01-31-2020, 08:45 PM
There are three types of large mammals that weren’t listed for U.N.E.’s lands here but that I think could plausibly occur in nations on this continent that have larger expanses of tropical rainforest and/or swamps & swamp-forest.
1. Tapirs
2. A branch of the ‘Water-Horses’ that I mentioned for U.N.E. but filling a comparable ecological niche to RL manatees rather than RL dugongs.
3. Amynodonts, members of a family that became extinct in RL but could have survived here: essentially hornless rhinoceroses with a comparable size & lifestyle (although perhaps with more browsing on soft plants, rather than grazing) as RL hippopotamuses. There is currently no “everyday” name for these animals in English, unless your nation has one, unlike the situation for some other (and mostly more recent) types of extinct mammal. I suggest that we use ‘Behemoth’, because that term for a large mammal came to English from the Old Testament in which it originally might have — according to some scholars — meant ‘Hippopotamus’ (because back in at least the earlier parts of ‘Biblical’ times, there was still a population of Hippopotamuses as far north as the Nile Delta…).
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Also, in the larger areas of uplands (above the tree-line) or semi-desert & desert there could be species from an endemic family that I’m currently calling the ‘Amallidae’. This belongs to an endemic order called the ‘Iduiungulata’, which is quite closely related to the Perissodactyla (i.e. horses, rhinoceroses, tapirs, etc…), and its members have evolved to fill similar ecological niches to RL llamas or — now that the map gives this expanded continent more drylands — camels…
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If we follow the same basic ideas for the fauna of this continent as a whole that I used for U.N.E. then it shares very few species of Mammals, or even genera of them with RL Earth.
There are Humans and their domesticated species, of course, and any other species that people have introduced whether deliberately or accidentally (House Mice seem fairly much a certainty, for example, and both Black Rats and Brown Rats are quite probable as well…). The order Cetacea (i.e. whales and dolphins) has much the same membership on both worlds, and perhaps even travelling freely between them, although we probably have an endemic family of ‘river dolphins’ here. Apart from that, so far only two species that exist on RL Earth have been listed so far as definitely present here (and, even then, have only been listed as present in the form of endemic sub-species), namely the Lion (Panthera leo) and the Tiger (Panthera tigris)… and those are the only species from their genus currently recorded as native.
The only other ‘RL’ genera of Mammals definitely reported as present on this continent so far are Cuon (the ‘Red Dog’, or Dhole; there is one species from this genus in RL Asia, and it is also quite closely related to the piebald ‘African Hunting Dog’), Ursus (bears; more precisely, ones from the sub-genus Melursus whose only RL member today is the ‘Sloth Bear’ of India), Mellivora (we have an endemic species closely related to the RL ‘Ratel’ or ‘Honey Badger’), and Sus (the most widespread genus of Pigs).
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I’ve made a list of the ‘national animals’ currently declared for nations on this continent, and will comment about this soon.
1. Tapirs
2. A branch of the ‘Water-Horses’ that I mentioned for U.N.E. but filling a comparable ecological niche to RL manatees rather than RL dugongs.
3. Amynodonts, members of a family that became extinct in RL but could have survived here: essentially hornless rhinoceroses with a comparable size & lifestyle (although perhaps with more browsing on soft plants, rather than grazing) as RL hippopotamuses. There is currently no “everyday” name for these animals in English, unless your nation has one, unlike the situation for some other (and mostly more recent) types of extinct mammal. I suggest that we use ‘Behemoth’, because that term for a large mammal came to English from the Old Testament in which it originally might have — according to some scholars — meant ‘Hippopotamus’ (because back in at least the earlier parts of ‘Biblical’ times, there was still a population of Hippopotamuses as far north as the Nile Delta…).
_________________________________________________
Also, in the larger areas of uplands (above the tree-line) or semi-desert & desert there could be species from an endemic family that I’m currently calling the ‘Amallidae’. This belongs to an endemic order called the ‘Iduiungulata’, which is quite closely related to the Perissodactyla (i.e. horses, rhinoceroses, tapirs, etc…), and its members have evolved to fill similar ecological niches to RL llamas or — now that the map gives this expanded continent more drylands — camels…
_________________________________________________
If we follow the same basic ideas for the fauna of this continent as a whole that I used for U.N.E. then it shares very few species of Mammals, or even genera of them with RL Earth.
There are Humans and their domesticated species, of course, and any other species that people have introduced whether deliberately or accidentally (House Mice seem fairly much a certainty, for example, and both Black Rats and Brown Rats are quite probable as well…). The order Cetacea (i.e. whales and dolphins) has much the same membership on both worlds, and perhaps even travelling freely between them, although we probably have an endemic family of ‘river dolphins’ here. Apart from that, so far only two species that exist on RL Earth have been listed so far as definitely present here (and, even then, have only been listed as present in the form of endemic sub-species), namely the Lion (Panthera leo) and the Tiger (Panthera tigris)… and those are the only species from their genus currently recorded as native.
The only other ‘RL’ genera of Mammals definitely reported as present on this continent so far are Cuon (the ‘Red Dog’, or Dhole; there is one species from this genus in RL Asia, and it is also quite closely related to the piebald ‘African Hunting Dog’), Ursus (bears; more precisely, ones from the sub-genus Melursus whose only RL member today is the ‘Sloth Bear’ of India), Mellivora (we have an endemic species closely related to the RL ‘Ratel’ or ‘Honey Badger’), and Sus (the most widespread genus of Pigs).
_________________________________________________
I’ve made a list of the ‘national animals’ currently declared for nations on this continent, and will comment about this soon.