u/Alpha_Bushdog

So after I finished the first primitive war book (Opiate Undertow) I read the acknowledgements in the end and it said that apparently the whole story was based on a collaborative project (I assume like the SCP foundation) called “Hunted”. Many characters from the book like Miller, Nguyen ,Leon etc. were created in this project. I can’t find anything about it online though (makes sense as this collaborative project would have existed years before the original book that was released in 2017). So does anyone here know anything more about it or have a link to it?

(Image 1 is from cryptozoologicon and drawn by John Conway)

This is an account from a soldier’s diary in this alternate timeline:

Son Tra peninsula March 12th 1968

“ Me and the lightning tigers were doing a patrol in the jungles of the Son Tra peninsula. It was late at night, I couldn’t even see my own hand. We were carefully marching trying to see if any pesky Vietnamese were nearby. My friend Chris Attorley whispered: “I see two in this bush over there”. Our lieutenant noticed and silently ordered: “Carefully approach them and then ambush them. Make sure they don’t have backup trees speaking Vietnamese, dismissed”. We silently moved towards them. You could hear the nocturnal animals like monkeys howling in the cloak of darkness as well as insects chirping. The two Vietcong sprinted away as soon as they appeared. “-Cowards!” The lieutenant whispered with a smile. But he wouldn’t be smiling for long. I saw a tall bulky figure that I think had reddish fur. Like the bigfoots I was trying to hunt down that I thought were real, with my brother back in California when we were kids. It was scary but also kind of majestic. More of the creatures appeared. It was a family of them. Soon we were surrounded by them. They were howling, trying to communicate to each other and were even grooming one another. But the lieutenant wasn’t impressed. I think he wanted a cool trophy, so he opened fire on one. The poor animal ran away in pain. “I have seen Charlies that put up a bigger fight than you, bitch.” Soon, I saw a rock being thrown and it severely wounded my friend Chris. “-Ouch, fuck!” He yelled in pain as the boulder had smashed into him, breaking some of his leg bones. I immediately grabbed him and brought him to our medic to give him some first aid. The ape folk were attacking us by throwing rocks at us.
What followed was a fire fight where we shot down three of the apes. But they brought reinforcements. More apes arrived and threw more boulders. Chris’ leg was now stuck between the ground and a rock and his leg was oozing blood. “-Help me!” He screamed. Soon our 14 man platoon was outnumbered and we had to run. Our lieutenant ordered us to leave Chris there. Is he still alive now? Don’t think so ,but I can’t be sure. I am a terrible friend I know, rest in peace Chris if you’re dead.We ran away. This was the most horrifying thing that happened to me in the war. No mortar fire, Vietcong or anything else could match the primal dread of nature.

Sincerely, Johnny”

After this encounter took place, the US military discovered a population of late surviving gigantopithecus blacki (the world’s largest known fossil ape) living in the jungles of Vietnam. They survived in a forested refugium and made it through the environmental calamities of the last ice age, allowing them to survive deep into the Holocene. After their discovery, as few as 20-50 individuals were known to survive. Having gone major population declines due to conflict with soldiers, getting caught in the crossfire of firefights as well as habitat loss by Napalm bombing. Today, they are a protected species and people from all over the world now visit Vietnam to have a chance at seeing these majestic prehistoric apes.

(This account was inspired by the primitive war novels and movie which have dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures in the Vietnam war)

Meniscoessus here. I am almost ready to enter the aberration and go to find the feather. Just waiting for Ace the didelphodon to make my gear. Until then ,I spotted a small lizard sitting on a rock. I immediately crouched and slowly approached not making a sound. And when I was close enough…Boom! In a burst of speed, I run at the lizard ,grab it and kill it. Then, I swallow my yummy prize. I’m an omnivore though so I also indulged in some fruit rations.

Hello there! I am a meniscoessus robustus, a species of multituberculate. I don’t have a favourite food, I just eat anything I can find as an opportunistic omnivore. I live in small burrows I make and small crevices in the bunkers which is how I survived the impact. Last night I had a weird vision about finding a long red feather in an underground aberration area. Also a part of me feels like a struthiomimus even though I’m perfectly happy with being a mammal. Maybe this and the feather are somehow related? IDK.I will get some rest now, perhaps snack on an insect or two and then I’m going into the aberration area and try to do this bizzare quest.

(OOC: I changed my user flair as you can all clearly see. This fella will replace the struthiomimus until the feather hunt is complete and he can be revived. The meniscoessus will also be one of the five animals in the feather hunt.)

Prompt: An organism that alternates between sessile (immobile) and motile (mobile) stances according to habitat conditions.

This time, I decided to not do an animal but rather a derived species of mushroom. This is volanomyces floranthropus

Volanomyces is a species of fungus, more specifically a very derived and specialized kind of mushroom from 100 million years in the future. It lives 100 million years in the future in high mountains. It filter feeds on small pieces of organic matter. (it coexists with aetherotragus dracomorphus, the common windgoat https://www.reddit.com/r/SpeculativeZoology/s/06eWZ621YT). During spring and summer, the species uses montane winds ,to permanently glide in the air. Spring is the species’ mating season. During this time, the gliding volanomyces will release male or female spores in the air, depending on their gender. A male and female spore will unite into a pseudo egg which will land in the ground and grow into a full adult within a week. Then it will repeat the cycle. During winter however, conditions are too cold for the species so all the individuals will rest on the ground and take root, until spring returns and they can return to gliding and breeding. However, during their resting time they are vulnerable. As they are a great source of food and nutrients for Aetherotragus which will actively seek them out. So, with their very primitive nervous system, the volanomyces need to find good hiding spots to “hibernate”

The struthiomimus barely escaped alive in the beach. The infected mosasaur didn’t swim as fast as it could before, allowing the ornithomimid to barely make it out. His mission had failed though as he didn’t manage to catch the leviathan. Attempting to do this again would be a straight up suicide mission. He couldn’t take down such a large animal on his own. But he found a better plan.
He made a diving suit to prevent the chance of infection and made a cage for himself with large meat chunks attached to it as bait. He also found some of the glory flowers that seemed to cure the infection and made a lot of paste from them and put it in a bowl. He then went back to the sea in this cage and waited. He waited for hours, his feathers becoming waterlogged. It was cold and very scary. His thalassophobia was kicking in and he almost panicked before calming himself down. Then it came. The zombie that was once the OG hell creek mosasaur. The beast swallowed the cage.
It consumed the meat chunks but in doing so, it nearly ate the struthiomimus too. He was still alive from sheer luck. He was horrified and he could quickly drown. But he didn’t let his chance slip away. Not this time.
The struthiomimus force fed the most all of the paste, hoping that this would cure it from the infection. But he had nearly passed out from the lack of oxygen. But in one last burst of strength ,he swam away, just before the mosa shut its mouth. The struthiomimus then climbed into a piece of driftwood floating around and paddled back to shore. If this didn’t work he would have to form a hunting party and better preparation to finish what he had started and stop the drowned zombie before it could cause more chaos.

The struthiomimus went on a raft with a net and a harpoon to catch the zombified water most that had escaped containement. He had been sailing on a log for hours and night had fallen, to no avail. After getting exhausted he sighed and thought. “Better luck next time, I’m continuing my hunt tomorrow”. Just then, a big underwater object hit his log. He froze in shock. Nothing like that ever happened in his 8 hour hunt. After the initial shock, he grabbed his harpoon. “Show yourself leviathan!” He yelled. But nothing happened. “It was probably nothing” He thought. Then he saw the head of a massive squamate trying to grab him. It was his chance. He threw the net at the sea monster but it just ripped through it like it was nothing. Then it proceeded to flip the log and cut it in two pieces. The struthiomimus was done for. He held onto his harpoon, his only defense. The mosasaur went to swallow him. The struthiomimus then stabbed the mouth of the aquatic squamate and pushed it deep into its upper jaw.
The struthiomimus then swam to shore as the mosa was distracted. He made it out safe just in the nick of time.

I have built more slingshots to help push off the asteroid if the looping plan doesn’t work. They are 10 in total and are 30 meters tall, capable of launching huge rock/metal missiles to the asteroid to help disintegrate it. Now, I need to see what will happen with the mosa situation.

In 1919 ,the treaty of Sevres carved up Anatolia and the remaining lands of the Ottoman Empire into zones of occupation among the winning powers of WW1. Greece got most of Eastern Thrace and a chunk of the western Anatolian coast which included Smyrna (Izmir). The same year, Greece deployed troops in Asia Minor to protect the Greek populations. However, Greece actually had imperialist goals for this military operation connected to the Megali Idea and Greater Greece. What followed was a brutal 2 year war where the Turks got back, all of Greece’s new territories (except for western Thrace). But what if in an alternate timeline ,Greece didn’t lose all their Anatolian lands.

In an alternate timeline, when it seems Greece has been totally defeated by the Turks, the Greek army in one last effort t continue occupying a part of Anatolia, manages to hold off Ataturk’s army from Smyrna and Ayvalik (Everything inside the red zones in images 2 and 3 is Greek).

Greece now has two exclaves in the coast of western Anatolia, similar to the Spanish exclaves in the North African coast (Ceuta)

These areas continue being part of Greece. Greek culture, architecture ,language and customs continues thriving there like it did for thousands of years. Greece would militarize these zones like in the Evros region of Thrace. Perhaps these exclaves could develop into major and rich Greek settlements/cities.

Türkiye however would be very unhappy by this. The Turkish army would also likely have a strong presence outside of the exclave borders, but since both countries are in NATO ,Türkiye wouldn’t be able to just attack and annex them.

The Aegean disputes of Greece and Türkiye would likely get a lot worse though, with Türkiye being more hostile to Greece over these exclaves and likely not fully recognizing them as Greek land.

Lastly, refugees from the Middle East would probably storm the place to access the rest of Europe.

These are just my thoughts so what’s your opinion on the matter?

In the middle Pleistocene of what is now the Northwestern Peloponnese region of Greece a strange encounter between two animals near the beach. A steppe mammoth calf (Mammuthus trogontherii) has found a bizzare critter from the sea. A Mediterranean monk seal (Monachus monachus). The mammoth calf is curious and approaches the seal. However, the pinniped is a mother and stands in front of the young mammoth in an effort to protect her newborn pup.

For a whole day, I stayed up on the top of the sea cliff / tall rock formation I found in the beach. It was an exhausting and very risky climb but well worth it. There were plenty of plants up there for me to eat and the view was just stunning. For hours , I was staring in awe in the great interior seaway with mosasaurs and sharks jumping from the water. Really fun. I also discovered an infernodrakon nesting site while climbing. Now for the descent.
The terrain was way too steep to easily climb down. Remember, I am more adapted for open ground where I can pick up high speeds. I was kinda stuck on how I would get down. Until, I realized there was only one, very scary option to get down. I am no bird or pterosaur but I am feathered. I used my feathers to slow down my fall to a lower flat region. I repeated until I reached sea level and returned to the forest near the coast.

Prompt: Meccha chameleon: An organism that uses externally deposited pigments to blend into its environment.

In the middle to late Permian, a bizarre and rather unsettling creature lurks in the forests at night, about as big as a Komodo dragon. The Aoratosaurus dolophonus. It’s not a reptile, but rather a synapsid. More specifically, a therapsid somewhat closely related to gorgonopsids. The species is arboreal and is an ambush predator. Its hunting strategy revolves around it latched on the bark of a tree in the cover of darkness, perfectly still and camouflaged, waiting for small to medium sized prey like dicynodonts and (usually small) parareptiles to pass by. Then, it pounces on them, quickly killing them with its powerful bite and dragging them on top of a tree like leopards so that larger, more powerful predators will not steal its kill.
Aoratosaurus is a solitary creature, only seeking out others of its kind to mate. Females will lay a clutch of about 20-30. Then, it will abandon them. The hatchlings are thus forced to fend for themselves. Hatchlings and juveniles after birth, are a pale pink color, not suitable for blending into their environment. This makes them easy targets for predators. Their main food source however, are the chromatic spiders, family chromarachnidae sp. A very successful and abundant family of spiders that has colonized all of Pangea. These spiders are very colorful, with very strong pigments. 90% of the hatchling/juvenile Aoratosaurus diet, is made up of these spiders. The spider coloration ,mostly the green pigments , directly affect the color of the young Aoratosaurus. With time, the young go from a pale pink that stands out, to a green coloration that blends in well with the environment and is perfect for hunting. However, there are multiple species of these spiders and different species give different colorations. Aoratosaurus that don’t live in forested/swampy environments eat them to blend in to other biomes like snowy tundras and more commonly, deserts. Adults, will instinctively continue to feed on the spiders, in turn preserving their coloration that helps them hunt.

Prompt: Land whale: A terrestrial organism that engulfs multiple prey items at once

The Af-ballaaran (in Somali :wide mouthed) or Gaiocetotherium oslatum ,is a genus of afrotherian mammal 40-45 million years in the future living in the Somalian continent of what is now East Africa. Due to the quills on its tail it is likely of tenrec ancestry.

The species is an insectivore with a very bizzare feeding strategy. The Af-ballaaran is toothless.It preys on swarms of migrating locusts. To do so, it leaps in the air and with its mouth which can open at a very big angle, it sucks multiple locusts at once and devours them. During the rainy season (spring and summer) when the locust swarms are in abundance and migrating, the Af-ballaaran feeds on them for hours. This is also their mating season and when they raise their young. During the dry season, the species hibernates in burrows, waking up just before the end of the dry season and the arrival of the locusts. In this small window of time, they mainly feed on birds and bats to sustain them, until their main food source arrives.

I have finally reached the top of the sea cliff after a long day of climbing! The view from up there is beautiful. With a view to the Great Interior seaway and the rest of hell creek. I think I am 150 or so meters above sea level! From up there I can see most of the formation, as far as rock valley! Also if you’re wondering where the location of the sea cliff is, it’s the x in image 3. To go down, all I need is a little wind…

After a while of rock climbing ,parkouring and overcoming steep terrain, I have finally made it into a more flat area about 20 meters from the top of the cliff. But now I have realized that someone was there before me. I found a baby infernodrakon just running around after I scared it (makes sense I’m basically a giant in its eyes). I was kinda worried that the parent would come for me (pretty dreadful thought as I had nowhere to run) but I found an unoccupied nest as well. The hatchling could even fly for short distances so I think it can fend for itself.

After waling some more, I have also found an entire colony of them, ready to fly away. Pretty smart for the pterosaurs to lay their eggs here, as predators cant easily climb up there to hunt them. Anyways see you at the summit!

(Images 1 and 2 are OC by me and image 3 is from prehistoric planet episode 3, Freshwater)

Well, I started climbing the sea cliff that I found on the beach and I have both good and bad news. The good news is that I have climbed the first 25 or so meters of the cliff with ease as they weren’t too steep. I’ve also found some tasty fruit which I was surprised that they grow here. It was a great snack to motivate me to climb further. Unfortunately though, from that point on things haven’t gone as well. I have almost slipped off of the rock, numerous times and the terrain isn’t as traversible anymore. Still, I’m very careful and I’m holding on very well. I want to see what awaits me in the peak.

Struthiomimus here, so today I was munching on some fresh ferns near the beach until my eye caught this super tall sea cliff. I would say it’s taller than 5 T. rexes stacked on top of each other! So I went to investigate and I’m going to reach the top! Probably a bad idea because I’m meant to run on open ground, not jagged peaks. I will give it a shot though!

Spoilers ahead if you haven’t seen the movie yet.

I went to see this movie 2 days ago in the cinema (pleasantly surprised my local cinema even had it). Overall I think it was very fun time. I really enjoyed that we got to see a dinosaur movie from the POV of regular people instead of elite scientists/special forces. People that are dealing with everyday problems and relationships just trying to survive. I think that was pretty good. Also, I kind of enjoyed that unlike other Dino movies, this one doesn’t show you the dinosaurs right off the bat, but instead builds up their arrival with little hints. For example, we see a prehistoric plant pleuromeia planted in a neighour’s garden or dinosaur feces. I quite liked that the first dinosaur to appear in the movie was only briefly shown in a reflection of itself, as an ominous sign of what’s to come.
As far as the dinosaur action scenes were concerned ,they were all pretty damn epic. Especially the spinosaurus attack on the family car, the titanoboa crawling in the house, the Garjainia murking the librarian and of course the allosaurus. The dog Dagestan-fighting the pterosaur to protect Brian ,towards the end was also awesome. From the start ,I also really hated Mel and hoped he would die (cause he threatened to shoot the dog) and indeed he was killed by the pterosaurs. This was quite satisfying as he was acting very stupid being on the roof of his house thinking he was him. I really enjoyed the dynamic of Greg and Denise from a couple in the edge of divorce, to working together to survive. The scene with the sauropods mating was also pretty good character development and kinda funny. (I mean, they’re animals ,makes sense they would do it.) The scene also made Greg’s death later even more sad.
I was surprised the film makers had the balls to kill off a character like Greg something JW would never do. I liked that it was traumatic for the characters as a crucial character just got eaten not just an unimportant merecenary, purely to show how dangerous the dinosaurs are. I also really liked that the movie showed more niche animals like coelophysis, allosaurus , Garjainia ,titanoboa ,carbonemys etc. instead of just the classic/obvious choices.

The prehistoric jungle with the baobab like trees, plants and volcanoes was also stunning to look at. As for the overly feathered designs, it felt they came straight out of the feather craze (an era in paleo media roughly from the late 2000’s to late 2010’s where all the theropods were feathered cause it was a new thing discovered. Probably not too paleo accurate (the amount of feathers) especially on the sauropods which kinda looked weird at first, but I kinda grew on their unique design.

While I loved the movie I have two major issues with it:

1. None of the prehistoric animals except for a damn plant got named in the movie. I guess that could be to keep them more mysterious but as I said previously, some of these animals are pretty niche to a non paleo nerd audience and more people should know about them.
2. The ending: I’d say it was okay. The only thing I didn’t like about it was that it didn’t feel climatic enough and didn’t have too many dinosaurs. I would prefer for the portal to appear beyond the neighourhood in the jungle where the characters would have a final showdown with a couple of theropods to escape. Also I kinda hated that Greg’s death wasn’t actually permanent and he lost all his character development. Also the asshole that was Mel actually wasn’t killed by pterosaurs after all.

Other than that, really solid movie. (Also appreciate the fact that the movie has Triassic animals)

Prompt: The Odyssey : An organism that undertakes long voyages as part of its life cycle.

Odysserpeton is a genus of fully aquatic temnospondyl amphibian from the Late Jurassic. It can breathe both air and in water. Its range covers the shallow seas of Gondwana like those of East Africa, Madagascar, the Indian subcontinent and Australia. It mainly feeds on fish and other relatively small sea creatures. (It’s about 3-4 meters in length). They live in shallow waters for most of their lives, until the time to mate. When they reach sexual maturity ,entire herds of them will migrate to a body of water called the Mid Gondwanan flood which is separated from the surrounding ocean by wave currents similar to our time’s Sargasso Sea. (Indicated by the red perimeter in image 2). There, the herds of Odysserpeton will spend a couple days mating and laying their eggs. They lay millions if not billions of eggs in total. The journey is long and tiring, many of them will not reach their destination. And the ones that make the journey aren’t capable of returning so they die.Their corpses, turning to food and nutrients for their offspring.The Mid Gondwanan flood, makes for a good nursery for the young. But after a month or so, by which point they will be about 20 cm long with a wingspan of 40-50 cm (the hatchling illustration is not to scale) the nursery can’t sustain them anymore. So the hatchlings, instinctively migrate to the shallow waters from where their parents came from. They can swim really quick but can also glide in the air like flying fish to avoid aquatic predators like marine reptiles. Their bright coloration shows that they are poisonous even though they really aren’t and many hatchlings still get eaten by oceanic predators in their journey. After their long voyage ,they can grow in the shallow seas of Gondwana.

I finally drew the struthiomimus I roleplay as. I based it a bit on the original art I used to represent myself in my introduction post but added some new features. Most notably a yellow sac and a red feather crest along with some dots added to the stripe pattern. Hope you enjoy him!