#History #Speculative #Zoology #Part
Welcome back to the third part of our review of the history of speculative zoology so far we’ve looked at the origin of speculative animals in the time machine the iconic works of Dougal Dixon as well as some of the more recent TV shows that feature hypothetical organisms such as
The future is wild and primeval now we’re again continuing right where we left off last time as we examined some more of the new aspects of projects first of all we come to a book called All Tomorrow’s this is another speculative zoology work similar to some we’ve talked about before namely first
And last men and man after man as it is another exploration of the future of humanity and the multiple species that descend from us All Tomorrow’s was authored by the incredibly imaginative cm Cosmin under the pen name of Nemo ramjet and Cosman is also known for other speculative evolution works such
As the fantastic snow and alien ecosystem and all yesterday’s which we’ll talk about very soon anyway in all tomorrow’s we start with humans pretty much as we are today and we see how Mars is gradually colonized centuries pass and eventually a war between Earth and Mars occurs when the Martians want
Independence due to the nature of this interplanetary war which involves massive catastrophic attacks on both planets over eight billion people are killed before peace is achieved after the war a new species of human is genetically engineered called the star people which are designed to go out and explore space our entire solar system
And several others are colonized by this posthuman species and the star people become dominant over known space although alien life has been encountered during the expansion into the final frontier none of it is sent into that point until on one planet the fossil of a creature descended from aether is
Nisour dinosaur is uncovered this indicates that an even more ancient civilization than the star people exists somewhere and at some point in the past brought an earth animal to an alien planet and so they start arming themselves ready for a potential conflict these sentient aliens are eventually encountered and they’re known
As the QED as masters of nanotechnology and genetic engineering the QED destroy the entire Empire of the star people and genetically modified the remaining survivors so that they no longer have sentience eventually the queue move on and in time many of the remaining post humans regain sentience as they
Evolve giving rise to a number of different species that all manage to contact one another again a theme also explored in first and last men however a race of sentient machines that was created by one of the species then exterminate all the post humans destroying their rebuilt Empire the
Machines are eventually stopped by another descendant of the star people that had actually managed to avoid the queue the Astra morphs and after all this the Astra morph starts recolonizing the galaxy yet again and another empire is formed and remains until every post human species disappears for unknown reasons All Tomorrow’s is essentially
Like an even more ambitious and large scale first and last men featuring some brilliant illustrations by cm Koosman himself as well as very imaginative stages in the evolution of post human species no matter how realistic you might find the events of the story and indeed there are parts that seem
Relatively plausible to me just reading about cows man’s vision of the future sparks creativity and curiosity despite they’re not necessarily being any direct technical educational purpose to it like some of Dickson’s stuff anyway after all tomorrow’s we come to a book called all yesterday’s published in 2012 and offered by John Conway the
Previously mentioned cm Cosman and darren naish this project was actually a sort of turning point in the history of paleoart itself as well as involving some elements of speculative zoology the book examines how reconstructions of prehistoric life have changed through the years as our understanding has developed and then proceeds to featured
Numerous reconstructions of extinct organisms featuring hypothetical but plausible and informed aspects of biology this includes images showing things such as majungasaurus camouflaging yourself as a log some beefy Parasaurolophus and a group of adorably fluffy alien essaouira there’s also a brilliant section at the end examining what modern-day animals might
Be reconstructed as looking like by future scientists if they made similar mistakes to the ones our species has made with interpreting ancient animals so while it’s not exactly speculative zeorge in the sense of the other projects we’ve talked about so far it utilizes a more data informed speculation by portraying known
With hypothetical soft tissues or behaviors but this brings us on to the next part of this history in 2013 a sequel to all yesterday’s was published all your yesterday’s this book which is free to download online features artwork from numerous paleo artists who submitted their work to be used and
Provides an explanation for the speculations made that resulted in the images you see this is another excellent project containing some incredibly imaginative ideas such as tyrannosaurs displaying like bowerbirds and the previously mentioned dinosaur roids riding an Iguanodon thien with a pet featherless dromaeosaurus a sort of tribute to that concept it also includes
A speculative reconstruction of a Denisovan a close hominin relative of ours that’s made to resemble a kind of polar Neanderthal basically a take on the Yeti but the most a remarkable thing about all your yesterday’s has to be the speculative animal that turned out to have actually once existed artist John
Messer owes Illustrated a unique take on the bizarre Cambrian stem arthropods known as a normal occurrence by speculating that some of these organisms may have evolved filter-feeding methods well as it turned out this was more than just a plausible idea since in 2014 a suspension feeding an omelet card from
The early cambrian was actually described in honor of my sources speculative CT Kerris as he called it the new group containing the real animal was named CTO Kara day now since the age of the internet arrived and everyone’s been able to more easily share their ideas around there have been quite a few
People and groups working to produce their own speculative world’s filled with alternate animals much like the style of Dougal Dixon these include ventures such as the speculative dinosaur project which had a similar concept to the new dinosaurs in which the end Cretaceous extinction never took place and all sorts of modern
Dinosaur descendants now ruled the earth this was an incredibly ambitious undertaking involving a number of people and it aimed to basically provide a more scientifically accurate version of Dixon’s original book the speculative dinosaur project nicknamed speck was going to be presented from the point of view of an expedition that entered this
Alternate timeline and examined its inhabitants and many illustrations and explanations of their creatures were produced work on spec mostly took place from about 2001 to 2006 but I’m including it at this point in the history since it’s technically sort of still ongoing although progress has slowed down a
Great deal and pretty much stopped as far as I’m aware it looks as if a book about the world of spec was planned to be published but this has not happened yet though I hope one day it does get finished then there’s also the neo seen project which initially started as a way
To connect the first time period of the future as wild with the earth scene in after man but it eventually became its own unique future world based 25 million years from now additionally from paleontologist darren naish who i’ve mentioned a couple of times already there’s the mazovick an alternative timeline in which the
Maids lizards snakes and amphisbaena UNS took over as the dominant group after the end of the Mesozoic and have since radiated out into various niches occupied by different animals today another very unique and interesting speculative zoology project is Serena a natural history of the world of birds
This concept involves a very few number of species being introduced to a terraformed moon grasses species of flowering plants Guppies and various insects are used to establish an ecosystem but the main focus of the project is the evolution of the single land vertebrates present on the moon the domestic canary documenting the
Evolution of these organisms and the way in which the world changes up to and beyond 250 million years since they were first introduced serena is an incredibly detailed and fascinating projects that features some very creative and utterly brilliant species that evolved as the Canaries radiate out to fill all the
Niches available to them on this new world and it still counts as speculative zoology since it’s looking at animal evolution despite it taking place on an alien world another notable project found on the Internet is artist Joshua Cooper’s dragons of the world in this concept dragons are portrayed as a
Real existing group of very annoyed reptiles closely related to monitor lizards that have survived since the Cretaceous and it explores what realistic dragon Anatomy and evolution could be like there are numerous other works out there on the Internet and not only entire world building projects but also individual speculative animals
And of course this is not even including the various alien and non zoological speculative works a good place to find these sorts of amazing projects and designs for speculative creatures is deviantART where all kinds of incredibly talented and imaginative people are able to share their concepts for hypothetical
Organisms then there’s also the website Seva theorem which I’ll link to down below a site that includes a collection of all kinds of speculative evolution works it’s a really great place that’s proved very useful to look at while making these videos and if you’re interested in finding even more
Speculative works that I haven’t managed to mention here I would absolutely recommend checking it out anyway moving back to more mainstream productions you could probably even count the 2011 TV show Terra Nova as speculative zoology since this series in which humanity travelled back in time to the Cretaceous
In order to start up civilization again did include some fictitious dance or species creatures such as these slashes nyko raptors and the emperor saw some sort of imagined spinosaurus again the 2013 film after earth which has nothing to do with the animals of after man contains some spectra to future
Creatures that have taken back the planet after humans left giant monkeys and giant condors are some of those featured so although we appear to be in a slight lull between mainstream speculative zoology projects since productions such as the future as wild primeval and Terra Nova ended there is always a background presence or
Speculative zoology fans especially as I mentioned before since the Internet has enabled groups of people to collaborate more easily on large-scale world building and people are now able to share their ideas more freely without having to get a book published or a TV show produced hopefully will one day
Soon see a return of major Spectre works perhaps if an after man film is ever created and when they do return there will certainly be an audience for it since this brilliant and entertaining topic seems to have a pretty constant appeal now before I end this video I
Would like to make some honorable mentions of a few things I either forgot to include in the last videos or couldn’t figure out a good position to put them in the order of entries first the land that time forgot not only did time forget about it but I
Did too it’s another novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs published in book form in 1924 with a sort of similar concept to the world of pellucid ah except there’s a mysterious island instead of an underground area on the island called Cass back there are all kinds of prehistoric animals such as
Tyrannosaurs woolly mammoths pterosaurs and many more as well as various groups of humans including a tribe of flying humans called the wearer next Godzilla I wasn’t sure whether to include this or not but I thought I should at least mention it since this organism is generally considered to be a late surviving
Radioactive giant theropod dinosaur I’m sure most of you probably know the history of Godzilla beginning with the first film in 1954 where he was acting as a metaphor for nuclear warfare and the science and Anatomy of this creature has actually been explored quite a few times by different people over the years
Clearly Godzilla is not exactly the most plausible of speculative animals but perhaps an examination of the biomechanics and evolution of this creature would make for a fun video in the future Dino topia is another project that I saw comments about including the first book in a series was published in 1992 and it
Involves an island where sentience dinosaurs and humans have worked together to create a civilization though there’s not necessarily any visible speculative evolutionary changes to the animals that are a part of the series it’s still worth a mention not only is there a book series of danau toba featuring some very nice artwork but
Also a couple of live-action TV shows an animated film and a few video games more alternate dinosaur evolution has appeared in TV 2 as there’s an episode of Star Trek Voyager a show I personally loved by the way in which the descendants of a dinosaur species that’s
Left earth millions of years ago are encountered by the Voyager crew on the other side of the galaxy the episode called distant origin featured paleontologists from the Stanzel species investigating where they had come from and it turns out that they were highly derived kind of Parasaurolophus like hadrosaur then there’s also the book
Evolution by Stephen Baxter which follows the evolution of humans from our ancestors before the Cretaceous mass extinction up until the last primates die out 500 million years in the future and there are a few spective animals featured more speculative dragons next as there was a 2004 documentary style
Film that I forgot to mention called The Lost dragon in some countries and in others dragons a fantasy made real this project which thankfully made it clear that it was a fictional documentary explored how dragons lived and behaved in various times throughout history including back in the Cretaceous when
They fought tyrannosaurs because what else was there to do back then there’s also a modern-day setting in which the frozen remains of a dragon are discovered and the show interprets these animals as a lineage of biologically plausible reptiles on that note does that mean the dragonology book series
Also counts as speculative zoology since it similarly treats these creatures as a clade of reptiles anyway it was pointed out to me that in the last video discussing the future is wild I forgot to mention the animated TV series that came out in 2007 and ran for 26 episodes
Until 2008 the story features a person from 10,000 years in the future joined by three kids from the present searching the far future for a new place for our species to survive and it includes a number of the speculative organisms from the original show such as the squibbon
Another entry that I wasn’t sure where to really put but that I’ll mention any way is cryptozoological vol 1 authored by Conway Cosman and Naish this book is an exploration of various cryptids creatures such as Bigfoot the Loch Ness monster and dillos ape and what their biology would be like if they were
Actual real animals next I saw a comment suggesting that Pixar’s the good dinosaur could potentially be considered speculative zoology since it’s another arguably less plausible take on the whole non-avian dinosaurs never went extinct thing switching media a bit here I also saw people saying that evolution by North
Star Games should be included as it’s a board game in which players create their own speculative animals in order to adapt to a changing environment there’s a huge variety of potential species that can arise and so every game is different and it’s apparently even been used at Oxford University and featured in the
Journal Nature recently a video game version was also released for iOS Android and steam – and finally another speculative evolution game is species artificial life real evolution available on Steam this is a sort of simulation of realistic evolutionary processes that looks very fun but I’m not sure if the organisms are actually
Animals or what so whether or not you’d count it as speculative zoology is unclear well there we go then the history of speculative zoology more or less I certainly wasn’t expecting this to become such a massive project when I started making it or even to have the
Massive success it seems to have gotten but I’m very pleased that everyone’s enjoyed this series and become so engaged in this wonderful art form I’m certainly open to making some more videos on more specific and different parts of speculative evolution in the future so if you have some ideas for what kind
Of speculative content you’d like to see from us please do let us know in the comments anyway thank you so much for watching this video I really hope you enjoyed it and learn something new if you’d like to find out more about our world its history and the wonderful life
That surrounds us all please feel free to subscribe to the channel if you think we deserve it and if you’d like to see more from us You
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