The Species of the Named

 

Since the story took place 5.3 to 24 million years ago, the species are hard to analyze. In fact, some might not be real animals at all. Thistle-Chaser, one of your two guest wizards, has attempted to analyze them here.

 

With this table we will try to show you all eligibilites we have found for each of the animals.. from the Named to seamares. The text found here was written by Thistle, and the generic pictures (collectively, the facetail, seamare and dappleback) came from the Biology: Principles and Explorations book by Holt, Rinehart and Winston.:)

Picture (Thumbnail)

Names

Description

Clan Cats/Hunters/UnNamed

The first thing that comes to mind is that these cats are sabretoothed cats. But if you read a little closer the descriptions of black, tawny, or reddish fur with the 'black mask' and also look at the pictures on the books. Sorta looks like a Cheetah which also adds to confusion. But there are no cheetahs in North America. So what cat could it be? I'm absolutly sure these cats are of the Puma family. (Puma aka Cougar aka Panther (not leopard type panther-- aka Mountain Lion) Pumas also have the 'fangs' spoken of in the book. The size varies from line to line. (So Shongshar coulda been another line of Puma that had gotten some sabre-tooth genes in there or something... or he could have been a sabretooth himself.)

Dappleback Horses

First thing you think is 'horses? but there weren't horses in America ...' .. wrong. There was 10+ million years ago. But were wiped out in the Americas during the Ice Age. There have been several species that I have looked at .. what might be the dapplebacks are the Pliohippus ... or earlier the Merychippus ... but that's only a guess. As for being called 'dapple' ... they had stripes, solids and spots back then. So our dapplebacks are undoubtedly spotted-backed horses. At any rate ... whatever they are they are from the Miocene time ... 5.3 millon to 24 millon years ago ... which does fit in our time scale! :)

Three-Horn Deer

These beasts we are still trying to find out .. a small picture of a deer that has the 'three horns'. They are definitely deer (the books call them 'deer') Just a matter of finding out what species exactly. If you can find anything out about this mysterious creature ... let us know!

Treelings

This has probably been one of the most difficult creature to track down. The books say its a 'lemur' like creature, but lemurs only exist on Madagascar island. Others have considered it a monkey ... but no primates (but for the lemurs) have long, ringed, tails. So we had to leave the primate family and looks else where. What else has a ringed tail and a black 'masked' face? Well .. a raccoon. But raccoons don't quite fit the description the books give you. Hasta be smaller. What fits that description? Their cousin, the ringtail.That undoubtfully is what our treeling friends are.

Facetail Mammoth

This was one of the most easiest to pick out .. since we were already told in the book! (Though it took me awhile to pick it up myself ;P ) It's none other than the mammoth.

Seamare

According to my biology book, four-legged mammals climbed into the ocean about sixty million years ago... as Thistle pointed out above, our timeframe is 5.3 to 24 million years ago-- exactly the right time for /Rodhocetus kasrani/ to have lived.. this is a rather vicious-looking animal, like a cross between a cetacean and an alligator.

To see the original text file (that Thistle wrote up for the MUCK), please click here.

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