ASTROVITAE ISSUE 01

ARTISTSPOTLIGHT | SPECULADERMIA
SPECULADERMIA
If Placoderms Conquered the Land
BY URIEL PEGUERRA
Humble Beginnings. A pair of Stagmoichthys natans meander onto land to hunt for insects during
the Middle Devonian Period. These amphibious ish are the irst vertebrates to conquer land and
are the forerunners of all modern day tripod species.
I’m rather new to the genre of
speculative biology and only learned
about it a couple years ago. The whole
concept is mind-boggling, but the idea of
creating a whole other world with
creatures of your design truly compels
me. I had several ideas in mind, ranging
from a world of birds to the future
evolution of humans. But one idea stuck
out the most for me—a group of armored
ish called the placoderms who ruled the
Devonian Period until they were driven
to extinction. In my project dubbed
Speculadermia, the Placoderms survived
and took over the land instead of our ish
ancestors. These terrestrial armored ish,
called “Tripods”, run on three sturdy legs
and breath from nostrils on their necks
descended from gill openings. The
project will explore the evolution of
these tripedal beasts as they endure
every major event that occurred in
Earth’s history, from the Permian Mass
Extinction to the Ice Age.
Beached. After a Miocene storm, an
Osteocetus anodontus washed up in Europe.
These “bone whales'' are a diverse group of
aquatic deinotripods that took over after the
K-T Mass Extinction that wiped out almost all
biota in the oceans.
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