[FireCrack]

They look like unripe strawberries with flat tops.

[Carl]

i thought they looked kind of like armadillos.

[Carl]

Aquatic Ammogemm

While some Ammogemms moved away from the ocean, others moved into it. their original argon based sleep cycle having faded away, they now feed and sleep as required. living at a depth of between 10 and 20 feet below sea level, their skin has become smoother now that they no longer have to protect themselves against the waves, and it allows water to run over them with less friction. Largely immobile, the Aquatic Ammogemm lives in larger clusters, and it's beak has shrunken into a smaller rooter, needing less to keep itself in place without the breakers. around 4 inches across, the Aquatic Ammogemm is so far the smallest in it's family. it has expanded it's diet to both microbes and a purpleish soup that sometimes sinks towards the ocean floor when it becomes too dense.

[Bobboau]

will someone make some plants already?
don't have time right now, it's already been established that the photoreactive agent is dark red-purple, but asside from that have at it.

[Carl]

I think it's plausible that the Aquatic Ammogemm is making it's way toward plant, while the Ammoerpes is moving toward animal.

[Carl]

Last one from this branch for a while, I promise.

Giant Ammoerpes

As the time the Ammoerpes spent anchored into the ground grew shorter and shorter thanks to their increased mobility, their beaks became longer and less trunk-like. now being used exlusively for movement, the end flattened out, and became a foot-like appendage. The ends on the Ammoerpes no longer needed to be flat in order to sit on the ground, and rounded out to allow better movement through the sand. their lips became longer and prehensile, allowing them to grap at food instead of scraping at it. this also let them pick small plants out of the sand, adding another source of food, letting them grow bigger. (about a foot long)

[Bobboau]

and speaking of plants

Crimson Sheet

developing from alge like single celled plants that grew in mats (primaraly as a defence from UV radiation) they developed firmer and firmer bonds to each other eventualy reaching a mass were they began specaliseing by there location. useing sun light as an energy source, these organisms convert germanium diselenium into surgar like compunds and release free selenium into the environment.

crimson sheet isn't a single species, but a family of plant like organism's that live primaraly in shallower waters. typicly there is a single ankering point with sevral long soft leaves emergeing from it, the anker looks similar to a root, but it does not actualy provide nurishment to the organism, insted it gets all of it's nutrients from the water (perhapes one day a decendend will tap this potent nurishment, but currently the organism is to simple to transport nutrients from one part of it to another (note the lack of veins in the leaves)). the name comes from the dark purple-red of it's photo-reactive chemicals (though far less commonly there do exsist blue, yellow, or green species), it typicly also has a beutiful shimering quality due to a semi-transparent layer of UV reflecting cells on it's outer membrate, causeing the color to change based on the angle you view it from.

crimsonsheets typicly reproduce by division of there ankers, but if two crimson sheets grow into each other they will share genetic material if they are similar enough. if a leaf is broken off or an anker detached, they will oftine be able to set a new anker somewere else if they settle down somewere without a current for a few days. the family is quite diverse, raingeing widely in colors and sizes (from less than a milimeter to more than 200 meter long leaves) and in leaf paturns (some have a fixed number of leaves, others have as many as are needed, also dispersal around the anker and leaf shape varys a lot)

pictured is a three stemed purple crimson sheet, one of the more primitive Crimson Sheet speciese.

[Carl]

Funny, i had made the 2nd pic before even knowing about your crimson sheet, and yet the plants in it look like they may be one of the species.

Ammovesic (Latin: Sand Blister)

The Aquatic Ammogemm continued to migrate down the continental slope, until it reaches 20-30 feet below sea level. the increased pressure made it smaller (2 inches wide), and the low light has made it loose some of it's pigment, becoming translucent. The Aquatic Ammogemm is now the Ammovesic. It has a new symbiotic relationship with a purple algea that lives on it's mouth. The algea stays safe from animals that might want to eat it (the Ammovesic isn't particularly good tasting) and in turn, it supplies the Ammovesic with excess sugars. Unlike it's ancestors, the Ammovesic is completely immobile. It must depend on ocean currents to move it's offspring to different locations, and as a result, clusters have become much larger, at around twenty members.

[Bobboau]

as the crawlers progressed, there higher energy lifestyle of movent requiered a better energy distribution system the basic bloodlike fluid was augmented with a highly reactive agent, a cobalt based chemical that easily bonded with selenium in the water, cells specalised at extracting selenium lined all surfaces exposed to the watter, largely on the outer skin and the upper part of the digestive sack.

also, the stromtium deposits were being made into a fairly stable strontium-tellurium nodes, many of them placed near nerve clusters wich were forming to cope with more and more nerve information. with a better ability to perceve it's world crawlers began to utalise newer food sources, sevral specese began eating plants and other animals.

with the added complexity of the Crawler's biology, there reproductive systems became more complex, rather than delivering spores, they allowed the spores to mature somewhat inside the parent body and left them with some additional nurishment when they were expelled. if two Crawlers came into contact and were suficently similar to do so, they would share genetic material.

(multiple pictures comeing)

[Bobboau]

Lustershelled Crawler

the strontium deposits on one line of Crawlers proved to be extreemly effective in blocking the UV radiation of there shallow water home. the deposits near the surface of the skin on there backs grew into a thin yet very hard and radiation proof shell, sevral diferent plates were made over the body allowing continued movement.

liveing near the surface allowed the lustershells to develop a higher energy solution to there selenium problem, they would take in and blow out water into there digestive sacs, absorber cells would extract the vital element as fast as posable. the less the blowing water interfered with the food in the gut the better, so eventualy the digestive sac seperated into two diferent cavities, the lower sack was for food, the upper sack was for resperation, and it developed into an almost spunge like network allowing extreemly eficent extraction of selenium. but requiering more energy.

pictured below is a Lusterback feeding on a Crimsonsheet

[Bobboau]

Featherbacked Crawler

liveing in deeper waters, the featherback needed to develop a more passive selenium extraction method, long soft flods of flesh loaded with selenium absorbing cells formed along it's back and sides. liveing were less food was readily available it specalised in finding the larges deposits of food it could find fast, it quickly developed a superior nural structure, with multable sub procesing nodes all inter conected, it was able to pinpoint other organisms especaly the excavateing stomachpods and primitive crawlers wich leaft a distinctive trail behind them, but also any Ammogemm decendents wich were unlucky enough to be found by the Featherback.
unlike the Lustershel it stored it's strontium internaly in sevral large lumps and in the  ends of it's mouth parts were a number of sensitive sensory nerves were located.

the featherback became the planet's first dedicated active preditor

(crappy picture )

[FireCrack]

We need more people doing this ot achive greater diversity.


Remember that, though thussofar all creatures have been 3d renders, it is not required to make a 3d render. A 2d image is just as good.

[Bobboau]

yeah, things are setup for a cambrien explosion like event right now, these two lines of crawlers, I have been bulding up to this point the whole time, I'm starting work on sevral new lines from these. Carl's Ammogemms look like they'r going places too.

[icespeed]

sorry, won't have any pictures with this.
i think i'll provide the pathogens.

the flagellated gyrorod is a single celled organism with a germanium based respiration system. it is essentially two rods, attached at both ends with a flagellum on one end. these rods are also attached at various places along the middle to form a double helix. the cell membrane is composed of a single layer of flexible, unstable germanium hydrogen oxide compounds, which allows diffusion of nutrients and deformability of the gyrorod. the cytoplasm contains few mitochondria for the metabolism of diffused nutrients and free DNA (there is no nucleus).

the structure of the gyrorod allows movement by rotation of the flagellum, which transmits torque to the helix and allows more efficient movement.

however, because of its essentially simple membrane and cytoplasm, the gyrorod is vulnerable to mineral and electrolyte disturbances in the surrounding milieu and to hostile toxins.

the gyrorod reproduces by asexual mitosis; the two rods divide and regenerate to form two gyrorods from one.

[Carl]

Edit: Nevermind. won't work.

[Liquid Fire]

Originally posted by FireCrack
Remember that, though thussofar all creatures have been 3d renders, it is not required to make a 3d render. A 2d image is just as good.

Alright, then! This is the petra-cola (rocky dweller)


It works like this:

The petra-cola consists of only three types of cells. Originally, the creature was only a bunch of purple translucent single-celled organisms which bonded together for protection. These cells consumed germanium. Eventually, these groups began to be deposited on beaches and were exposed to harsh radiation. The outside layers died, forming a tough shell around the blob. After many years, another type of cell came into the group. It was a small cell which consumed selenium and excreted germanium at a very efficient rate. When these cells bonded, they were able to expand the groups to larger proportions, due to the more effective energy intake. Eventually, another type of cell moved in, one that also consumed germanium. These cells had simple cilia which always pumped in one direction. These cells oriented themselves so that they pushed dirt into the interior of the organism. This caused the organism to expand to an even greater size.

Currently, the organism is so simple, it can barely hold itself together. Thus, when the cilia cells on the bottom begin to dig, the organism will follow gravity and slosh into the hole. However, with the increased efficiency, the organism is able to grow as fast as it falls, making it tunnel slowly into the ground.

later, the various cells began to form a column, in which the cilia and selenium-consuming cells would occupy. The cilia would pass the dirt past the selenium cells, who would digest what they needed and pass the waste to the rest of the organism. Each organism would normall have around five of these columns.



When the organism gets around six feet long, the relatively thin column it has created can no longer support such a massive entity. When this happens, it spits out "spores" which contain varying amounts of all three organisms. These spores roll down the sides of the petra-cola and start up their own colonies. Shortly after releasing spores, the organism dies.

On the surface, the petra-cola appears to be nothing more than a mound of lightly colored dirt, from which small pieces of sand slowly emerge

[icespeed]

anselenic flagellated gyrorod

the gyrorod developed energy storage mechanisms based on the equilibrium conversion reactions between selenium and germanium. in effect, it converts selenium into a stable germanium-selenium-hydrogen compound which, instead of excreting as waste, it stores. (the energy stored is slightly more than the energy used to create the compound, but only by a little bit.) when it finds itself in environments where selenium supplies are low, it can live off the germanium-selenium-hydrogen stores in its cytoplasm. over time the efficiency of various reactions involved improved. this of course, led to the gyrorod becoming, in fact, most efficient in low selenium environments. this further developed until the anselenic flagellated gyrorod emerged, which actually takes in germanium as nutrient rather than excretes it as waste, and does not utilise selenium as part of its respiration processes.

this evolution allowed the gyrorod to survive by colonising near other organisms' germanium disposal apparatus.

[Bobboau]

I think you may be mis understanding the role Germanium plays here, it's an element that these organisms are based on, it takes the place of carbon, everything uses and excretes some form of Germanium (exept the few silicon based lifeforms that have developed)

[icespeed]

i know. the point is that its _not_ using selenium. which i think you used as a sort of oxygen substitute? anaerobic respiration was the model i had in mind. of course i'm open to correction.

[Carl]

it wouldn't hurt you to just post an MS paint pic or something.