Alien Evolution:
The (now definite) beginnings of an illustrated e-text on extraterrestrial evolution by Josh Shinavier.
More images coming soon, bookmark this page!
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Demiom arthropoid, type A
Here are (for now) just three of my creations. I'll probably be able to add a couple of others as well, but more will not fit into my remaining disk quota. Click on the small image to see it in full size.
I've just discovered a great way to compress these black-and white drawings to about half of their original file size without losing any significant amount of image quality, so I'll be able to put quite a few more images here. Now it's just a question of free time, of which I have basically none at the moment, to do some more scanning and uploading. By Christmas, at the latest, the number of drawings here should be doubling or even tripling.
Sorry, I know I said I was going to have new images here soon,
and now it's well beyond 'soon' and I've still only gotten these
four images scanned, edited and uploaded. Well, I'm adding a
fifth which I drew about a week ago, but I do promise to add more, I'm just not sure when. There are at least ten drawings which I WILL scan, and five others in the making, including an animation. Please use the URL minder and it will automatically tell you when the new drawings are here. Guess what, Geocities has extended its disk quota to 3MB, which means I have space for almost 6 times as much material as I have here now. I'll fill it all, but not overnight; I have to edit the images to reduce their file size, which takes time I don't neccessarily have... motivate me, send me an
e-mail. JJS
If any philanthropically-inclined Net surfers out there would like to see a LOT more of these, I just need $36 to buy extra disk space, then I can store about ten times as many images here. It doesn't seem all that logical to PAY to show people one's artwork; normally it's the other way around, but I'm willing to do it for free as long as I have the disk space...
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high-grav. arthrochordate
high-gravity adaptation
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This creature is what I call an 'arthrochordate', which has both
an internal and also an external skeleton, having evolved from
simple protective armor (a fall from a tree could be fatal to
even a small animal on a high-gravity planet) into a system of
interlocking bone plates which serve as a neccessary structural reinforcement in a larger animal. Six or more legs wouldn't be
as much of a nuisance in such an environment as they would be
on Earth; they would help to spread the weight out and make a fall that much less likely.
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Antiel chordate scavenger
a bipedal carnivore
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I imagine this odd creature as something like the analog of Earth's hyena; a heavily-built scavenger which relies on overpowering its competitors rather than hunting for itself, an animal which is not dangerous unless you fail to clear out rather promptly upon its appearance. I tend to find a horizontally-opening mouth more likely to evolve than a vertical one, as it would be genetically simpler, due
to the natural symmetry of the animal, to code for a symmetrical jaw. This creature has evidently evolved
from oncestors with compound eyes and, owing to the fact that they allow the creature to see in all directions
at once, it has 'decided' to keep them.
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generic low gravity forager
Five Heads are Better than One:
a low-gravity forager
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The "what good is half an eye?" phenomenon: It seems strange at first that no species has ever developed more than one head, when multiple heads would in many cases, confer certain evolutionary advantages upon their possessors. Clearly, a grazing or foraging species which could graze or forage several times more quickly and efficiently than its limited "monocephalous" counterpart would quickly dominant, and the world would soon contain a significant percentage of "polycephalous" herbivores. Only in animals who count on a simple, aerodynamic body form (such as predators, fish and birds) would this be a hindrance. The explanation lies in the fact that at the beginning stages of evolution, more than one body opening would be superfluous and of no advantage to the animal, assuming that it evolves from a free-swimming organism. Then by the time the animal has reached land, it has advanced to the point that the beginnings of any primitive additional orifice will be of very little use and won't be allowed to continue evolving. So this is an impossible creature, not on account of its nature, but merely because there is no possible evolutionary path leading up to it.
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