#wolbear

[tribbetherium]

Some new species from the wildlife of the islands post.

The Bridge Isles off the northern coast of South Ecatoria have been isolated since the Glaciocene. Here an empty space in the ecology with resources and territory unexploited remained unoccupied, and soon new tenants would arrive from the skies--and never take off again.

The Bridge Isles are home to very few terrestrial species, with much of its occupants being airborne flyers, marine species resting on its beaches, or small creatures, like duskmice, furbils and rattiles that rafted to the island. But one large outlier stands out: a 300-pound flightless pterodent towering over anything else that calls the Bridge Isles home.

The greater zeebeedee (Megalornithomys equinocephalus) is the largest of several species each living on different islands along the chain. Its flighted days are long past behind it: bearing but stunted wings, that lack even the four wing claws most pterodents sport, it has entirely abandoned an airborne existence to take advantage of a resource that deters most other flying animals--tough grasses. Such a forage would require a heavy, unwieldy digestive system to ferment it and extract maximum nutrition, so by giving up the ability to fly, the greater zeebeedee can easily occupy a niche that would be filled by ungulopes elsewhere. Indeed, the convergence is evident: particularly in its striped equine-like head with cropping incisors and grinding molars that allow it to efficiently graze on the grasses that carpet the mountainous meadows of the Bridge Isles, growing to such large sizes due to an absence of herbivore competition.

A consequence of their isolation, however, has been the loss of fear responses among the greater zeebeedee: in fact, they, especially solitary young males, have become utterly fearless, even reckless, in their behaviors. In territorial fights, achieved with bites and kicks, both combatants will not back down until they have both sustained serious injuries--injuries they can afford to sustain with no enemies to run from or concern them if weakened. If anything new or unfamiliar enters their territory, it is met with decidedly un-cautious aggression. To them, there is no danger, and the urge to flee to protect themselves has greatly diminished: an otherwise fatal flaw that persists on the Bridge Isles without any detrimental consequence.

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The Fragmian Isles are a series of small islands that have emerged in the Temperocene as a result of tectonics and volcanic activity, forming a series of tiny landmasses connecting Gestaltia to the smaller subcontinent of Fragmus.

These chain of islands have come to form the most intriguing of patterns: along the islands, from Gestaltia to Fragmus, live a series of species on each island that trend along a series of increasing size. The ones of neighboring islands can and do interbreed if they get the chance, however the ones on opposite ends of the island chain have speciated so vastly that they are no longer capable of breeding with one another, both physically and genetically.

The mudmallows are one such example: a group of thick-skinned semi-aquatic cavybaras native to Gestaltia that, on their homeland, scarcely grew larger than 50 kilograms due to the abundance of bigger herbivore competition. But, seeking out new frontiers with their exceptional swimming ability, some coastal populations headed out to sea from one island to the next, island-hopping across the archipelago until they arrived to Fragmus: with no competition from other herbivores, but, trailed there by the predatory wolbears who were just as competent long-distance swimmers when hunting aquatic prey, the mudmallows would expand into far bigger, horned grazers, ten to twelve times as massive as their mainland cousins.

Some of the mudmallows, however, have continued to make a living along the coasts and shallow seas of the Fragmian Isles, such as the atoll seahog (Marinoporciceros fragmus), a smaller species that ranges all across the archipelago. It forages in small herds on the shores for marine plants such as seagrasses, coast kudzu and kelp, and can dive deep for as long as ten minutes at a time to graze on bottom-anchored marine vegetation. Able to float easily and swim with broad, paddle-like paws with blunt claws and semi-webbed toes, it can even head out during low tide to access atolls and sandbanks that submerge in high tide, feasting on marine vegetation that ends up washed ashore, and sharing their spaces with bayvers, ratbats and pterodents, conspicuous as the only creatures on the atolls with neither fins nor wings.

Atoll seahogs are a gregarious species, traveling in small family groups of about a dozen individuals as they probe the coastal shallows during the cooler parts of the day. Their secluded location leaves them with hardly any threats on dry land, but in the seas are occasionally preyed upon by opportunistic phorcas that target them from below. To counter this, seahogs tend to stick close to the shallows, where phorcas rarely venture to avoid the risk of beaching: yet even then, some phorcas, skilled at timed lunges to ambush bayvers resting on shore, try to hunt them from time to time with varying rates of success.

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Junctus was a former land bridge that formed during the Late Therocene, connecting the continents of Arcuterra and Gestaltia throughout the Glaciocene and allowing the exchange of its flora and fauna. Once, Junctus was a flourishing landscape with vast wetlands and bramboo forests. But then came the winter of the Glaciocene, stripping it of nearly all life plant and animal alike. Gone are the giant grandas, herbivorous badgebears that fed on the bramboo, or the small rabbacoons that have since also vanished with the extinction of the skragg, their final living representative, at the dawn of the Temperocene.

Today, a small leftover piece of the land bridge that once was still remains: Isla Junctus, a northernly isle commonly exposed to cold winters and hot summers, now a rarity in most other places in the Temperocene. Its soils, rich in organic matter from being formerly part of the seabed, is highly conducive for plants to grow brought over by wind or ratbat and pterodent droppings, yet much of its wildlife are semi-aquatic marine species like bayvers and narwalruses, or airborne flyers. Its land animal population is scant: the ever present furbils, duskmice, rattiles, and a few basal jerryboas or scabbers. And reigning as unlikely top predator on this small but stable sanctuary is a holdover from a time far long past: the Junctus fauxfox (Junctucyon pelagius).

The fauxfox is a relic from the time when its larger zingo ancestors prowled the forest floors of the bramboo groves all the way back in the Therocene. When the cold snap of the Glaciocene, larger species died out, but the hardy fauxfox endured--surviving the demise of the forests by turning to the sea and shoreline for food. Today, the Junctus fauxfox sticks mostly to the coastal habits of its Glaciocene ancestors, feeding heavily on shrabs, mollusks, crustaceans, sea ratbats, and the carcasses of narwalrus bulls that perish in brutal breeding-season fights and the abandoned afterbirths and any deceased pups the females leave behind. But as Isla Junctus's only land predator, it is not a picky eater, and also heads inland to exploit more terrestrial food sources, such as small animals, insects and even fruit on occasion. Thriving in a variety of environments, the fauxfox's flexibility has been its asset in surviving in an ever-changing world. In the Therocene, ancestors of the fauxfox lived side by side with far larger animals, ones that had failed to persist through the harsh winters. In the end, it is not the strongest that survive: but the ones that adapt the best to change.

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Peninsulaustra in the Glaciocene was a barren, frozen wasteland: once home to abundant life in the Therocene, the freezing of the Glaciocene left it but a lifeless, icy rock. But this catastrophe would allow a new clade to dominate the continent: the flightless semi-aquatic ratbats known as the blubbats.

In the Glaciocene, the blubbats would primarily occupy a parapiscivorous niche, hunting the various small fish-analogues like shrish and pescopods as there was scarcely any food on the land. This pressure would eventually turn some larger and more aggressive blubbat species against their own kin, and thus would rise the blubbears: large terrestrial apex predators that hunted smaller blubbat species as well as the bayvers that came ashore on Peninsulaustra's coast.

Peninuslaustra, however, would merge with South Easaterra in the Temperocene, forming Austro-Easaterra, a warmer temperate world that now offered many opportunities on land. The blubbats thus diversified into freshwater waterfowl-like niches, tree-climbing omnivores, and burrow diggers to name a few, while the blubbears became stocky omnivores that foraged, scavenged and hunted at the same time. A lingering piece of the old Peninsulaustra still endures, however, as Isla Frigor: a small island south of Austro-Easaterra that still remains frozen for half the year, but now experiences summer thaws that enable plants to bloom inland. Here, a relic survivor clings to the arctic ways of its ancestors--part-time, that is.

The bipolar blubbear (Temporursanyctus bimorphis) is the largest native species of Isla Frigor, that for half the year, during the cold winter months, lives a coast-dwelling, blubbat-hunting lifestyle, clad in thick white fur much like its ancient forebearers. Yet, as the days become longer, the snow and ice floes melt and summer draws near, the bipolar blubbear undergoes a dramatic transformation. Shedding its snowy coat that replaces with a shorter, brown-grey coat, it adopts an alternate camouflage for the other half of the year, suited to hide among rocks and plants instead of ice and snow. Its behavior changes too: it becomes less territorial and aggressive now food is plentiful, and the solitary carnivore now becomes a semi-gregarious omnivore, gorging on plants as much as it does with meat, and gathering in small loose groups. It is at this time that they mate and breed, yet it is not until winter when the young are born: well after the bipolar blubbears, with scarcer food and colder weather, revert to their solitary, white-coated, carnivorous phase once more. Here, the mother relies more on stored fat to nourish her young, typically only one, and once the youngster is developed enough can cling to her back and accompany her on hunts. Twins are rare, and usually not viable: in such a case, the mother would often abandon, or even cannibalize, the weaker of the two pups, as she frequently lacks the resources to allow both to survive.

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The North Isles, a breakaway portion of a small peninsula north of Gestaltia, is the most northernmost land mass of the Middle Temperocene: and is the only landmass polar enough as to remain cold and snowy for the entire year, with but a few cold-resistant flora briefly blooming in the snow for less than a month when the temperature is at its highest--relatively speaking, as even in summer snow still covers the ground.

The North Isles are so barren, inhospitable and devoid of life that literally only two hamster species live there: the tundra blemming (Frigirattocricetus brevicauda) and the northern snowhound (Phantasmacyon jonii). Predator and prey locked in an eternal conflict, these two extremophiles are the only survivors of the detachment and northward drift of the North Isles in the Early Temperocene.

Tundra blemmings are furbils: despite lacking the long tails normally sported by the clade, for here they would be a liability in the cold. They are very abundant, but are rarely seen above ground: banding together in large communal dens, they eat mostly underground roots, lichens, and microbe-eating invertebrates living deep in the soil. During the rare month-long bloom, the blemmings emerge in droves to gather and hoard as much food as they can, like seeds and plant matter, piling them in their dens as a stash for later. If conditions are unfavorable for a prolonged period of time, they can also enter a state of torpor to conserve their energy as food becomes scarce and they cannot easily refuel.

They themselves are an important resource for the snowhounds: the most northerly of the zingos, and a hardy survivor in an inhospitable world. Covered in thick white fur and well insulated by the cold, they use sensitive senses of smell and hearing to locate the blemmings from under the snow and pounce on them from above. Migratory ratbats and pterodents offer a welcome change in diet to the snowhound, but for most of the year, it feeds entirely on blemmings, on average hunting two or three a day, scarcely enough to dent the numbers of the prolific burrowers, which, with a gestation of as little as 16 days can produce two litters of up to a dozen young in quick succession during the brief time of plenty.

Their harsh environment, poor diet, and monotonous lifestyle has had a strange consequence in the snowhound: it has evolved to be the least intelligent of all the zingos, with a bigger and energy-hungry brain being but a liability in such a precarious niche. Elsewhere, big brains and social behavior have been an asset that allowed the zingos to become the most successful and widespread carnivore on the planet, and even give rise to not one, but two sophont species. But here, in a place where prey is small enough to hunt alone, sociality became detrimental, and conspecifics became competitors rather than partners. With a brain relatively smaller and smoother than those of an average zingo, and far tinier than those of the calliducyons, the snowhound is a testament to intelligence being but just another trait that can be selected for or against. In the end, the snowhound is good enough to just survive and hunt, and thrives, in spite of knowing nothing else.

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The Glaciocene subcontinent of Fissor was the birthplace of the rattiles: a clade that, emerging at an inopportune time when ice was abundant, now enjoys widespread success worldwide as the tropical Temperocene made the planet far more hospitable for them to grow and flourish. From plodding torticles to flying wingles to swimming seashingles and serpentine burrowurms, the rattiles are a clade unlike any other. Elsewhere, they have diversified and taken on unique forms entirely unexpected of a mammal. Yet it is here on the remnants of their birthplace, long since fused to Gestaltia, that a species both very primitive and very specialized prowls the swamps and wetlands: the marshland garitor (Rodentosuchus fissorius).

Belonging to a very basal offshoot of the rattile family unrelated to other major groups, the garitors fill the niche of aquatic ambush predator, a niche that convergent evolution has shaped repeatedly many times and even today happens in parallel with freshwater leviahams, a similar species that coexists with the garitors by being endothermic and thus more northernly-ranging into cold regions, and needing more food has a much more diverse diet. Most garitors, across Gestaltia, are much more specialized, yet none are extremely specialized as the marshland species of the Fissorian Archipelago.

Equipped with an extremely narrow snout with very elongated molars bearing numerous pointed cusps, the marshland garitor is a specialized hunter of small prey. It hunts freshwater shrish, skwoids and pescopods, and even uses its long snout to probe into burrows and extract its prey from their hiding places. But as a compromise, the marshland garitor exchanges this for a very weak bite: it cannot tackle larger prey unlike its mainland cousins which can tackle prey as big as an ungulope, and is thus restricted to much smaller quarry that it can seize and swallow whole.

Garitors breed once a year, producing a large litter of young numbering well into 50 tiny babies at one go. Once born, the mother leaves them to fend for themselves, and promptly moves out of the area instinctively as far as she can, to reduce the risk of her encountering her offspring again. Young garitors are conveniently bite-sized for an adult, and like most basal rattiles are not very social creatures, and likely would not recognize their own progeny. As such, natural selection favored for a hormonal trigger following birth that inhibits hunger for six to eight hours: plenty of time for the young to disperse before the mother becomes indiscriminately hungry once more.

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Alongside the rattiles, another clade hailing from Fissor are the rhinocheirids: a group of diverse, trunked bipeds descended from the walkabies that developed nasal trunks for pulling vegetation to their mouth. Over time, it became an increasingly dexterous appendage while their real arms became relegated to grooming or defensive functions, their trunk bearing a three-lobed tip formed of the nose and the split upper lip of their hamster ancestor. Gradually, the rhinocheirids found success in a myriad of different forms: towering treechers, arboreal treebumms, carnivorous lipgrips and even a sapient species at one point, the splintsters.

On the Fissorian archipelago, derived forms exist in abundance, such as the slow-moving, tree-living vertigoths. But mundane, generalist basal omnivores also thrive here. Many species of rhinocheirids are medium-sized, ground-dwelling foragers, using their trunks to pull down branches, pluck off fruit, tear up roots and tubers and probe into insect nests.

The splendid snuffsnout (Chromatorhinocheirus elegans) is a fairly typical species representative to many common rhinocheirid species, a forest-dweller that roams in groups in search for food. One less typical aspect, however, are their social structure: they are harem-based, as opposed to simple family groups by most rhinocheirids, with one dominant male and a group of up to a dozen females and their young. Males advertise their dominance through a display uncommon in mammals: bright coloration.

Walkabies were among the first hamsters to develop good color vision, and sport brilliant, decidedly un-mammallike patterns. This trend has now become more widespread in other groups like the tetracorns and lemunkies, as the presence of a secondary red sun likely contributed to vision seeing into the red spectrum as well. The male splendid snuffsnout's blue-hued fur is a product of hollow hairs that refract light, while sparsely-haired parts of its body sport gaudy pinks and oranges. These both attract females, and intimidate rivals: as their pigmentation intensifies based on their diet, their colors are an honest indicator of their health: signifying a strong well-fed individual worth checking out by receptive females, and better left avoided by other males. Sometimes, however, less-dominant males, while consuming reddish, iron-rich soil for the minerals, stain their faces with the dirt on purpose to appear redder: cheating their way to the top of the social hierarchy that is fairly successful on occasion enough as to keep the dishonest behavioral trait passed on.

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Well over a couple thousand ratbat species range all across the continents and islands, even in the presence of the wingles and pterodents. As the first flying hamsters to arise as early as in the Rodentocene, they have remained diverse and abundant, and settled onto landmasses inaccessible to other species.

Isla de Oof is one such example, with beach-dwelling jerryboas and herbivorous duskmice that scurry beneath the undergrowth of coast grass, while fallen nephtiles, giant, flightless wingles, roam the forest floor and forage on the shores as well. Its most notable resident, however, is the greater oof, giant, herbivorous lemunkies that specialized to a diet of weedwood trees. Alongside them is another endemic species that depends on the weedwood to survive: the iridescent bluewing (Cyanonyctus reflectus).

Iridescent bluewings get their color from the shiny, reflective coats of the males: coats that appear a dull grey most of the time but shines a bright blue in certain lighting angles. The bluewing, however, lacks any actual blue pigment: the color comes from the refraction of light. Their individual hairs are transluscent, flattened, and possess fine overlapping cuticular scales, allowing for a smooth reflective surface with multiple layers that produce color through interference with light, allowing light to pass through the hair and refracting it as it bounces back out, much like a thin film of oil on water produces iridescent bands. Males use their flashy colors to signal to females, a shining beacon in the treetops: yet, when threatened, they can ruffle their fur to disperse the light, breaking up the smooth surface and reverting to a dull grey, allowing them to almost disappear at will.

Iridescent bluewings have a diet that consists almost entirely of two things: the sugary sap of the weedwood trees, and the insects attracted to said sap. At times, the bluewings' gnawing for sap lures in insects that in turn become its main course, which over time has developed into an intentional behavior. The bluewing has a relationship with the greater oof as well. As the greater oof feeds, torn-off branches exude sap that the bluewing can access with little effort. The greater oofs are also magnets for swarms of flying insects that gather in clouds above their heads, and bluewings eagerly circle the lumbering beasts, snapping up the insects that are drawn by their warm, pungent, and massive bodies.

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Isla Frigor is home to year-round, grounded residents that live on the island permanently, such as the blubbears and blubbats that are endemic to the isle alone. But other transient species come to the islands and stay there part-time, particularly airborne ones that travel great distances between continents to search for food and nesting grounds.

The south arctic skwazzah (Marornimys borealis) is a species of wandergander that nests primarily in Austro-Easaterra in the winter and spring. During summer and fall, however, some populations migrate south to Isla Frigor to exploit a wide bounty of available prey. The skwazzah is the most predatory of the wanderganders: while most are primarily foragers or fishers, this species supplements its diet with ratbats, blubbats, and even the young of pinniped-like bayvers, which they achieve by harassing the mothers into aggression in hopes of them accidentally crushing their pups under their heavy, clumsy bodies, which, when deceased, is soon after abandoned by the parent and made an easy meal for the skwazzahs. They also trail behind bipolar blubbears, who in the fall are just entering their carnivorous winter phase, and feast eagerly upon their leftovers, or even riskily steal pieces of meat while the blubbears are eating if they are impatient or hungry enough.

When pickings are plentiful, some skwazzahs stay on the island even throughout winter, with a thick layer of insulating fur that helps them keep warm. Their massive wings, which would otherwise become heat sinks that would cause them to lose heat quickly, have a specialized joint in the middle of the wing finger like with most other pterodents, that allows the wing to almost "crumple" like origami and be folded compact and close to the body, insulated by the thick fur. Here, they fly less, and run and walk more, gorging on blubbear leftovers, small blubbats, and opportunistically on beached carrion.

While morphologically identical, the skwazzah has separated into several distinct ecotypes based on behavior and migration patterns: permanent Austro-Easaterra residents, transient Isla Frigor visitors, and Isla Frigor over-winterers, each population behaving differently at a given time of the year which has the positive consequence of reducing intra-species competition. While still perfectly cross-fertile and genetically the same, skwazzahs prefer to breed with those of their own ecotype if possible as they stay together longer throughout the year and maximize dual parental care for their pups: potentially heralding a divergent speciation within a species separated not by physical barriers but behavioral ones.

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[iamvegorott]

I was just listening to “Fire on fire” by Sam Smith (it’s godamm beautiful and you cannot change my mind) and when the fan-fucking-tastic chorus came on I was like: oh wait why does this match Dark and Anti? (Am I the only one here? Yeah? Ok I’ll leave bye) (sorry for that ask I just needed to get that out of my mind)

Just listened to it and I can totally see that!

[xmyloggo-blog]

Quick illustration #wolbear a combination of #wolf & #bear #illustragram #instafit #instago #picoftheday #instaart #logos #myloggo #liketoknowit #liketoworthit #likeforlikes #heart2heart #soulmate #humanwolf #humanbear #deerbear check out #myloggopromo (at Ulhasnagar) https://www.instagram.com/p/BncX4nfgDIZ/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=fd3jmug093mp

[wolverineholic]

Wolbearine by Jeffrey Cruz

[tribbetherium]

The Early Temperocene: 145 million years post-establishment

Badgebear Necessities: Badgebears of the Early Temperocene

The badgebears, a group of fearrets of the same relation as the predatory carnohams, have seen one of the strangest explosions of diversity in the Temperocene. Stocky-bodied omnivores ranging from small foragers about ten kilograms in weight, to massive lumbering beasts weighing five hundred kilograms or more, they come in a wide range of niches and sizes, and a wide variation of diets on a broad spectrum of carnivore, omnivore or herbivore.

Like their carnoham cousins, the badgebears possess pointed incisors for stabbing and cutting, and carnaissal-like first molars for shearing and tearing. However, with broader molars, stronger jaws, and a more flexible digestive system, the badgebears weren't pure meat-eaters, and could tackle vegetation in various quantities, depending on the species, with increasingly more-herbivorous species following a trend of broader molars and blunter incisors, as well as a longer gut that can manageably, though not efficiently, proccess plant matter.

The most carnivorous-leaning of the badgebears fill the niche of Gestaltia's apex predators, hunting its local fauna of walkabies, cavybaras, and buffalopes, among others. Some, such as the eastern wolbear (Ursoidetherium gestalticus), are opportunistic predators, mostly preferring carrion or small animals and still consume quite a lot of plants, but will eagerly take on bigger game if weak or injured. Wolbears are rather slow and ineffective big-game hunters, though the species present on the subcontinent of Fragmus find good fortune there with the abundance of the giant, horned mudmallows, slow-moving herbivores that take strength rather than speed or stealth to bring down.

The ursurppers (Gymnocephalursa spp.) are even more specialized carnivores, eating a diet of almost exclusively meat, but like the wolbears are relatively clumsy hunters that focus on buffalopes and other slower Gestaltian herbivores, which they basically wound persistently over a long period of time until it eventually expires from blood loss. A favorite tactic of theirs, however, is to score a free meal by simply bullying smaller carnivores away from their kills and profiting off someone else's effort. Their faces are distictively only sparsely furred, as they are messy eaters, often tearing into a carcass to access the most nutritious bits, and while this may be primarily an adaptation for such large animals to cool off in warmer weather, it has the serendipitous side benefit of keeping hygenic.

But by far the most specialized of the carnivorous badgebears are the fasbears (Ursoleo spp.), with the largest and heaviest being the 200-kilogram golden fasbear (U. dromaeus). Far from being a lumbering hunter crudely tearing its prey apart, the fasbear is more agile with its sleeker build and longer legs, and can run after prey on open plains, pounce on them, and deliver a windpipe-crushing bite to the throat. Obligate carnivores, such is its lifestyle that it has come to converge heavily appearance-wise to its distant carnoham relatives, distinguished only by its non-retractable claws and relatively less-flexible body that restrict it from arboreal hunting like the true carnohams do.

On Gestaltia, the badgebears rule as top predator, but elsewhere, such as Austro-Easaterra and Arcuterra, they live mostly as small, generalist omnivores seldom bigger than twenty kilograms at most. Here, they have to contend with true carnohams in Arcuterra, and with the bearhounds and blubbears of Austro-Easaterra, and such never rise to such heights as in Gestaltia in the presence of competing carnivores.

The pugnacious bugbear (Xanthursus brachycephalus) of Austro-Easaterra is one of the more generalized ones, barely getting any larger than a medium-sized dog, and practically eats anything it chances upon: carrion, small animals, tubers, berries, fruit and especially insects and their larvae are all well on the menu. Aside from its diverse diet, its other saving grace is its truly unpleasant temperament, that makes enemies even twice or thrice its size to hesitate picking on the small but fearsome creature.

The tricolored bearglar (Procynursus tricolor) of Arcuterra, on the other hand, has a completely different tactic to evade the notice of enemies: rather than being bold and brave, it is a very shy and timid animal that primarily emerges under the cover of night or Beta-twilight while the big diurnal predators are asleep. Unusually for the typically-solitary badgebears, they travel in small family groups, their coloration helping them recognize one another, and their diet as a whole is significantly more herbivorous than the pugnacious bugbear, comprised mostly of roots and fruit with the occarional helping of small prey thrown in, primarily during the breeding season when the higher demand for energy drives them to seasonal increased carnivory.

In some lineages on the opposite end of the dietary spectrum, some badgebears have, over time, increased this plant consumption to higher levels when pressured by a lack of prey, adapting to their new diet with flatter, blunter teeth, a proportionally longer digestive tract, and, most importantly, a new micro-ecosystem of beneficial gut microbes that play a large part of their ability to digest these fibrous matter that would make a more carnivorously-inclined badgebear ill. This would not be the first time this carnivore lineage would make a foray to herbivory: earlier in the Therocene, the now-extinct giant granda fed on the abundant bramboo grasses, the demise of which in the Glaciocene ultimately led to their extinction.

The broadnose gumbear (Rhinnurus gummae) of Arcuterra is one of the more herbivorous of the badgebears. While it may supplement it's diet with invertebrates, up to 80% of its diet is plant matter, primarily leaves and stems of cloverferns and grasses as well as flowers and fruit. As such its anatomy clearly reflects this transition: its teeth have become more suited to cutting, clipping and grinding as opposed to tearing and shearing. Yet its evolution is not perfect: it still processes its vegetation quite inefficiently, compared to the likes of more "proper" herbivores like the hamtelopes. Much of its droppings are undigested plant matter passed out without being absorbed, so to avoid wasting this resource, the gumbear creatively--and disgustingly-- recycles its dung, allowing the undigested plant matter and its nutrients to run through the digestion and absorbption process for a second time.

On Gestaltia, the badgebears' experiment on herbivory has culminated in an even bigger species than the ten-to-twenty kilogram gumbear, in the form of the greater tibber (Tibbertherium giganteum), which in its adult size can reach sizes of up to 250 kilograms in the biggest specimens. It too is a herbivore, almost entirely so, and is remarkable for a strange dietary transition. Mother tibbers bear relatively large litters of up to a dozen or more small but well-developed offspring that can forage at the age of just a few weeks after weaning. When young, tibbers are highly omnivorous, including small prey on their diet, likely for the protein that allows them to grow quickly. As they age, however, their consumption of meat gradually wanes eventually to become near-obligate herbivores upon reaching maturity at the age of two or three years. This dietary "metamorphosis" allows a larger population to thrive as youngsters and breeding adults are able to coexist without depleting one another of sources of food.

Incidentally, the tibbers' geographical placement puts it into conflict with its own distant relatives, the fasbears, who in turn recognize no kin and simply consider them just another prey species. On the tibbers' credit, their powerful claws make for quite effective weapons, and pound per pound, are evenly matched with their carnivore cousin on a one-on-one conflict strength-wise. Predator and prey, borne from the same ancestry, clash on the continent of Gestaltia, representing the two ultimate extremes of a very diverse clade: an obligate carnivore and apex predator, and a herbivorous forager, both part of a widespread group that includes nearly everything else in between.

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[tribbetherium]

The Early Temperocene: 145 million years post-establishment

Leap Frag: The Fragmian Isles and the Fragmus Subcontinent

Among the pre-existing continents of the Glaciocene, some fused into larger landmasses, one new subcontinent has arisen from the flooding of Gestaltia and the rise of sea levels: the subcontinent of Fragmus. Bordering the mouth of the Fragmian Sea, a low-level basin that in the rising tides has flooded into a seagrass-rich "seavannah", the continent of Fragmus was a land mostly devoid of large life, until only recently in a few million years' time.

Most immigrants to new lands are often small creatures, either flyers or small rafters that came ashore on floating mats of vegetation. Yet Fragmus is home to large megafauna that made the journey across despite the marine separation, through truly unusual means that in convenient coincidence neatly demonstrate the forces of evolution that shaped all life on this world. These are the mudmallows: a clade of semi-aquatic, sparsely-furred cavybaras of distant relation to hammoths and piggalo. Residents of the Gestaltian swamps, the rising floods worked well to their favor, and being remarkable swimmers, they did not need frozen seas or land bridges to colonize new land: they simply swam there on their own power.

But even to this amphibious swamp-dwelling herbivores, crossing a whole sea seems a bit of a stretch, save for a convenient path for it to follow: the Fragmian Isles. Acting as rest stops filled with abundant food, the mudmallows island-hopped across the sea in search of new territory, able to cross gaps of up to several kilometers of shallow sea that other land animals could not, settling on one island, to another, until they finally reached the new continent and thus spread and diversified.

However, even today a remarkable relic of their incredible journey remains, in the form of a genus of mudmallows (Fragmuchoerus spp.). Eight extant species are found on the Fragmian Isles between Gestaltia and Fragmus, each having settled on one island while others moved on, and as one observes the species from each island, a trend becomes evident: as the species progresses closer to Fragmus, a trend of increasing size, bonier noses and more divergent color patterns become clear, ranging from coastal Gestaltia's hog-sized Fragmuchoerus proteus to mainland Fragmus's ox-sized Fragmuchoerus continentem. They thus form a unique chain of transitional species on the island, all simultaneously extant, and while species on neighboring islands are similar enough and on rare occasion actually do cross over to other islands and interbreed, the further away they originate the less compatible they become, until the point that mudmallows from opposite ends of the chain can no longer even physically interbreed due to massive accumulated physiological differences, and thus must be regarded as entirely separate species as opposed to dubious definitions of subspecies.

Mainland Fragmus, however, is where the mudmallows truly have the chance to shine, as, with little other competition, they came to dominate large herbivore niches on the subcontinent, now spanning over thirty or more species in seven genera. But they did not come alone.

Gestaltia's dominant carnivores, the badgebears, followed suit: surprisingly good swimmers as well, due to their facultative preference for aquatic prey at certain times of the year, some of the larger carnivorous species made their way across the Fragmian Isles all the way to Fragmus, and indeed may be partly responsible for the increasing size and defenses of the mudmallows as they co-evolved in an arms race with their predators. The badgebears now thus fill a wide array of nondescript generalist carnivore niches on Fragmus, with the biggest species, with the largest, the shaggy wolbear (Ursoidetherium arctoimitus) being over two meters on its hind legs and weighing up to 250 kilograms. Curiously for an apex predator, however, wolbears are secondarily omnivorous: while they do hunt the large herbivores of the subcontinent, a significant amount of their diet also includes plants, fruit and invertebrates, allowing them to be more behaviorally flexible when large game is hard to come by.

The local mudmallows, in response, have evolved many defenses to their large predators in response: most conspicuously, a pair of true bony-cored horns from bony knobs on their snouts as effective ramming weapons. Smaller species such as the curl-horned poirot (Nasoceratochoerus hercule) have forward-pointing horns that can inflict serious injury when headbutting smaller enemies, while small species with big predators to worry about rely on multiple defenses: the smallest species of Fragmus mudmallow, the quilled spinehorn (Spinochoerus minimus) is only about 15 kilograms but overlaps its territorial range with the shaggy wolbear: against which it defends itself not only with horns on its front, but also spines on its rear: quills formed from the mudmallows' coarse bristly hairs that have been modified into barbed-tipped quills that are difficult to remove once embedded. Well-defended fore and aft the spinehorn is far more trouble than it is worth, and many wolbears learn from painful experience that they are better off finding a meal elsewhere.

While smaller mudmallows develop defenses to ward off enemies, others rely on passive protection simply by becoming very big. The largest mudmallow species is the golden aurotaur (Aurotaurochoerus maximus), unmistakable by both its tawny yellow hue most pronounced in adult males and by its size, with the largest growing up to four or five tons and measuring six or more feet at the shoulder. Traveling in herds aurotaurs are protected by their size and numbers, while large solitary species, such as the bighorn potodon (Macroceratochoerus bicornis) possess impressive weaponry for both intimidation and actual combat, which, in the highly territorial species, often is against rivals of their own species as well as against predators.

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Wolbear by BRKD