7
This is a good question, and you actually might be able to achieve your goal naturally. The lower cutoff for helium fusion is $\sim0.5M_{\odot}$; given the main sequence lifetime relation $\tau_{\text{MS}}\propto M^{-2.5}$, we can estimate that such a star would stay on the main sequence for approximately 56 billion years. A good rule of thumb for red giant ...
7
We have various living things on earth that prevent erosion:
Mangroves
Corals
Ground Cover
Really anything with a root system or with the ability to create durable structures will help prevent erosion.
Now, reversing erosion is another issue.
The goal here will be to get dirt/soil out of the air. Blocking the wind (enough) will allow dirt to "drop out&...
5
There are much easier ways to go about doing what you want. For one, moist skin allowing oxygen to be extracted from the water is a synapomorphy of Lissamphibia, not amphibians as a whole. Most extinct "amphibians" (temnospondyls, anthracosaurs, semouriamorphs, lepospondyls, stem stegocephalians, colosteids) had either keratinous scales or some ...
5
First Ask, How many Generations are we Dealing With
Human females hit maturity at the age of 13 whereas your dragons hit maturity at an age of 22 with 3.5 million years to work with, you can assume the amount your dragons evolved in this timeframe could be comparable to about 2.4 million years of human evolution at an estimated 160,000 generations. When you ...
4
You need to refuel your star somehow
The best way to do this is probably a Stellar merger. This needs to be a very lucky collision that gets in the sweet spot where they merge gently, such that it doesn't cause a supernova, or create a black hole, or melt your ice world, or create a gamma ray burst that sterilises the system. This is quite the trick shot.
0....
4
I Think I Hear You:
Ultimately you want tentacle-like growths on the head of something that is otherwise a bipedal quadruped. Sorry, but I don't have a vision for ossicones, but I could see you reaching the same goal with ears. Since ears are cartilaginous, they can eventually do the same ossification that ossicones do once we've evolved some really clever ...
3
First of all you would rule out bones or the like, because they would impede stretching or compressing beyond a small amount. You see something like that in an octopus, who can pass through narrow passages just by squeezing its body through them, thanks to the lack of bones.
To have a rubber like behavior also the body would be made in a rubber like way: ...
answered Apr 5 at 6:48
3
Oh deer!
Imagine a scenario where there's a massive increase in aggressive small mammals. They attack other small animals, even of the same species. Sometimes they kill for fun. These critters move almost silently. Imagine the rabbit from Monty Python as an example.
How would existing animals react? Over a long enough period of time, evolution would ...
3
It's turtles all the way down the list.
Most of the time in freshwater: check. Bog turtle, say.
Brief period on land for larvae that return to the water to feed: check.
Flattened limbs: check.
Moist skin to absorb oxygen: check! seriously! The caveat is that it's only during hibernation - their needs are too much when they're active. For now. Evolution ...
3
It sounds like you are talking about the ever-growing teeth of rodents or elephants. Rodents don't have milk teeth, in fact their chisel-like incisors are actually retained baby teeth that continually grow throughout the animal's life. The incisor teeth of a capybara are the same incisors it had as an infant. Elephants do go through two sets of teeth, a ...
3
I don't believe that all your requirements can be met simultaneously.
Bone growth requires living tissue around the bones. You've already ruled out continuously growing teeth and deciduous teeth, and you don't like the structure of eg. mammalian horns. Your idea of tree-like growth is going to be problematic with tooth-like materials, and the prospect of ...
2
Have you considered looking at non-mamalian biology for inspiration? I know you said they were "deer-like," but if they're aliens, there's no reason they'd have to follow Earth evolution.
If you look at the frills of Ceratopsian dinosaurs, you can see how they start off as a solid bone plate, but as the animal ages, windows open up in the bone to ...
2
Anal teeth
Sea cucumbers are a class of echinoderms. Many species are practically sessile. Other animals love to hide inside their anuses. In some cases, they have coevolved into commensalism with said other animals; The sea cucumber is generally chill with having other animals making a nest inside its anus.
Sometimes these guests are inconvenient, such as ...
1
I do not think this is a complete answer, but I saw an opportunity to grind some of the rust off of my chemistry skills and give us a starting point for the "how much complexity could life on a rogue planet have" portion of your question.
As this is an estimate of available chemical energy from hydrothermal vent fields on a planetary scale, these ...
1
Dental Battery
You mention triceratops teeth. well the "teeth" you refer to are not a single tooth but a dental battery, which is hundreds of tiny interlocking teeth. they continuously grow new teeth that get pushed out but due to their shape and being cemented together by tooth formation they stay interlocked with their neighboring teeth creating ...
1
Let’s look at the old model your replacing. The king, or chief, or tyrant rules nothing outside of his immediate surroundings. He can only directly command the men within earshot. And can only project that power (by marching the army) a short distance. The far lands are ungoverned (at least by the tyrant himself).
The way monarchies and empires dealt with ...
1
It would seem like it would enforce any sort of nobility based system, as a more effective method of communication inherently means a more effective government, meaning that the basis for nobility wouldn't be a culture in a vacuum of psudoscientfical principles of superiority but rather how closely you could communicate with other governmental officials, ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
