it being stated directly.

One in particular that comes to mind is tasertongues. Out of all the lineages to produce a sophont, they are the only one that proceeded to also survive the extinction event that followed (roamers and triwalkers both got nuked with their sophont members). More specifically, modern tasertongues came from the same direct ancestor as the Sagon only a few million years prior; when comparing them to human evolution, this means that they are as close to the Sagon as non-human apes are to humanity, if not closer. Assuming evolution is occurring at Earth-like speeds, the ancestors of all living tasertongues therefore must have at the very least been self-aware, and they were probably capable of simple tool use. And this is far from unreflected in living species--though self-awareness is never specified, the Boomcracker in particular has tool use in the form of clubs.

What other lineages are there that must have unstated high intelligence, or have potential to gain it?

I actually scoured through ancestors when making this, and found that plents incubated their young in throat pouches. There used to be more information on that in descriptions, it's kinda weird that it stopped being mentioned eventually. After looking over other pre-grb plents I updated the general page to note the variation I observed (from gular pouch like organs to stuff closer to the chest) for future reference.

I've seen the term "scent" used as a verb before.

I'm not so sure about the barbed claws. Wouldn't having thicker hooked claws or simpler serrations do the same job more effectively?

Since you're the original Detoxicated, there's no need to use this thread. @MNIDJM can restore your Sagan 4 Team status and split this into its own topic.

@Detoxicated sorry for the late response! Are you the same "Detoxicated" who was already a member before the limbo?

On the submission itself, the ancestor already had webbed feet, so that is not a new development.

So fun fact: Leafstars were not an intentional case of recreating an Alpha lineage in Beta! It was genuine convergent evolution, I had no idea crastrums existed until I made Stickerstar and someone compared it to the Suction Crastrum which looks and behaves similarly.

Brushrums (Crescoasterus spp)
Creator: Disgustedorite
Ancestor: Calmstrum
Habitat: Global (Sagan 4)
Size: 1-5 cm wide
Diet: Photosynthesis, Planktivore, Detritivore
Reproduction: Sexual (Male and Female, Spores), Asexual (Budding)

The Brushrums split from their ancestor. These marine planimals regained some mobility in their leaves and took on a more benthic lifestyle. Unlike their suction cup-using relatives, however, they are crawlers--using their filter-feeding tentacles to creep along the seafloor. They are also able to flap their leaves to quickly ascend, should they encounter a predator. They accomplish this with the beginnings of a nervous system--a chemical-based nerve net running through the leaves and tentacles. They have a blind gut in their center with six tongue-like mini-tentacles surrounding it, which lick plankton and detritus off of their larger bristly tentacles to eat. They capture food passively as they walk along the seafloor.

The reproductive method of the Brushrums has been altered. Several paired gonads exist along the edges of each leaf. These gonads release spores, which join with other spores of the opposite sex and eventually grow into new Brushrums. Juvenile Brushrums are planktonic and can be found out in the open ocean, living a similar lifestyle to their ancestor where they float at the surface, soaking in sunlight and filter-feeding. As they grow, they become denser and eventually sink down to the shallows to assume the adult benthic lifestyle. They retain the ability to reproduce by budding as well.

There are many species of Brushrums. They have not developed good osmoregulatory capabilities, so they are absent from rivers. Polar species are typically darker in color and will bury themselves in sand over the winter to hibernate. Some species drag their tentacles through the sediment, rather than lifting them off the ground, to capture benthic microbes. Though uncommon, some species live as deep as the twilight floor and live exclusively off of plankton and detritus, losing their photosynthesis and turning a ghostly white as they mature. Some tropical species have purple striping, allowing them to camouflage in reefs and undersea forests without harming their photosynthesis.

There are some that might be able to go into new biomes. There's some polar species that currently live in temperate biomes that I could see surviving in the mountains. I may revise it with specific spread lists.

Its niche is unfortunately just like that.

Not to mention the shrogs aren't exactly controlling where their nests go, so it could be stuck in the tropics for years.

I'm not sure crossing the tropics on seashrog nests is all that likely given it's a polar species. The tropics are awfully warm.