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[piecewise]

If you listen to the fanboys, all the series they call "bad writing!" on tend to ignore stuff like the progenitor race and the clear steel or whatever windows (as well as throwing rooms into the ship that serve no logical purpose.)

I recall an episode of voyager where they met a many million year old civilization that evolved from dinosaurs on Earth and left when they saw the meteor coming. I kept myself from fussing too much about all of the things that didn't make sense there but what matters right here is that some of the writers DO think that any species that ends up intelligent ends up humanoid, unless it's crystals or a small population of psychic space whales or such.

I saw that episode. I was actually very attracted to the first ten minutes, wherein the writer had obviously drawn on Brecht's 'Life of Galileo' (though, the rest of the episode was just Galileo in general). The dinosaurs didn't bail when they saw the meteor, though. They bailed when the meteor blocked out the sun. I didn't think it was so much of a stretch, except for the fact that we never found any of their cities.

[Shoku]

If you listen to the fanboys, all the series they call "bad writing!" on tend to ignore stuff like the progenitor race and the clear steel or whatever windows (as well as throwing rooms into the ship that serve no logical purpose.)

I recall an episode of voyager where they met a many million year old civilization that evolved from dinosaurs on Earth and left when they saw the meteor coming. I kept myself from fussing too much about all of the things that didn't make sense there but what matters right here is that some of the writers DO think that any species that ends up intelligent ends up humanoid, unless it's crystals or a small population of psychic space whales or such.

I saw that episode. I was actually very attracted to the first ten minutes, wherein the writer had obviously drawn on Brecht's 'Life of Galileo' (though, the rest of the episode was just Galileo in general). The dinosaurs didn't bail when they saw the meteor, though. They bailed when the meteor blocked out the sun. I didn't think it was so much of a stretch, except for the fact that we never found any of their cities.

That's quite poorly handled as well though. Even if we take the asteroid to be 10 miles across (a little bit generous) this is no good. The sun takes up about half of one degree of our visual range. Using the math for angular diameter this would make such an asteroid the same visual size when it was just five miles away. This would put it in the troposphere and things usually light up at more like 50 miles up. It is worse because there's no way it would have been directly lined up with the sun so it would actually need to be much closer. Additionally it would need to be falling toward us in the direction the Earth is moving in order to not quickly move out of range of the sun so there can't be any "sure it was falling toward us but it took a long time because we were moving away" explanations, even though with the whole acceleration thing that doesn't make much sense anyway. So it had to be falling toward us but I'm going to make these numbers even more favorable for the story and say that it was just inexplicably sitting still waiting for the Earth to run into it. The Earth moves at 18 miles a second so they just said that they shot themselves off of Earth within a 3rd of a second window and weren't caught in the effects of the impact. Having that kind of acceleration available and the means to transport what sounded like their whole population they could have just physically deflected the thing at any time after noticing it and probably taking a break to have some tea.

The writers didn't bother with lore or calculations. Sure the show does some wonky stuff with space travel in general but the other series at least bothered to preserve geometry.

Oh, and in case you think I've vastly underestimated the size of the space rock the equation is simple enough that you don't need to even look it up. Just double the size if you want it to have been twice as far away at sun-blocking size. Don't worry about the area of a circle or any of that, if it matches half the diameter of the sun it's half as close as it needs to be to match the diameter. Go ahead and treat it like a 1000 mile wide asteroid (any bigger than that and you might as well throw the moon at Earth,) but that would still only give 30 seconds to get the hell out of the atmosphere.

Edit: Whoops, some of the angles were in radians so this is all wrong. You'd get it about 600 miles from the Earth so you'd have had 30 seconds at my initial size estimate. This is still a ridiculous window though. You could go with a lot of exaggeration of things and almost make this seem reasonable.

[Grakelin]

Good gravedig and all, but the scientific theory of Dinosaur's extinction doesn't involve them all dying at once. The theory goes that the meteor kicked up so much shit off the surface of the planet that the soot filled up the sky and blocked out the sun.

I'm amazed you were able to critically think the idea of the meteor physically blocking the sun, but didn't realize that.

[Shoku]

redacted

[Supermikhail]

I've just stumbled on this topic, and I'm interested in it, but I'm having a hard time finding a starting point for the quest for evolution. Actually, I'm really fascinated with bizarre creatures, but my inner skeptic has almost killed all of my ideas. I used to like speculating on what laws govern evolution, how a lump of organics gains instincts, what ways it has to evolve. Now I feel that evolution is too prone to the butterfly effect, and the current abundance of lifeforms is a result of unique events and influences that we would not be able to trace. But one of my writing projects involves an alien planet that's starving of life due to my lack of imagination, so I'd really like to be in. I can draw, and for the direction I've been going in lately you can check out this place, which has a couple of my pieces in the OP.

[Shoku]

It is and should be very butterfly effect-y. If I wanted to be too technical we could keep track of the pH, temperature, nutrient scarcity, light tolerance and various other things then have disasters wipe animals out accordingly but I think just having a food web will do the trick after it gets started.

Five different plant eating specialists die out? How can something that didn't die change to perform those roles?
It's the less butterfly-effect style evolution where species just refine their body plan that would be the most trouble in a project like this.

[Supermikhail]

And now I've remembered my idea that the best things (including humans) evolve when there are extreme conditions, like conditions of a mass extinction due to a meteor impact, or a magnetic field shift. I mean, look at dinosaurs and what they've achieved? Only bigger and bigger butts (and teeth in some cases). But let them die - and here we come. And increase in species number and diversity.

So, do I have to draw something? I've got

Spoiler: this idea of an alien sentient being (click to show/hide)

that came to me one night when I was trying to sleep. And it's even written here that it speaks in "low, guttural sounds interspersed with short bursts". But I have no idea what its neighbors would be. Is it possible to start sort of from the top and only later from the bottom?

Some of my thoughts of it were that it's got a springy ribcage and females feed their kids through the canals in the growths on their upper jaw that can be mistaken for teeth.

[Shoku]

Well look at that- it's got two eyes, two arms, two ears, and hair on top of it's head. Why?

[Supermikhail]

Because for my story I needed it to be humanoid, because it has to be vaguely relateable by the human protagonist. And also the human protagonist has to coexist with this species.

But consider the skeletal structure. I'd dare a guess that it in no way could have developed from our fish, because fish's ribcage is quite solid. This creature is made for jumping. Also, the idea of its eyes, as I said it came to me in a half-dream state. And my best guess would be that they are close to an insect's, because they are solid black with blue iridescence.

So, does it even remotely promise to be something to work with?

And hairs - this species exists in a savannah-like environment, and hairs have proven to be a good insulant, a measure against dehydration and a camouflage against predators if they have pigments, on our planet, I believe.

[Shoku]

It's a bit counter to my goal. "Humanoid" really says everything.

Definitely a good creative effort but,
Well, in biology they teach you about this thing called phylogeny pretty quick. Basically it's just fitting things into a family tree and you list the changes between them on the branches. The fewer things on the branch the better. To me this looks like starting with a human and then changing the ribcage and eyes.

Plus bones aren't really as hard to change as people seem to think. Giraffes went and made their vertebrae really long yet their necks are still awfully flexible while turtles up and make this whole new set of bones well after their normal skeleton is already there.
From a mechanical standpoint springy bones sound like they would make it tiring to stand. Might as well not use bones/cartilage there and just go with something like the intrinsic muscles of the tongue if you're going to always have to even have them working to keep you in "resting" position. Of course with evolution "might as well" doesn't have all that much to do with how thing actually happen~

[Supermikhail]

Well, sorry, wrong address. I guess I'll have to work on it sometime on my own.

[Shoku]

The point is really that we always make humanoids and arachnidoids and so forth because we're trying to start at the top and the bottom is an afterthought if it's addressed at all.

So yeah unfortunately this is the wrong address if you're not interested in doing it differently than everyone else and paying some attention to the bottom.

[Grakelin]

So, what have you done so far?

[Shoku]

Nothing. I'm not going to work on it myself because the idea is about shuffling things between people.

Alternatively: a 4 year degree in 6 years, err, I mean Biology.

I've run into two or three top downers, about eight people who said they were interested and disappeared, and about four people who might have had a learning disability that prevented them from understanding that I was asking people to draw things. Most of that in places other than this thread.

This has been flat out the only location where people have told me about similar projects other people are working on. Overall I'd say the major failing point has been that people didn't notice my emphasis on evolution. Like the mutation and selection kind. Everyone that sticks around until their reason for leaving is clear either wants to build Aristotle's ladder or doesn't realize that's what they're trying to do.

[Jopax]

Well we need a start first, create a planet, do the first few stages perhaps, so we have some of a start.I have an idea, a fairly Earth-like planet, slightly larger, and a bit farther away from the sun, some 40-50% of it is ice and ice covered oceans, along the poles are the only open air water surfaces, due to heavy volcanic activity on those locations, so it's a bit warmer there and the temperatures aren't that extreme.The planet itself goes trough three stages before completing a full circle, one of extreme temepratures, where during the day it's warm enough to melt the ice and during the night it's cold enough to freeze it all back up, a second milder stage where most of the temperature differences come from volcanic activity and weather changes and a third stage where the entire planet semingly goes dead and all climate changes halt, there are no winds and volcanic activity is minimal.

Don't ask for any explanations for the planet, it's like that, deal with it

Also, for starters we could have several basic species with defined roles, then we build upon those.Several plant species, some herbivores, omnivores and predators.