A World For The Birds

 

My latest Internet obsession has been a speculative evolution/world-building project called Serina: A Natural History of the World of Birds. Its creator came up with a hypothetical world, and through artwork and write-ups, imagined the evolution of the planet and its lifeforms over more than 250 million years.

He starts with a barren moon, and has humans populate it with canaries as the prime lifeform, as well as guppies, various types of insects and invertebrates, and plants like bamboo and sunflowers.

Over time, Serina's inhabitants diversify. the flowers and bamboo become like trees, growing into forests. Without predators, sea-life grows until you have shark and whale-like guppies and sea slugs the size of a man. Snails and crickets grow large and ants become a major lifeform. The planet's birds, which get funny and creative names like chubbirds and butcheraptor, diversify. Eventually, some reach the size of dinosaurs!

Gradually, the creator imagines the planet changing. The various continents attach and drift, with the wildlife adapting and changing accordingly. A creature called a mudwicket evolves from one of the types of fish, becoming amphibious, with its tail becoming a leg. Those gradually evolve into the tribbets, become full-time land dwellers and branch off into all sorts of weird creatures.

The birds get stranger as well, with some moving to the water and resemble fish and seals. Others start to develop sabre teeth and long necks, and some bird's beaks become soft and start to develop into hand-like grappling appendages around their mouths!

The end of Serina's penultimate epoch/beginning of its last, where I'm currently at, is where some inhabitants start to show signs of intelligence. The babbling jay evolves enough to strategically use tools to evade predation from the hand birds, then goes further with art and even a religion of sorts. But, it goes extinct quickly. 

Two other species, the antlears, tribbet descendants with boney arm-like appendages growing from their ears, and grave diggers, descended from a group of birds, become the two dominate, sentient lifeforms of the project, existing near a planet, and so story-ending, ice age.

A very fun, well-researched, and seriously fascinating project! Highly recommended.

Cheers!