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labgnome — Dragon Planet Tarasque-Kin

#kori #tarrasque #kasogonaga #tarasque #speculativeevolution #speculativebiology
Published: 2018-09-04 22:10:35 +0000 UTC; Views: 1485; Favourites: 11; Downloads: 0
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Description So here is an in-depth look at the tarasques, and their relatives, as well as how they are realted to all the other live-birth mammal analogues of Meadea.

*Icthiocentauriformes: have fully developed placental gestation, discussed in detail here .

*Hexicarnivorimorphia: ancestral digigrade posture, discussed in detail here .

*Panogremorphia: obligate herbivoeres, discussed in detail here .

Scaly Sea Tarasques: open-ocean aquatarasques with reduced scale-like armor.  They have a fully developed tail-fluke, and paddle-like fins.  Like all living armored aquatrarasques they have a fluked tail and three pairs of fins or flippers.

Scaly Aquatarasques: shallow-sea-dwelling aquatarasques with reduced scale-like armor.  They are closely related to scaly sea tarasques.

Spiny Aquatarasques: aquatarasques with armored plates modified into sharp protective spines.

Armored Aquatarasques: aquatarasques with a flexible covering of hardened armored plates.

Flippered Armored Aquatarasques: extinct, aquatarasques with transitional more flipper-like limbs.

Legged Armored Aquatarasques: extinct armored aquatarasques with basal legs and webbed feet.

Leatherback Aquatarasques: very large open-ocean aquatarasque with a thick, leathery shell.  Like all shelled aquatarasques, it's armor is fused into a single immobile shell like non-banded terrestrial tarasques.

Giant Aquatarasques: large, maraine shelled aquatarasque with a hard, bony shell.

Shore Aquatarasques: small, shore-dwelling shelled aquatarasque.  It is related to both leatherbacked and giant aquatarasques.

Maned Aquatarasques: shelled aquatarasque with a prominent mane.

Shelled Aquatarasques: the prototypical shelled aquatarasques.

Spike-tailed Tarasques: tarasques with a bony, spiked clubs on the ends of their tails.  Like all non-banded tarasques, they have their bony plates fused into a singular solid, dome-shaped shell covering their back.

Club-tailed Tarasque: tarasques with a hard, bony clubs on the ends of their tails.

Greater Tarasque: especially large tarasques.  They have short cone-shaped armored tails with pointed spines.

Lesser Tarasque: a medium sized tarasque.

Fairy Tarasque: a very small, burrowing tarasque.

Nine-banded Tarasque: small tarasques with nine jointed bands on their backs.  Like all banded tarasques they can roll into a ball-shape as a defense against predators.

Seven-banded Tarasque: small-to-medium tarasques with seven jointed bands on their backs.

Five-banded Tarasque: small tarasques with five jointed bands on their backs.

Three-banded Tarasque: small-to-medium sized tarasques, with three jointed "bands" on their backs. 

Soft-shelled Tarasque: extinct tarasques who had thick leathery shells with few or no bony plates.

Pygmy Kasogonaga: very small kasogonagas.  Like all kasagonagas they are tree-dwelling and feed on small, usually social arthropod-analogues with their long, prehensile, sticky tongue.  Like all kasogonagas they have tailless round bodies that have gas-bladders that can inflate and provide limited bouncy, which the animal can control by changing their body temperature.  This is used most often to cushion falls or to achieve controlled descents from high branches.  Pygmy kasogonagas have a vivid, coat pattern of multi-colored spots and are light enough to be able to occasionally generate controlled lift.

Lesser Kasogonaga: small sized kasogonagas.  They have a distinctive pattern of multi-colored horizontal stripes.

Greater Kasogonaga: medium sized kasogonagas.  They have a distinctive pattern of multi-colored vertical stripes.

Short-tailed Kasogonaga: extinct kasogonagas.  They possessed short, stubby tails.

Long-tailed Kasogonaga: extinct kasogonagas.  They possessed long, flexible tails.

Giant River Kori: very large kori, that are often found near rivers.  Like all Kori, they feed off of eusocail arthropod analogues and specialize in species that build larger nests.  They are especially powerful swimmers and often take the the water to escape predators.

Giant Swamp Kori: large kori native to wetlants.  They are more adapted to moving through thick vegetation.

Sea Kori: smaller marine kori, that feed primarily on sea bees**.  Something needs to eat them, I suppose.  They are related to both river and swamp kori.

Lesser Kori: extinct, medium-to-large sized terrestrial kori.

Proto-Kori: extinct relatives of kori and kasogonagas.

Xenonumbat: extinct relatives of ogres, tarasques, kasogonagas and kori.

Tree Xenopossum: arboreal marsupial hexipods.  Like all true xenopossums they are cursorily related to the other marsupial hexipods.

Burrowing Xenopossum: burrowing marsupial hexipods.

Bush Xenopossum: terrestrial marsupial hexipods.  They are related to both tree, and burrowing xenopossums.

Proto-Xenopossum: extinct relatives of species with true internal gestation.  They gestated their eggs internally in a pouch.

Prototherian: extinct relatives of species with internal gestation.  They laid eggs but carried them in pouches.

So my main inspiration for the aquatarasques was in fact speculations on "many-finned" sea-serpents that some were somehow weird, armored mammals???  So yeeeaaahhh???

Go home cryptozology, you're drunk.

Anyway other than there there was the tarasque, with it's honestly super glyptodon-like characteristics, and thus I made these tarasques six-legged glyptodon analogues, and naturally threw-in some mythical anteater cousins to fill things out.  For the kasogonagas I decided to take the "float upward from hot air" part of the mythology literally and ignore the direct lightning associations, as we already have one group of eletric mammals, and they work better.

**See bees?  Really medieval heraldry? Really?  Oh my god, I thought Cryptozology was drunk!  You're wasted!?
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Comments: 4

Lediblock2 [2018-09-04 22:38:14 +0000 UTC]

What are kasogonagas from?

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labgnome In reply to Lediblock2 [2018-09-04 23:25:30 +0000 UTC]

Apparently south-american mythology/folklore.  A place where people have IRL anteaters, so I guess magical ones isn't that weird in context.  I specifically got them from the "A Book of Creatures" website, so if I come across a better source retroactive changes might be incoming.  Also the whole rising into the sky is probably a poetic rendering of animal sacrifice, but seeing as this planet is already set to have other atmospheric floaters they seemed to be a nice and also interesting fit.  Balloon-mammals are pretty rare to non-existent in speculative biology to my knowledge.

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Lediblock2 In reply to labgnome [2018-09-05 00:53:51 +0000 UTC]

Ah, gotcha. The spelling threw Google for a loop.

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

labgnome In reply to Lediblock2 [2018-09-05 17:06:21 +0000 UTC]

Ahhh! Yeah.  I chose to go with the K-spelling because I also included the Kori as a relative.

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