https://idugov.com/forum/ Mon, 25 May 2026 12:59:10 +0000 MyBB https://idugov.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=2152 Thu, 17 Jun 2021 05:39:16 -0500 Bears Armed]]> https://idugov.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=2152 Bears Armed( → Tearvan)
14 hours ago

"Hrarroom!" ("Greetings!")

As you're active, and have taken a place on the map, would you be interested in developing your nation's ecosystems... whatever development has left of them?
Given the location, size, and city-state theme, I'd envisage a general pattern similar to that of Hong Kong or Singapore, although with a very high proportion of native species filling the niches that are occupied by similar -- & possibly quite closely related -- ones in RL. Lots of waterfowl & waders/shorebirds, some brightly-coloured land-birds, otter, civets, large & 'ornate' squirrels, small-to-medium wild Cat species, lots of snakes (probably including both cobras & sea-snakes), gecko lizards & maybe also monitor lizards, turtles, possibly a 'saltwater' crocodile, lots of colourful fish, sharks, large prawns, jellyfish... Mangrove swamps... etc...

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Tearvan (replies)
10 hours ago

Greeting!

That sounds cool, I do imagine this city-state to be like Singapore in a way. I do want the ecosystem of mine to at least match the area around me cause that would make sense. Other than that, I'm down to develop my nation's ecosystems.]]> Bears Armed( → Tearvan)
14 hours ago

"Hrarroom!" ("Greetings!")

As you're active, and have taken a place on the map, would you be interested in developing your nation's ecosystems... whatever development has left of them?
Given the location, size, and city-state theme, I'd envisage a general pattern similar to that of Hong Kong or Singapore, although with a very high proportion of native species filling the niches that are occupied by similar -- & possibly quite closely related -- ones in RL. Lots of waterfowl & waders/shorebirds, some brightly-coloured land-birds, otter, civets, large & 'ornate' squirrels, small-to-medium wild Cat species, lots of snakes (probably including both cobras & sea-snakes), gecko lizards & maybe also monitor lizards, turtles, possibly a 'saltwater' crocodile, lots of colourful fish, sharks, large prawns, jellyfish... Mangrove swamps... etc...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tearvan (replies)
10 hours ago

Greeting!

That sounds cool, I do imagine this city-state to be like Singapore in a way. I do want the ecosystem of mine to at least match the area around me cause that would make sense. Other than that, I'm down to develop my nation's ecosystems.]]> https://idugov.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=2043 Wed, 11 Mar 2020 13:35:05 -0500 Bears Armed]]> https://idugov.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=2043 (even if we don’t count the four voting nations that aren’t [yet] actually on the map, or the one puppet that voted after its player’s main nation had already also done so, that’s still 12-to-1 in favour …) See: https://www.nationstates.net/page=poll/p=153911

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Do we still have Trilobites in the IDU's world?

The Free Bears of Bears Armed wrote: In RL the Trilobites (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilobite) became extinct shortly before the rise of the Dinosaurs, but the Horseshoe Crab [of comparable antiquity] still survives. Might we still have living Trilobites in our world, somewhere in the almost-unexplored deeps or even in the shallows alongside -- or replacing -- the Horseshoe Crab?

No: Legionas.
Yes, only in the deeps: Laeral, Ruskayn, Res Publica Melitensis, Gladysynthia, North Cross, Lauchenoiria, and Comhar.
Yes, deeps and shallows (alongside Horseshoe Crab): Zamastan, Libertas Omnium Maximus, Christos, Gardavasque, Agury, Sunemia, Rio Palito, Birnir, and Ponoxien.
Yes, deeps and shallows (replaces Horsehoe Crab): ---
Yes, shallows only (alongside Horseshoe Crab): ---
Yes, shallows only (replaces Horseshoe Crab): Arcadia Dazeber.

____________________________________________

Obviously it’s still up to each nation’s own player to decide whether Trilobites are present in that nation’s own territorial waters, but it seems reasonable to presume that (at the least) those who voted in favour of there being trilobites in the “shallows” will have them present.
Looking at the pattern of votes cast, this suggests so far that our surviving Trilobites’ collective range centres on the Olympic Ocean (although not along the western coasts of Hesperia?), with outlying populations around both Libertas Omnium Maximus and Arcadia-Dazeber, but that they might be absent from most of the Tenebric Ocean’s shores. Decisions by additional players might change this, of course. I am working on IC explanations for this distribution.]]> (even if we don’t count the four voting nations that aren’t [yet] actually on the map, or the one puppet that voted after its player’s main nation had already also done so, that’s still 12-to-1 in favour …) See: https://www.nationstates.net/page=poll/p=153911

____________________________________________

Do we still have Trilobites in the IDU's world?

The Free Bears of Bears Armed wrote: In RL the Trilobites (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilobite) became extinct shortly before the rise of the Dinosaurs, but the Horseshoe Crab [of comparable antiquity] still survives. Might we still have living Trilobites in our world, somewhere in the almost-unexplored deeps or even in the shallows alongside -- or replacing -- the Horseshoe Crab?

No: Legionas.
Yes, only in the deeps: Laeral, Ruskayn, Res Publica Melitensis, Gladysynthia, North Cross, Lauchenoiria, and Comhar.
Yes, deeps and shallows (alongside Horseshoe Crab): Zamastan, Libertas Omnium Maximus, Christos, Gardavasque, Agury, Sunemia, Rio Palito, Birnir, and Ponoxien.
Yes, deeps and shallows (replaces Horsehoe Crab): ---
Yes, shallows only (alongside Horseshoe Crab): ---
Yes, shallows only (replaces Horseshoe Crab): Arcadia Dazeber.

____________________________________________

Obviously it’s still up to each nation’s own player to decide whether Trilobites are present in that nation’s own territorial waters, but it seems reasonable to presume that (at the least) those who voted in favour of there being trilobites in the “shallows” will have them present.
Looking at the pattern of votes cast, this suggests so far that our surviving Trilobites’ collective range centres on the Olympic Ocean (although not along the western coasts of Hesperia?), with outlying populations around both Libertas Omnium Maximus and Arcadia-Dazeber, but that they might be absent from most of the Tenebric Ocean’s shores. Decisions by additional players might change this, of course. I am working on IC explanations for this distribution.]]> https://idugov.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=2039 Fri, 21 Feb 2020 12:43:30 -0600 Bears Armed]]> https://idugov.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=2039 Overview

Introduction
Birds – Those of the vertebrate animals that are members of the Class ‘Aves’, distinguished from the other types of ‘Tetrapods’ (literally the “Four-footed”; those others are the Amphibians, Reptiles, and Mammals) by their possession of feathers, according to traditional taxonomic reckoning. An offshoot of the Dinosaurs, whose continued designation as a ‘Class’ is awkward because the Dinosaurs are generally defined as only a ‘Super-Order’ (which is a lower taxonomic rank…) within the class ‘Reptilia’, and whose earliest members’ differentiation from feathered “Non-Avian Dinosaurs” is hard to define, according to more current thinking.
As this thread will deal primarily with the IDU’s birds from the geological era after the extinction of the “Non-Avian Dinosaurs” I won’t really need to differentiate between these two groups here, and continuing to classify Aves as a ‘Class’ makes applying labels systematically to its various subdivisions easier, so that’s what I’m going to do.

This thread will simply list & explain the sub-divisions of the Birds down to the level of ‘Family’ — or possibly, in some cases, ‘Sub-Family’ — and state which of the IDU’s continents each of those groups is (or, at least, “was”…) found on & around: Further detail will be given in threads about the relevant continents, instead.

Basic Evolution and Taxonomy of the Birds
The earliest “birds”, such as the famous Archaeopteryx, were anatomically just feathered Dinosaurs whose forelimbs had developed into wings… and may have been only one group among several of Dinosaurs for which this was the case. They had long tails in which the vertebral column extended almost to the tip, had long jawbones with teeth rather than just [lighter-weight] beaks, had claws on their fingers, and did not have their breastbones expanded into ‘keels’ as anchors for efficient flight-muscles.
(Indeed, gaps in the fossil record mean that we cannot even be certain that Archaeopteryx was in the line of descent that led to modern Birds rather than just a less closely related side-shoot of the evolutionary tree…)

These ‘basal’ forms gave rise to two main groups, the ‘Enantionithes’ ( = “Opposite Birds”, so-called because of a significant detail in their shoulder joints) and the ‘Euornithes’ ( = “Good Birds”, i.e “True Birds”, the stock from within which the ancestors of all of today’s birds arose). Lineges within both of these branches evolved ‘pygostyle’-type tails (in which just a few vertebra persist, generally fused together in most modern birds, forming a short structure that supports a longer tail which consists solely of feathers) of various forms: they also developed more ‘keel’-like breastbones (presumably with improved flight-muscles attached), lost their finger-claws, and lost teeth in favour of beaks, to varying extents… but these changes happened at differing rates in different lines, so that groups showing quite significant differences in these respects frequently co-existed. Fossil evidence uncovered in recent decades currently suggests that on RL Earth it was the ‘Enantiornithes’ that dominated during the Mesozoic Era (‘Age of Dinosaurs’), at least on land: The best-known Mesozoic groups of ‘Euronithes’ were apparently seabirds, in the orders ‘Icthyornithiformes’ (the genus Ichthyornis contained “gull-sized” flyers with teeth) and ‘Hesperornithiformes’ (the genus Hesperornis was a larger, flightless, foot-propelled diver, also with teeth), although fossils of more land-based types have also been uncovered in recent decades.

All of the birds alive in modern times are classified together as a lineage called the ‘Neornithes’ ( = “New Birds”), which also contains their last common ancestor and all of its other descendants. It is not yet [and might never be] clear to us whether certain fossils from the later Mesozoic and the earliest parts of the following Cenozoic Era (the “Age of Mammals”) were members of surviving Neornithean lineages, ‘basal’ Neornithes descended from the same shared ancestor but in separate branches that died out relatively early, or even “pre-Neornithes” whose lineages branched off from the Avian family tree after the Hesperonithiformes (or possibly after the Ichthyornithes, with the Hesperornithiformes having arisen before rather than after those…) but before that Neornithean common ancestor.

It seems to be the case that the Enantiornithes and any last surviving lines of the ‘basal’ types died out at the ‘K-Pg Event’, the “Doom of the Dinosaurs”, and that so too did all Euornithean lineages which had branched off from the Avian family tree before the Hesperornithiformes… On RL Earth, the Hesperonithiformes also died out at that point, but in the IDU’s reality at least one species survived it and this lineage continued (with some returned diversity, for a while) until late in the Miocene epoch.


The most basal division within the surviving Neornithes is between the ‘Palaeognathae;’ who retain certain “primitive” features of the jaw & palate even as adults, and the far more numerous ‘Neognathae’ in which those traits do not persist past the embryonic stage or — at most — are lost during the birds’ growth from chicks into adults. It is not clear which of these patterns existed in the last common ancestor of the two groups, because it is possible that the “Neognath”-type jaw & palate did not evolve until after the lineages had already diverged genetically anyway but it is also possible that the “modern” structures had evolved earlier so that the presence of the older system in the surviving Palaeognathes is just an example of ‘neoteny’ (an evolved persistence of formerly-“childhood” features into adulthood) instead. They have only short tails, or even none at all, but — unlike the situation in all other surviving Avian taxa — their caudal vertebrae are not fused to form “true” pygostyles.
The most basal division within the surviving Neognathae, confirmed on the basis of molecular& genetic studies from the 1990s onwards, is between the ‘Galloanserae’ (containing the Order ‘Galliformes’, which is the Chickens & their close relatives; the order ‘Anseriformes’, which is the Geese & their close relatives; and some less well-known groups, now extinct in RL although one of them survives in the IDU’s reality, that were more closely related to these than to any other surviving Orders…) and the far more numerous ‘Neoaves’ ( = “New Birds”… again; containing all of the other surviving lineages).

Several rival patterns of evolution-based classification have been proposed for the Neoaves, and it has not yet been possible to determine for certain which [if any] of these is correct: Even genetic studies cannot yet give us a definitive answer, due to the length of time through which the various branches have been diverging and the amount of random variation that has therefore been possible during that process. We can be reasonably sure that most of the Orders are divided between seven ‘Super-Orders’, but the precise relationships between these larger groups remain unclear and three Orders that exist in RL (at least two of which also exist in the IDU’s reality) — plus at least two Orders that are endemic to the IDU’s reality — currently have to be left as singletons instead.

Super-Orders
Columbimorphae = Pigeons & relatives.
Mirnadornithes = Flamingos, Grebes, & [extinct] relatives.
Cuculimorphae = Cuckoos & relatives.
Strisores = Swifts, Hummingbirds, & relatives; Nightjars & relatives.
Phaetonimorphae = Tropic Birds & [extinct] relatives; Kagu & Sun-Bittern & [extinct] relatives.
Aequiornithes = ‘Higher Water Birds’ (although the latter term is sometimes extended to include the Eurypterygimorpha as well…).
Telluraves = ‘Higher Land Birds’, divided into ‘Afroaves’ (earliest evolution apparently in Africa) & ‘Australaves’ (earliest evolution apparently in South America, Australia, and presumably pre-glaciated Antarctica while that still formed a habitable connection between those other two continents…). Among the Australaves is the Order ‘Passeriformes’ ( = “Sparrow-like Birds”, commonly called the “Perching Birds”, with most of its members in the Sub-Order ‘Oscines’ which is the “Songbirds”), which alone contains over half of the “modern” Bird ‘Species’ and approximately half of the surviving Bird ‘Families.

Separate Orders
Charadriiformes = ‘Shorebirds’ or ‘Waders’ (including, despite that common name, both some purely land-based groups and the more maritime Gulls and Auks…).
Gruiformes = Cranes, Rails, & relatives.
Opisthocomiformes = Hoatzin & [extinct] relatives.
Ibidorostriformes = Ibis-beaks & close relatives ( endemic to the IDU; apparently not closely linked to the RL ‘Ibis-bill’[i], which is in the Order Charadriiformes instead).
Terpsichoraviformes = ‘White Dancers’ & close relatives (endemic to IDU).]]> Overview

Introduction
Birds – Those of the vertebrate animals that are members of the Class ‘Aves’, distinguished from the other types of ‘Tetrapods’ (literally the “Four-footed”; those others are the Amphibians, Reptiles, and Mammals) by their possession of feathers, according to traditional taxonomic reckoning. An offshoot of the Dinosaurs, whose continued designation as a ‘Class’ is awkward because the Dinosaurs are generally defined as only a ‘Super-Order’ (which is a lower taxonomic rank…) within the class ‘Reptilia’, and whose earliest members’ differentiation from feathered “Non-Avian Dinosaurs” is hard to define, according to more current thinking.
As this thread will deal primarily with the IDU’s birds from the geological era after the extinction of the “Non-Avian Dinosaurs” I won’t really need to differentiate between these two groups here, and continuing to classify Aves as a ‘Class’ makes applying labels systematically to its various subdivisions easier, so that’s what I’m going to do.

This thread will simply list & explain the sub-divisions of the Birds down to the level of ‘Family’ — or possibly, in some cases, ‘Sub-Family’ — and state which of the IDU’s continents each of those groups is (or, at least, “was”…) found on & around: Further detail will be given in threads about the relevant continents, instead.

Basic Evolution and Taxonomy of the Birds
The earliest “birds”, such as the famous Archaeopteryx, were anatomically just feathered Dinosaurs whose forelimbs had developed into wings… and may have been only one group among several of Dinosaurs for which this was the case. They had long tails in which the vertebral column extended almost to the tip, had long jawbones with teeth rather than just [lighter-weight] beaks, had claws on their fingers, and did not have their breastbones expanded into ‘keels’ as anchors for efficient flight-muscles.
(Indeed, gaps in the fossil record mean that we cannot even be certain that Archaeopteryx was in the line of descent that led to modern Birds rather than just a less closely related side-shoot of the evolutionary tree…)

These ‘basal’ forms gave rise to two main groups, the ‘Enantionithes’ ( = “Opposite Birds”, so-called because of a significant detail in their shoulder joints) and the ‘Euornithes’ ( = “Good Birds”, i.e “True Birds”, the stock from within which the ancestors of all of today’s birds arose). Lineges within both of these branches evolved ‘pygostyle’-type tails (in which just a few vertebra persist, generally fused together in most modern birds, forming a short structure that supports a longer tail which consists solely of feathers) of various forms: they also developed more ‘keel’-like breastbones (presumably with improved flight-muscles attached), lost their finger-claws, and lost teeth in favour of beaks, to varying extents… but these changes happened at differing rates in different lines, so that groups showing quite significant differences in these respects frequently co-existed. Fossil evidence uncovered in recent decades currently suggests that on RL Earth it was the ‘Enantiornithes’ that dominated during the Mesozoic Era (‘Age of Dinosaurs’), at least on land: The best-known Mesozoic groups of ‘Euronithes’ were apparently seabirds, in the orders ‘Icthyornithiformes’ (the genus Ichthyornis contained “gull-sized” flyers with teeth) and ‘Hesperornithiformes’ (the genus Hesperornis was a larger, flightless, foot-propelled diver, also with teeth), although fossils of more land-based types have also been uncovered in recent decades.

All of the birds alive in modern times are classified together as a lineage called the ‘Neornithes’ ( = “New Birds”), which also contains their last common ancestor and all of its other descendants. It is not yet [and might never be] clear to us whether certain fossils from the later Mesozoic and the earliest parts of the following Cenozoic Era (the “Age of Mammals”) were members of surviving Neornithean lineages, ‘basal’ Neornithes descended from the same shared ancestor but in separate branches that died out relatively early, or even “pre-Neornithes” whose lineages branched off from the Avian family tree after the Hesperonithiformes (or possibly after the Ichthyornithes, with the Hesperornithiformes having arisen before rather than after those…) but before that Neornithean common ancestor.

It seems to be the case that the Enantiornithes and any last surviving lines of the ‘basal’ types died out at the ‘K-Pg Event’, the “Doom of the Dinosaurs”, and that so too did all Euornithean lineages which had branched off from the Avian family tree before the Hesperornithiformes… On RL Earth, the Hesperonithiformes also died out at that point, but in the IDU’s reality at least one species survived it and this lineage continued (with some returned diversity, for a while) until late in the Miocene epoch.


The most basal division within the surviving Neornithes is between the ‘Palaeognathae;’ who retain certain “primitive” features of the jaw & palate even as adults, and the far more numerous ‘Neognathae’ in which those traits do not persist past the embryonic stage or — at most — are lost during the birds’ growth from chicks into adults. It is not clear which of these patterns existed in the last common ancestor of the two groups, because it is possible that the “Neognath”-type jaw & palate did not evolve until after the lineages had already diverged genetically anyway but it is also possible that the “modern” structures had evolved earlier so that the presence of the older system in the surviving Palaeognathes is just an example of ‘neoteny’ (an evolved persistence of formerly-“childhood” features into adulthood) instead. They have only short tails, or even none at all, but — unlike the situation in all other surviving Avian taxa — their caudal vertebrae are not fused to form “true” pygostyles.
The most basal division within the surviving Neognathae, confirmed on the basis of molecular& genetic studies from the 1990s onwards, is between the ‘Galloanserae’ (containing the Order ‘Galliformes’, which is the Chickens & their close relatives; the order ‘Anseriformes’, which is the Geese & their close relatives; and some less well-known groups, now extinct in RL although one of them survives in the IDU’s reality, that were more closely related to these than to any other surviving Orders…) and the far more numerous ‘Neoaves’ ( = “New Birds”… again; containing all of the other surviving lineages).

Several rival patterns of evolution-based classification have been proposed for the Neoaves, and it has not yet been possible to determine for certain which [if any] of these is correct: Even genetic studies cannot yet give us a definitive answer, due to the length of time through which the various branches have been diverging and the amount of random variation that has therefore been possible during that process. We can be reasonably sure that most of the Orders are divided between seven ‘Super-Orders’, but the precise relationships between these larger groups remain unclear and three Orders that exist in RL (at least two of which also exist in the IDU’s reality) — plus at least two Orders that are endemic to the IDU’s reality — currently have to be left as singletons instead.

Super-Orders
Columbimorphae = Pigeons & relatives.
Mirnadornithes = Flamingos, Grebes, & [extinct] relatives.
Cuculimorphae = Cuckoos & relatives.
Strisores = Swifts, Hummingbirds, & relatives; Nightjars & relatives.
Phaetonimorphae = Tropic Birds & [extinct] relatives; Kagu & Sun-Bittern & [extinct] relatives.
Aequiornithes = ‘Higher Water Birds’ (although the latter term is sometimes extended to include the Eurypterygimorpha as well…).
Telluraves = ‘Higher Land Birds’, divided into ‘Afroaves’ (earliest evolution apparently in Africa) & ‘Australaves’ (earliest evolution apparently in South America, Australia, and presumably pre-glaciated Antarctica while that still formed a habitable connection between those other two continents…). Among the Australaves is the Order ‘Passeriformes’ ( = “Sparrow-like Birds”, commonly called the “Perching Birds”, with most of its members in the Sub-Order ‘Oscines’ which is the “Songbirds”), which alone contains over half of the “modern” Bird ‘Species’ and approximately half of the surviving Bird ‘Families.

Separate Orders
Charadriiformes = ‘Shorebirds’ or ‘Waders’ (including, despite that common name, both some purely land-based groups and the more maritime Gulls and Auks…).
Gruiformes = Cranes, Rails, & relatives.
Opisthocomiformes = Hoatzin & [extinct] relatives.
Ibidorostriformes = Ibis-beaks & close relatives ( endemic to the IDU; apparently not closely linked to the RL ‘Ibis-bill’[i], which is in the Order Charadriiformes instead).
Terpsichoraviformes = ‘White Dancers’ & close relatives (endemic to IDU).]]> https://idugov.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=2031 Wed, 15 Jan 2020 09:48:41 -0600 Bears Armed]]> https://idugov.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=2031 In terms of latitudes it seems roughly comparable to RL South America (less the southern end) & Central America, and so should probably have a similar basic range of climates to that continent as well although if we continue with my earlier presumptions that the IDU’s world is slightly more ‘temperate’ overall than RL Earth (due to an absence here of major icecaps) then broad-leafed forests would probably be more widespread than they are in S.A., while grasslands and deserts would be scarcer. There could still be grasslands at high altitudes, and grasslands and perhaps even deserts where the ‘rain-shadow’ of mountain ranges led to drier conditions, though, and looking at the continent’s basic shape (and considering my ideas about how the region’s land-masses have undergone continental drift) I wouldn’t be surprised to all to find out that the western side of this continent — like that of S.A. — contains some fairly major mountain ranges (like the RL Andes) that would “shade” the areas directly to their east… Also, areas surfaced with Precambrian rocks tend (at least outside the ‘tropical rainforest’ belt) to support “poorer” vegetation than do areas where the top strata are newer: looking at RL for examples, this factor contributes to the facts that northern Canada & much of Siberia are mostly covered by either coniferous forests or bogs or tundra while Africa’s Kalahari and much of Australia have deserts… Also, if some types of large herbivores become established in an area of not-too-dense woodland then they themselves might end up turning that area into open grassland instead…
I think that the region’s four continents were probably all part of a single supercontinent at the beginning of the Mesozoic Era (‘Age of Dinosaurs’) and that this broke up in a series of stages. The gap between this continent and the eastern pair is probably due to the earliest major split, but whether this continent remained attached to its own northern neighbour for long or whether that remained linked to the north-eastern one instead and its distance from this one has been narrowing over time is something that will obviously need to be discussed with the players who have nations on those other continents. The answers to these questions will obviously affect how easily species could have spread between the continents, too, although of course continents that were not in close contact here could both have acquired the same groups of animals through “immigration” from the same parts of a more RL-like Earth anyway…
If this continent has been quite separate from all of the region’s other ones since the late Mesozoic then its ecosystems could differ quite significantly from theirs: Depending on which parts of RL it has received species from since then, the additions to its older endemics could make its modern fauna look more like that of modern South America, prehistoric South America (with large marsupials and flightless birds, and perhaps terrestrial crocodiles, as the main predators; unique Ungulates; ground sloths, and gigantic armadillo-relatives; gigantic relatives of the Guinea Pig [maybe up to a ton in weight!]; gigantic ‘Teratornid’ birds of prey flying above the more open areas; and so on…); or even prehistoric Australia (from before that land dried out as much)… or either Africa or south-eastern Asia, if you want something more “standard”, I suppose… It could even have ecosystems like nowhere at all on RL Earth, maybe even with some surviving lineages [non-Avian] Dinosaurs, although if it does have any such Dinosaurs then the extra 65 million years that they would have had in which to evolve means that these probably wouldn’t bear close resemblances to any species known from RL prehistory…

Main Questions
1. Keep my basic presumptions about regional climate, and thus about likely climates here?
2. Were there prehistoric land-bridges to the North-Western continent?
3. Do the players with nations here have any shared preferences about which RL continent (if any…) significant elements of this continent’s flora & fauna might have come from?
4. Do your people have a name for this continent?
5. Do your people have names for any of the region’s other continents?
6. Is your ‘national animal’ native to at least part of the continent (or to at least one nearby island), introduced there, just symbolic, or what?]]> In terms of latitudes it seems roughly comparable to RL South America (less the southern end) & Central America, and so should probably have a similar basic range of climates to that continent as well although if we continue with my earlier presumptions that the IDU’s world is slightly more ‘temperate’ overall than RL Earth (due to an absence here of major icecaps) then broad-leafed forests would probably be more widespread than they are in S.A., while grasslands and deserts would be scarcer. There could still be grasslands at high altitudes, and grasslands and perhaps even deserts where the ‘rain-shadow’ of mountain ranges led to drier conditions, though, and looking at the continent’s basic shape (and considering my ideas about how the region’s land-masses have undergone continental drift) I wouldn’t be surprised to all to find out that the western side of this continent — like that of S.A. — contains some fairly major mountain ranges (like the RL Andes) that would “shade” the areas directly to their east… Also, areas surfaced with Precambrian rocks tend (at least outside the ‘tropical rainforest’ belt) to support “poorer” vegetation than do areas where the top strata are newer: looking at RL for examples, this factor contributes to the facts that northern Canada & much of Siberia are mostly covered by either coniferous forests or bogs or tundra while Africa’s Kalahari and much of Australia have deserts… Also, if some types of large herbivores become established in an area of not-too-dense woodland then they themselves might end up turning that area into open grassland instead…
I think that the region’s four continents were probably all part of a single supercontinent at the beginning of the Mesozoic Era (‘Age of Dinosaurs’) and that this broke up in a series of stages. The gap between this continent and the eastern pair is probably due to the earliest major split, but whether this continent remained attached to its own northern neighbour for long or whether that remained linked to the north-eastern one instead and its distance from this one has been narrowing over time is something that will obviously need to be discussed with the players who have nations on those other continents. The answers to these questions will obviously affect how easily species could have spread between the continents, too, although of course continents that were not in close contact here could both have acquired the same groups of animals through “immigration” from the same parts of a more RL-like Earth anyway…
If this continent has been quite separate from all of the region’s other ones since the late Mesozoic then its ecosystems could differ quite significantly from theirs: Depending on which parts of RL it has received species from since then, the additions to its older endemics could make its modern fauna look more like that of modern South America, prehistoric South America (with large marsupials and flightless birds, and perhaps terrestrial crocodiles, as the main predators; unique Ungulates; ground sloths, and gigantic armadillo-relatives; gigantic relatives of the Guinea Pig [maybe up to a ton in weight!]; gigantic ‘Teratornid’ birds of prey flying above the more open areas; and so on…); or even prehistoric Australia (from before that land dried out as much)… or either Africa or south-eastern Asia, if you want something more “standard”, I suppose… It could even have ecosystems like nowhere at all on RL Earth, maybe even with some surviving lineages [non-Avian] Dinosaurs, although if it does have any such Dinosaurs then the extra 65 million years that they would have had in which to evolve means that these probably wouldn’t bear close resemblances to any species known from RL prehistory…

Main Questions
1. Keep my basic presumptions about regional climate, and thus about likely climates here?
2. Were there prehistoric land-bridges to the North-Western continent?
3. Do the players with nations here have any shared preferences about which RL continent (if any…) significant elements of this continent’s flora & fauna might have come from?
4. Do your people have a name for this continent?
5. Do your people have names for any of the region’s other continents?
6. Is your ‘national animal’ native to at least part of the continent (or to at least one nearby island), introduced there, just symbolic, or what?]]> https://idugov.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=2030 Wed, 15 Jan 2020 09:45:39 -0600 Bears Armed]]> https://idugov.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=2030 southern continent… except that it covers a wider range of latitudes.
The previous map’s two continents together were originally defined as stretching c. 20-55[sup]o[/sup] north of the equator, but were later expanded (while Sanctaria was cartographer) to cover either “the full range” (which was Sanctaria’s suggestion) or c. 16[sup]o[/sup]S-66[sup]o[/sup]N (my own suggestion, based on using the grid that overlay some copies of the map as a scale in degrees) instead. On the new map, however, it now extends over a ranged of latitudes roughly comparable to RL ‘Sub-Saharan’ Africa, but extending a bit further south, and so should probably have a similar basic range of climates to that continent as well although if we continue with my earlier presumptions that the IDU’s world is slightly more ‘temperate’ overall than RL Earth (due to an absence here of major icecaps) then broad-leafed forests would probably be more widespread than they are in Africa while grasslands and deserts would be scarcer. There could still be grasslands at high altitudes, and grasslands and perhaps even deserts where the ‘rain-shadow’ of mountain ranges led to drier conditions, though… Also, areas surfaced with Precambrian rocks tend (at least outside the ‘tropical rainforest’ belt) to support “poorer” vegetation than do areas where the top strata are newer: looking at RL for examples, this factor contributes to the facts that northern Canada & much of Siberia are mostly covered by either coniferous forests or bogs or tundra while Africa’s Kalahari and much of Australia have deserts… Also, if some types of large herbivores become established in an area of not-too-dense woodland then they themselves might end up turning that area into open grassland instead…
I think that the region’s four continents were probably all part of a single supercontinent at the beginning of the Mesozoic Era (‘Age of Dinosaurs’) and that this broke up in a series of stages. The gap between this continent and the south-western one is probably due to the earliest major split, with the split between this continent and its northern neighbour being a bit later (probably in the late Jurassic or early Cretaceous…) instead. For the old map, I was presuming that these two eastern continents have both been moving slowly northwards since then, but that their speeds had varied so that (with global changes in sea-level probably also playing a part) there were a few times when land-bridges formed and allowed species to pass more easily from one to the other. I think that it would make sense to continue with this explanation. Furthermore, it had been agreed that most of Malabra had originated as a fragment that broke off from the southern continent in the later Cretaceous and then moved northwards more rapidly so that collided with the northern one (pushing up mountains) around the end of the Eocene, which not only explained how some groups of species moved between the continents but also gave us a place where some of those groups could have developed & diversified in isolation before that spreading: If the players of any nations that are now in a suitable position to fill that role is willing to accept it then please let me know. (Or possibly the same role could now be filled by one or more nations on the northern edge of the southern continent, “left behind” after breaking off from that one, instead?).
When I helped to design the ecosystems for [nation]United New England[/nation], which is the only nation on this continent for which I’ve done much so far, I combined ‘old endemic’ elements (some of them taken as belonging to groups present here since the Mesozoic) with ones whose ancestors had come here from a RL-like Earth’s southern or south-western Asia (before those lands dried-out as much as is currently the case in RL, and before large animals there were over-hunted by Humans…) but with those arrivals from a RL-like Earth less frequent than in the Northern continent so that a higher proportion of the actual species present today are ones that had evolved locally: That actually ends up looking almost as much like modern RL Africa as it does like modern RL Asia (see: https://theidu.us/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2071)… Even if we take that as the basic pattern for this continent as a whole, now, the extension of the continent’s latitudinal range means that we could plausibly add some lineages from more tropical parts of RL-Earth if people want, although I’m also willing to diversify the already-listed groups still further instead (and, of course, you can put whatever you want in your own nations — although there would probably be some “leakage” around the edges — anyway…).


Main Questions
1. Keep my basic presumptions about regional climate, and thus about likely climates here?
2. Continue following my already-used ideas about the basic groups of animals present, although perhaps with “local” [i.e. ‘nation’-based] changes?
3. Add more stocks of species from RL, maybe from areas beyond those taken as the sources of the stocks already listed as present?
4. Were there prehistoric land-bridges to the North-Eastern continent? Did a large island “move” between the two continents?
5. Do your people have a name for this continent?
6. Do your people have names for any of the region’s other continents?]]> southern continent… except that it covers a wider range of latitudes.
The previous map’s two continents together were originally defined as stretching c. 20-55[sup]o[/sup] north of the equator, but were later expanded (while Sanctaria was cartographer) to cover either “the full range” (which was Sanctaria’s suggestion) or c. 16[sup]o[/sup]S-66[sup]o[/sup]N (my own suggestion, based on using the grid that overlay some copies of the map as a scale in degrees) instead. On the new map, however, it now extends over a ranged of latitudes roughly comparable to RL ‘Sub-Saharan’ Africa, but extending a bit further south, and so should probably have a similar basic range of climates to that continent as well although if we continue with my earlier presumptions that the IDU’s world is slightly more ‘temperate’ overall than RL Earth (due to an absence here of major icecaps) then broad-leafed forests would probably be more widespread than they are in Africa while grasslands and deserts would be scarcer. There could still be grasslands at high altitudes, and grasslands and perhaps even deserts where the ‘rain-shadow’ of mountain ranges led to drier conditions, though… Also, areas surfaced with Precambrian rocks tend (at least outside the ‘tropical rainforest’ belt) to support “poorer” vegetation than do areas where the top strata are newer: looking at RL for examples, this factor contributes to the facts that northern Canada & much of Siberia are mostly covered by either coniferous forests or bogs or tundra while Africa’s Kalahari and much of Australia have deserts… Also, if some types of large herbivores become established in an area of not-too-dense woodland then they themselves might end up turning that area into open grassland instead…
I think that the region’s four continents were probably all part of a single supercontinent at the beginning of the Mesozoic Era (‘Age of Dinosaurs’) and that this broke up in a series of stages. The gap between this continent and the south-western one is probably due to the earliest major split, with the split between this continent and its northern neighbour being a bit later (probably in the late Jurassic or early Cretaceous…) instead. For the old map, I was presuming that these two eastern continents have both been moving slowly northwards since then, but that their speeds had varied so that (with global changes in sea-level probably also playing a part) there were a few times when land-bridges formed and allowed species to pass more easily from one to the other. I think that it would make sense to continue with this explanation. Furthermore, it had been agreed that most of Malabra had originated as a fragment that broke off from the southern continent in the later Cretaceous and then moved northwards more rapidly so that collided with the northern one (pushing up mountains) around the end of the Eocene, which not only explained how some groups of species moved between the continents but also gave us a place where some of those groups could have developed & diversified in isolation before that spreading: If the players of any nations that are now in a suitable position to fill that role is willing to accept it then please let me know. (Or possibly the same role could now be filled by one or more nations on the northern edge of the southern continent, “left behind” after breaking off from that one, instead?).
When I helped to design the ecosystems for [nation]United New England[/nation], which is the only nation on this continent for which I’ve done much so far, I combined ‘old endemic’ elements (some of them taken as belonging to groups present here since the Mesozoic) with ones whose ancestors had come here from a RL-like Earth’s southern or south-western Asia (before those lands dried-out as much as is currently the case in RL, and before large animals there were over-hunted by Humans…) but with those arrivals from a RL-like Earth less frequent than in the Northern continent so that a higher proportion of the actual species present today are ones that had evolved locally: That actually ends up looking almost as much like modern RL Africa as it does like modern RL Asia (see: https://theidu.us/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2071)… Even if we take that as the basic pattern for this continent as a whole, now, the extension of the continent’s latitudinal range means that we could plausibly add some lineages from more tropical parts of RL-Earth if people want, although I’m also willing to diversify the already-listed groups still further instead (and, of course, you can put whatever you want in your own nations — although there would probably be some “leakage” around the edges — anyway…).


Main Questions
1. Keep my basic presumptions about regional climate, and thus about likely climates here?
2. Continue following my already-used ideas about the basic groups of animals present, although perhaps with “local” [i.e. ‘nation’-based] changes?
3. Add more stocks of species from RL, maybe from areas beyond those taken as the sources of the stocks already listed as present?
4. Were there prehistoric land-bridges to the North-Eastern continent? Did a large island “move” between the two continents?
5. Do your people have a name for this continent?
6. Do your people have names for any of the region’s other continents?]]> https://idugov.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=2029 Wed, 15 Jan 2020 09:45:32 -0600 Bears Armed]]> https://idugov.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=2029 southern continent… except that it covers a wider range of latitudes.
The previous map’s two continents together were originally defined as stretching c. 20-55[sup]o[/sup] north of the equator, but were later expanded (while Sanctaria was cartographer) to cover either “the full range” (which was Sanctaria’s suggestion) or c. 16[sup]o[/sup]S-66[sup]0[/sup]N (my own suggestion, based on using the grid that overlay some copies of the map as a scale in degrees) instead. On the new map, however, it now extends over a ranged of latitudes roughly comparable to RL ‘Sub-Saharan’ Africa, but extending a bit further south, and so should probably have a similar basic range of climates to that continent as well although if we continue with my earlier presumptions that the IDU’s world is slightly more ‘temperate’ overall than RL Earth (due to an absence here of major icecaps) then broad-leafed forests would probably be more widespread than they are in Africa while grasslands and deserts would be scarcer. There could still be grasslands at high altitudes, and grasslands and perhaps even deserts where the ‘rain-shadow’ of mountain ranges led to drier conditions, though… Also, areas surfaced with Precambrian rocks tend (at least outside the ‘tropical rainforest’ belt) to support “poorer” vegetation than do areas where the top strata are newer: looking at RL for examples, this factor contributes to the facts that northern Canada & much of Siberia are mostly covered by either coniferous forests or bogs or tundra while Africa’s Kalahari and much of Australia have deserts… Also, if some types of large herbivores become established in an area of not-too-dense woodland then they themselves might end up turning that area into open grassland instead…
I think that the region’s four continents were probably all part of a single supercontinent at the beginning of the Mesozoic Era (‘Age of Dinosaurs’) and that this broke up in a series of stages. The gap between this continent and the south-western one is probably due to the earliest major split, with the split between this continent and its northern neighbour being a bit later (probably in the late Jurassic or early Cretaceous…) instead. For the old map, I was presuming that these two eastern continents have both been moving slowly northwards since then, but that their speeds had varied so that (with global changes in sea-level probably also playing a part) there were a few times when land-bridges formed and allowed species to pass more easily from one to the other. I think that it would make sense to continue with this explanation. Furthermore, it had been agreed that most of Malabra had originated as a fragment that broke off from the southern continent in the later Cretaceous and then moved northwards more rapidly so that collided with the northern one (pushing up mountains) around the end of the Eocene, which not only explained how some groups of species moved between the continents but also gave us a place where some of those groups could have developed & diversified in isolation before that spreading: If the players of any nations that are now in a suitable position to fill that role is willing to accept it then please let me know. (Or possibly the same role could now be filled by one or more nations on the northern edge of the southern continent, “left behind” after breaking off from that one, instead?).
When I helped to design the ecosystems for [nation]United New England[/nation], which is the only nation on this continent for which I’ve done much so far, I combined ‘old endemic’ elements (some of them taken as belonging to groups present here since the Mesozoic) with ones whose ancestors had come here from a RL-like Earth’s southern or south-western Asia (before those lands dried-out as much as is currently the case in RL, and before large animals there were over-hunted by Humans…) but with those arrivals from a RL-like Earth less frequent than in the Northern continent so that a higher proportion of the actual species present today are ones that had evolved locally: That actually ends up looking almost as much like modern RL Africa as it does like modern RL Asia… Even if we take that as the basic pattern for this continent as a whole, now, the extension of the continent’s latitudinal range means that we could plausibly add some lineages from more tropical parts of RL-Earth if people want, although I’m also willing to diversify the already-listed groups still further instead (and, of course, you can put whatever you want in your own nations — although there would probably be some “leakage” around the edges — anyway…). 


Main Questions
1. Keep my basic presumptions about regional climate, and thus about likely climates here?
2. Continue following my already-used ideas about the basic groups of animals present, although perhaps with “local” [i.e. ‘nation’-based] changes?
3. Add more stocks of species from RL, maybe from areas beyond those taken as the sources of the stocks already listed as present?
4. Were there prehistoric land-bridges to the North-Eastern continent? Did a large island “move” between the two continents?
5. Do your people have a name for this continent?
6. Do your people have names for any of the region’s other continents?
7. 7. Is your ‘national animal’ native to at least part of the continent (or to at least one nearby island), introduced there, just symbolic, or what?]]> southern continent… except that it covers a wider range of latitudes.
The previous map’s two continents together were originally defined as stretching c. 20-55[sup]o[/sup] north of the equator, but were later expanded (while Sanctaria was cartographer) to cover either “the full range” (which was Sanctaria’s suggestion) or c. 16[sup]o[/sup]S-66[sup]0[/sup]N (my own suggestion, based on using the grid that overlay some copies of the map as a scale in degrees) instead. On the new map, however, it now extends over a ranged of latitudes roughly comparable to RL ‘Sub-Saharan’ Africa, but extending a bit further south, and so should probably have a similar basic range of climates to that continent as well although if we continue with my earlier presumptions that the IDU’s world is slightly more ‘temperate’ overall than RL Earth (due to an absence here of major icecaps) then broad-leafed forests would probably be more widespread than they are in Africa while grasslands and deserts would be scarcer. There could still be grasslands at high altitudes, and grasslands and perhaps even deserts where the ‘rain-shadow’ of mountain ranges led to drier conditions, though… Also, areas surfaced with Precambrian rocks tend (at least outside the ‘tropical rainforest’ belt) to support “poorer” vegetation than do areas where the top strata are newer: looking at RL for examples, this factor contributes to the facts that northern Canada & much of Siberia are mostly covered by either coniferous forests or bogs or tundra while Africa’s Kalahari and much of Australia have deserts… Also, if some types of large herbivores become established in an area of not-too-dense woodland then they themselves might end up turning that area into open grassland instead…
I think that the region’s four continents were probably all part of a single supercontinent at the beginning of the Mesozoic Era (‘Age of Dinosaurs’) and that this broke up in a series of stages. The gap between this continent and the south-western one is probably due to the earliest major split, with the split between this continent and its northern neighbour being a bit later (probably in the late Jurassic or early Cretaceous…) instead. For the old map, I was presuming that these two eastern continents have both been moving slowly northwards since then, but that their speeds had varied so that (with global changes in sea-level probably also playing a part) there were a few times when land-bridges formed and allowed species to pass more easily from one to the other. I think that it would make sense to continue with this explanation. Furthermore, it had been agreed that most of Malabra had originated as a fragment that broke off from the southern continent in the later Cretaceous and then moved northwards more rapidly so that collided with the northern one (pushing up mountains) around the end of the Eocene, which not only explained how some groups of species moved between the continents but also gave us a place where some of those groups could have developed & diversified in isolation before that spreading: If the players of any nations that are now in a suitable position to fill that role is willing to accept it then please let me know. (Or possibly the same role could now be filled by one or more nations on the northern edge of the southern continent, “left behind” after breaking off from that one, instead?).
When I helped to design the ecosystems for [nation]United New England[/nation], which is the only nation on this continent for which I’ve done much so far, I combined ‘old endemic’ elements (some of them taken as belonging to groups present here since the Mesozoic) with ones whose ancestors had come here from a RL-like Earth’s southern or south-western Asia (before those lands dried-out as much as is currently the case in RL, and before large animals there were over-hunted by Humans…) but with those arrivals from a RL-like Earth less frequent than in the Northern continent so that a higher proportion of the actual species present today are ones that had evolved locally: That actually ends up looking almost as much like modern RL Africa as it does like modern RL Asia… Even if we take that as the basic pattern for this continent as a whole, now, the extension of the continent’s latitudinal range means that we could plausibly add some lineages from more tropical parts of RL-Earth if people want, although I’m also willing to diversify the already-listed groups still further instead (and, of course, you can put whatever you want in your own nations — although there would probably be some “leakage” around the edges — anyway…). 


Main Questions
1. Keep my basic presumptions about regional climate, and thus about likely climates here?
2. Continue following my already-used ideas about the basic groups of animals present, although perhaps with “local” [i.e. ‘nation’-based] changes?
3. Add more stocks of species from RL, maybe from areas beyond those taken as the sources of the stocks already listed as present?
4. Were there prehistoric land-bridges to the North-Eastern continent? Did a large island “move” between the two continents?
5. Do your people have a name for this continent?
6. Do your people have names for any of the region’s other continents?
7. 7. Is your ‘national animal’ native to at least part of the continent (or to at least one nearby island), introduced there, just symbolic, or what?]]> https://idugov.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=2028 Wed, 15 Jan 2020 09:43:55 -0600 Bears Armed]]> https://idugov.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=2028 In terms of latitudes and general shape it seems roughly comparable to RL North America, and so should probably have a similar basic range of climates to that continent as well although if we continue with my earlier presumptions that the IDU’s world is slightly more ‘temperate’ overall than RL Earth (due to an absence here of major icecaps) then broad-leafed forests would probably be more widespread than they are in N.A., while grasslands and deserts would be scarcer. There could still be grasslands at high altitudes, and grasslands and perhaps even deserts where the ‘rain-shadow’ of mountain ranges led to drier conditions, though, and looking at the continent’s basic shape (and considering my ideas about how the region’s land-masses have undergone continental drift) I wouldn’t be surprised to all to find out that the western side of this continent — like that of N.A. — contains some fairly major mountain ranges that would “shade” the areas directly to their east… Also, areas surfaced with Precambrian rocks tend (at least outside the ‘tropical rainforest’ belt) to support “poorer” vegetation than do areas where the top strata are newer: looking at RL for examples, this factor contributes to the facts that northern Canada & much of Siberia are mostly covered by either coniferous forests or bogs or tundra while Africa’s Kalahari and much of Australia have deserts… Also, if some types of large herbivores become established in an area of not-too-dense woodland then they themselves might end up turning that area into open grassland instead…
I think that the region’s four continents were probably all part of a single supercontinent at the beginning of the Mesozoic Era (‘Age of Dinosaurs’) and that this broke up in a series of stages. The gap between the south-western continent and the eastern pair is probably due to the earliest major split, but whether this continent remained attached to that one for long or whether it remained linked to the north-eastern one instead and the gap with its southern neighbour has been narrowing over time is something that will obviously need to be discussed with the players who have nations on those other continents. The answers to these questions will obviously affect how easily species could have spread between the continents, too, although of course continents that were not in close contact here could both have acquired the same groups of animals through “immigration” from the same parts of a more RL-like Earth anyway…
I suspect that most of its fauna’s closest relatives in RL would be in North America, although of course that’s a matter for the players of nations based here to discuss. If you do go for that option, then remember that the North American fauna included a much more diverse range of large mammals until only c. 10-12 thousand years ago (when over-hunting by the first Human peoples to arrive there, hitting stocks that hadn’t had any opportunity to evolve precautionary behaviour for this situation, might have led to the mass extinction…) and that this continent could have acquired & retained species from that selection as well… Lion, Sabre-Tooth, Dire Wolf, ‘Hunting Dog’ (a larger relative of the modern African species), Short-faced Bear, Cave Bear, a cheetah-like Hyaena, ‘giant’ Wolverine, Mammoth, Mastodon, Giant Ground Sloths, Pampatheres & Glyptodonts (herbivorous armadillos, very large and in the latter case VERY well-armoured), multiple species of Camelid, multiple species of Pronghorn (rather than just the one that survives today), multiple species of Wild Horse… Also, on the avian side, both Terror-Cranes (predatory flightless birds) and Teratornids (related to Condors, but larger and more predatory, possibly the source of Native American traditions about the ‘Thunderbird’…).

Main Questions
1. Keep my basic presumptions about regional climate, and thus about likely climates here?
2. Continue following my already-used ideas about the basic groups of animals present, although perhaps with “local” [i.e. ‘nation’-based] changes?
3. Were there prehistoric land-bridges to the North-Eastern continent?
4. Were there prehistoric land-bridges to the South-Western continent?
5. Do your people have a name for this continent?
6. Do your people have names for any of the region’s other continents?
7. Is your ‘national animal’ native to at least part of the continent (or to at least one nearby island), introduced there, just symbolic, or what?

The usefulness of a geologically recent land-bridge to the NE continent would obviously be affected by the terrain specified at their ends by relevant lands' current owners (at present Trive in the NW & nobody yet in the NE), but even if they fill their ends of the current gap with mountains there could have been a useful 'shelf' of plains along one or the other side of this -- or even on both sides -- exposed during a period of lower sea-levels.]]> In terms of latitudes and general shape it seems roughly comparable to RL North America, and so should probably have a similar basic range of climates to that continent as well although if we continue with my earlier presumptions that the IDU’s world is slightly more ‘temperate’ overall than RL Earth (due to an absence here of major icecaps) then broad-leafed forests would probably be more widespread than they are in N.A., while grasslands and deserts would be scarcer. There could still be grasslands at high altitudes, and grasslands and perhaps even deserts where the ‘rain-shadow’ of mountain ranges led to drier conditions, though, and looking at the continent’s basic shape (and considering my ideas about how the region’s land-masses have undergone continental drift) I wouldn’t be surprised to all to find out that the western side of this continent — like that of N.A. — contains some fairly major mountain ranges that would “shade” the areas directly to their east… Also, areas surfaced with Precambrian rocks tend (at least outside the ‘tropical rainforest’ belt) to support “poorer” vegetation than do areas where the top strata are newer: looking at RL for examples, this factor contributes to the facts that northern Canada & much of Siberia are mostly covered by either coniferous forests or bogs or tundra while Africa’s Kalahari and much of Australia have deserts… Also, if some types of large herbivores become established in an area of not-too-dense woodland then they themselves might end up turning that area into open grassland instead…
I think that the region’s four continents were probably all part of a single supercontinent at the beginning of the Mesozoic Era (‘Age of Dinosaurs’) and that this broke up in a series of stages. The gap between the south-western continent and the eastern pair is probably due to the earliest major split, but whether this continent remained attached to that one for long or whether it remained linked to the north-eastern one instead and the gap with its southern neighbour has been narrowing over time is something that will obviously need to be discussed with the players who have nations on those other continents. The answers to these questions will obviously affect how easily species could have spread between the continents, too, although of course continents that were not in close contact here could both have acquired the same groups of animals through “immigration” from the same parts of a more RL-like Earth anyway…
I suspect that most of its fauna’s closest relatives in RL would be in North America, although of course that’s a matter for the players of nations based here to discuss. If you do go for that option, then remember that the North American fauna included a much more diverse range of large mammals until only c. 10-12 thousand years ago (when over-hunting by the first Human peoples to arrive there, hitting stocks that hadn’t had any opportunity to evolve precautionary behaviour for this situation, might have led to the mass extinction…) and that this continent could have acquired & retained species from that selection as well… Lion, Sabre-Tooth, Dire Wolf, ‘Hunting Dog’ (a larger relative of the modern African species), Short-faced Bear, Cave Bear, a cheetah-like Hyaena, ‘giant’ Wolverine, Mammoth, Mastodon, Giant Ground Sloths, Pampatheres & Glyptodonts (herbivorous armadillos, very large and in the latter case VERY well-armoured), multiple species of Camelid, multiple species of Pronghorn (rather than just the one that survives today), multiple species of Wild Horse… Also, on the avian side, both Terror-Cranes (predatory flightless birds) and Teratornids (related to Condors, but larger and more predatory, possibly the source of Native American traditions about the ‘Thunderbird’…).

Main Questions
1. Keep my basic presumptions about regional climate, and thus about likely climates here?
2. Continue following my already-used ideas about the basic groups of animals present, although perhaps with “local” [i.e. ‘nation’-based] changes?
3. Were there prehistoric land-bridges to the North-Eastern continent?
4. Were there prehistoric land-bridges to the South-Western continent?
5. Do your people have a name for this continent?
6. Do your people have names for any of the region’s other continents?
7. Is your ‘national animal’ native to at least part of the continent (or to at least one nearby island), introduced there, just symbolic, or what?

The usefulness of a geologically recent land-bridge to the NE continent would obviously be affected by the terrain specified at their ends by relevant lands' current owners (at present Trive in the NW & nobody yet in the NE), but even if they fill their ends of the current gap with mountains there could have been a useful 'shelf' of plains along one or the other side of this -- or even on both sides -- exposed during a period of lower sea-levels.]]> https://idugov.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=2026 Tue, 14 Jan 2020 12:16:33 -0600 Bears Armed]]> https://idugov.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=2026 main continent… except that it covers a wider range of latitudes. The previous map’s two continents together were originally defined as stretching c. 20-55[sup]o[/sup] north of the equator, but were later expanded (while Sanctaria was cartographer) to cover either “the full range” (which was Sanctaria’s suggestion) or c. 15[sup]o[/sup]S — 65[sup]o[/sup]N (my own suggestion, based on using the grid that overlay some copies of the map as a scale in degrees) instead. On the new map, however, this continent alone now stretches all of the way from the edge of the Artic into the northern edge of the Tropics…
On the original map this continent’s equivalent therefore had basically temperate climates, except that some parts of its northern coasts were cold enough for Polar Bears while [nation]Malabra[/nation] was anomalously — ‘Tropically’, even — hot. 
On the new map, with an extent closer to that of Eurasia it should probably now have a similar basic range of climates to that continent as well although if we continue with my earlier presumptions that the IDU’s world is slightly more ‘temperate’ overall than RL Earth (due to an absence here of major icecaps) then broad-leafed forests would probably be more widespread than they are in Eurasia, while grasslands and deserts would be scarcer. There could still be grasslands at high altitudes, and grasslands and perhaps even deserts where the ‘rain-shadow’ of mountain ranges led to drier conditions, though… Also, areas surfaced with Precambrian rocks tend (at least outside the ‘tropical rainforest’ belt) to support “poorer” vegetation than do areas where the top strata are newer: looking at RL for examples, this factor contributes to the facts that northern Canada & much of Siberia are mostly covered by either coniferous forests or bogs or tundra while Africa’s Kalahari and much of Australia have deserts… Also, if some types of large herbivores become established in an area of not-too-dense woodland then they themselves might end up turning that area into open grassland instead…

The ecosystems chosen for various nations here on the original version of the map were mainly derived from those of RL Europe or North America (i.e. the home continents of those nation’s players…) but with some endemic species added as well. Malabra was an exception, again, with an intrusion of ‘Amazon Rainforest’ ecosystems into its central districts and various species from both India and the non-rainforest parts of South America (including formerly-native species that are now extinct on the RL-Earth, such as Gompotheres, Glyptodonts, and Giant Ground Sloths…) in the drier-but-still-hot lands to the west of that… In more recent years, working with the players of various nations, I also oversaw the introduction of some species from eastern Asia (e.g. in [nation]Laeral[/nation]) as well. 
I suggest that we draw most species for the version of this continent on the new map from the same sources as those. If you look at RL India and southern China, or Mexico, you will see that various species (or, at least, genera) of large mammal which exist in Europe or further north in Asia or in the USA are also capable of doing well at those latitudes too — e.g. Tiger, Puma, Wolf, Golden Jackal, Coyote, Red Fox, Wild Boar, wild cattle [species differ), deer [species differ) — and the Pleistocene fauna of South America (before Humans arrived there) had even more in common with that of its northern neighbour… Endemic mammals would then be mostly smaller ones, which tend to have narrower geographical ranges anyway. I had designed an ‘Old IDU Tropical’ set of small-to-medium Mammals that I thought might still exist in parts of Malabra and nearby lands (as stocks surviving from a distant past in which the whole region was warmer…), and we could use elements from that in the more extensive tropics that the continent’s new version possesses. Also, some genera of the larger mammals that came to the old map from South America into Malabra had also spread into RL [prehistoric] North America as well and thus could have reached us from there instead.

For the old map, I was presuming that the two continents were on separate tectonic plates that had been united in a single supercontinent at the start of the Mesozoic Era (‘Age of Dinosaurs’) but had split apart during the later Jurassic or early Cretaceous and were now both moving slowly northwards but whose speeds had varied so that (with global changes in sea-level probably also playing a part) there were a few times when land-bridges formed and allowed species to pass more easily from one to the other. I think that it would make sense to continue with this explanation. Furthermore, it had been agreed that most of Malabra had originated as a fragment that broke off from the southern continent in the later Cretaceous and then moved northwards more rapidly so that collided with the northern one (pushing up mountains) around the end of the Eocene, which not only explained how some groups of species moved between the continents but also gave us a place where some of those groups could have developed & diversified in isolation before that spreading: If the players of any nations that are now in a suitable position to fill that role is willing to accept it then please let me know. (Or possibly the same role could now be filled by one or more nations on the northern edge of the southern continent, “left behind” after breaking off from this one, instead?).
The question of whether there have also been land-bridge connections to this continent’s western neighbour, with possible exchanges of species across those, is obviously one in which the players of nations on that other continent should also have a say… 


Main Questions
1. Keep my basic presumptions about regional climate, and thus about likely climates here?
2. Continue following my already-used ideas about the basic groups of animals present, although perhaps with “local” [i.e. ‘nation’-based] changes?
3. Were there prehistoric land-bridges to the South-Eastern continent, and is there perhaps even a large area that detached from one of these continents & then became attached to the other one?
4. Were there prehistoric land-bridges to the North-Western continent?
5. Do your people have a name for this continent?
6. Do your people have names for any of the region’s other continents?
7. Is your ‘national animal’ native to at least part of the continent (or to at least one nearby island), introduced there, just symbolic, or what?

The usefulness of a geologically recent land-bridge to the NE continent would obviously be affected by the terrain specified at their ends by relevant lands' current owners (at present Trive in the NW & nobody yet in the NE), but even if they fill their ends of the current gap with mountains there could have been a useful 'shelf' of plains along one or the other side of this -- or even on both sides -- exposed during a period of lower sea-levels.]]> main continent… except that it covers a wider range of latitudes. The previous map’s two continents together were originally defined as stretching c. 20-55[sup]o[/sup] north of the equator, but were later expanded (while Sanctaria was cartographer) to cover either “the full range” (which was Sanctaria’s suggestion) or c. 15[sup]o[/sup]S — 65[sup]o[/sup]N (my own suggestion, based on using the grid that overlay some copies of the map as a scale in degrees) instead. On the new map, however, this continent alone now stretches all of the way from the edge of the Artic into the northern edge of the Tropics…
On the original map this continent’s equivalent therefore had basically temperate climates, except that some parts of its northern coasts were cold enough for Polar Bears while [nation]Malabra[/nation] was anomalously — ‘Tropically’, even — hot. 
On the new map, with an extent closer to that of Eurasia it should probably now have a similar basic range of climates to that continent as well although if we continue with my earlier presumptions that the IDU’s world is slightly more ‘temperate’ overall than RL Earth (due to an absence here of major icecaps) then broad-leafed forests would probably be more widespread than they are in Eurasia, while grasslands and deserts would be scarcer. There could still be grasslands at high altitudes, and grasslands and perhaps even deserts where the ‘rain-shadow’ of mountain ranges led to drier conditions, though… Also, areas surfaced with Precambrian rocks tend (at least outside the ‘tropical rainforest’ belt) to support “poorer” vegetation than do areas where the top strata are newer: looking at RL for examples, this factor contributes to the facts that northern Canada & much of Siberia are mostly covered by either coniferous forests or bogs or tundra while Africa’s Kalahari and much of Australia have deserts… Also, if some types of large herbivores become established in an area of not-too-dense woodland then they themselves might end up turning that area into open grassland instead…

The ecosystems chosen for various nations here on the original version of the map were mainly derived from those of RL Europe or North America (i.e. the home continents of those nation’s players…) but with some endemic species added as well. Malabra was an exception, again, with an intrusion of ‘Amazon Rainforest’ ecosystems into its central districts and various species from both India and the non-rainforest parts of South America (including formerly-native species that are now extinct on the RL-Earth, such as Gompotheres, Glyptodonts, and Giant Ground Sloths…) in the drier-but-still-hot lands to the west of that… In more recent years, working with the players of various nations, I also oversaw the introduction of some species from eastern Asia (e.g. in [nation]Laeral[/nation]) as well. 
I suggest that we draw most species for the version of this continent on the new map from the same sources as those. If you look at RL India and southern China, or Mexico, you will see that various species (or, at least, genera) of large mammal which exist in Europe or further north in Asia or in the USA are also capable of doing well at those latitudes too — e.g. Tiger, Puma, Wolf, Golden Jackal, Coyote, Red Fox, Wild Boar, wild cattle [species differ), deer [species differ) — and the Pleistocene fauna of South America (before Humans arrived there) had even more in common with that of its northern neighbour… Endemic mammals would then be mostly smaller ones, which tend to have narrower geographical ranges anyway. I had designed an ‘Old IDU Tropical’ set of small-to-medium Mammals that I thought might still exist in parts of Malabra and nearby lands (as stocks surviving from a distant past in which the whole region was warmer…), and we could use elements from that in the more extensive tropics that the continent’s new version possesses. Also, some genera of the larger mammals that came to the old map from South America into Malabra had also spread into RL [prehistoric] North America as well and thus could have reached us from there instead.

For the old map, I was presuming that the two continents were on separate tectonic plates that had been united in a single supercontinent at the start of the Mesozoic Era (‘Age of Dinosaurs’) but had split apart during the later Jurassic or early Cretaceous and were now both moving slowly northwards but whose speeds had varied so that (with global changes in sea-level probably also playing a part) there were a few times when land-bridges formed and allowed species to pass more easily from one to the other. I think that it would make sense to continue with this explanation. Furthermore, it had been agreed that most of Malabra had originated as a fragment that broke off from the southern continent in the later Cretaceous and then moved northwards more rapidly so that collided with the northern one (pushing up mountains) around the end of the Eocene, which not only explained how some groups of species moved between the continents but also gave us a place where some of those groups could have developed & diversified in isolation before that spreading: If the players of any nations that are now in a suitable position to fill that role is willing to accept it then please let me know. (Or possibly the same role could now be filled by one or more nations on the northern edge of the southern continent, “left behind” after breaking off from this one, instead?).
The question of whether there have also been land-bridge connections to this continent’s western neighbour, with possible exchanges of species across those, is obviously one in which the players of nations on that other continent should also have a say… 


Main Questions
1. Keep my basic presumptions about regional climate, and thus about likely climates here?
2. Continue following my already-used ideas about the basic groups of animals present, although perhaps with “local” [i.e. ‘nation’-based] changes?
3. Were there prehistoric land-bridges to the South-Eastern continent, and is there perhaps even a large area that detached from one of these continents & then became attached to the other one?
4. Were there prehistoric land-bridges to the North-Western continent?
5. Do your people have a name for this continent?
6. Do your people have names for any of the region’s other continents?
7. Is your ‘national animal’ native to at least part of the continent (or to at least one nearby island), introduced there, just symbolic, or what?

The usefulness of a geologically recent land-bridge to the NE continent would obviously be affected by the terrain specified at their ends by relevant lands' current owners (at present Trive in the NW & nobody yet in the NE), but even if they fill their ends of the current gap with mountains there could have been a useful 'shelf' of plains along one or the other side of this -- or even on both sides -- exposed during a period of lower sea-levels.]]> https://idugov.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=2003 Wed, 27 Nov 2019 11:50:54 -0600 Bears Armed]]> https://idugov.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=2003 https://theidu.us/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2067 .

BASIC PRESUMPTIONS

Presumption #1: The Planet
Although our pattern of lands and waters differs from that of RL Earth, this still is an ‘Earth’ in all fundamental respects: Astronomical position, positions & sizes of the solar system’s other members, lengths of the day and the year, frequency of eclipses, age, basic chemical composition, types (and approximate ratios) of rocks & minerals present, basic atmospheric composition, basic biochemistry, and so on.

Presumption #1.B: Departures and Arrivals
When old nations CTE, and new nations arrive among us, this often involves history being retrospectively altered so that IC the current situation has “always” been the case. What I think has probably happened (sort-of-IC) in these cases is that the areas concerned have been “swapped” for ones from Parallel Earths with different histories. This involves a phenomenon, sometimes called ‘Fractal Reality’, that has already been evoked to explain some such changes not only elsewhere in NS (along with explaining the fact that many NS nations can claim to occupy the same RL nations’ locations...) but even by some of the earlier players in this very region. The accompanying changes to IC memories and histories would then be either an [inexplicable?] side-effect of the relocation or direct action through whoever or whatever had deliberately (whether using “sufficiently advanced science”, outright supernatural powers, or something else…)made the swap.
This phenomenon would also explain, obviously, the “movement” of various nations from our older map into the current one…

Presumption #2: Coordinates
We need to determine climates for the nations on our regional map. This is necessary not only for sorting-out “reasonable” ecosystems but also for determining their likely weather for use in role-plays, their agricultural possibilities, and even their basic habitability.
We need to know latitudes and scale to determine the nations’ ‘proper’ climates, and related details such the probable directions of ocean currents and the relative lengths of daylight & night locally through the year.
Modifying the suggestions that I made about the old map (and that were partly based on details already agreed by various other nations’ players) to fit the new one, and going with the Equator being along the line that our Cartographers have already designated, what I now suggest is:
(1) That we take the northern edge of the map currently shown as being a bit further north than the Arctic Circle, but not actually as the North Pole: 65[sup]o[/sup] or 70[sup]o[/sup] North, perhaps. (Would the Cartographers be willing to consider extensions if & when players of nations close to that line specifically request them?) Also, of course, that we treat the map as being symmetrical so that the north-south scale is the same on both sides of the equator.
(2) That we use degrees themselves for the map’s scale, rather than miles (either standard or nautical) or kilometres or leagues or whatever, which means that we don’t have to worry about using any ‘projection’ system — with the inherent inaccuracies over large distances which that would automatically entail — to depict the planet’s curved surface on a flat map.
People can find the lengths for degrees of latitude and longitude at any particular latitude, and thus the [OOC/“external”] dimensions for their nations sizes using either of two online calculators that I’ve already found ( http://www.csgnetwork.com/degreelenllavcalc.html and https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/gccalc.shtml ) or alternative ones that they find for themselves or that other players have found and listed in this thread.

Presumption #3: Climatology
The fact that the waters around the North Pole on our world are not as enclosed as their counterparts on Earth-RL, combined with the plausible lack of either a land-mass or an enclosed (or, as in RL’s Arctic, almost-enclosed) sea centred over the South Pole, means that although there would still be zones of permanent snow on the highest mountain ranges — especially at higher latitudes — our world would probably lack any major icecaps. This would make the world moister and warmer, on average, than is Earth-RL. The wide expanses of open sea surrounding our continents, although now slightly more constrained than on the old map, would still allow currents to circulate quite freely and redistribute that higher warmth more evenly so that the high latitudes here would be warmer than those of Earth-RL while the tropics would be slightly cooler than the higher average temperature might otherwise suggest. These circumstances mean that temperate forests could exist closer to the polar regions, and also that they could stretch further inland so that — depending on the positions of major mountain ranges as well, of course — we have less desert or even steppe than would have been predictable for continents of these sizes at these latitudes with a more “Earth-like” situation. There could still have been some relatively minor glaciations, but we would not have had a major ‘Ice Age’ here during the Pleistocene epoch.
EDIT (30th January 2020; added sentence): This also means that seasonal migrations from north to south (or vice versa) by birds are likely to be less extensive than on RL Earth, but there will still be cases in which they occur and even intercontinental migration should still be considered a possibility.
(I’m currently thinking that we might have had a milder ‘Ice Age’ covering part of the rather earlier Oligocene epoch instead, here, to help explain some details in the evolution of the wildlife around then. Some geographical features caused by this might still be visible, in northern lands and mountain ranges (and now in those relatively close to the southern edges of the southern continents, as well…), although erosion would probably have softened them significantly during the intervening millions of years. If any player who runs any of these nations absolutely want their lands to have had more recent glaciation then I’d suggest that those lands’ actual geographical features might have been “swapped-in” at some point from other Earths with different geological/climatic histories…)


Presumption #4: Plate Tectonics
(The player who runs Malabra agreed to their parts of this when we discussed the situation a few years ago…)

There was a single large ‘supercontinent’ here at the start of the Mesozoic Era (or “Age of Dinosaurs”), but this broke up — and the central ocean, which probably began that period as a sea extending some way into the supercontinent from the south — opened up during the early stages of the Cretaceous period. Our four continents today are basically on four separate tectonic plates, with at least the eastern pair and probably the north-western one as well all moving slowly northwards but not necessarily always moving at the same speed as each other… The south-eastern continent has probably been disconnected from any of the others for longest, and might be moving in a different direction: These points — which would be likely to affect the patterns of mountain ranges, and the likelihoods of earthquakes & volcanos in different areas, as well as ecosystems — would [presumably] be a matter for the owners of nations now on it, as well as for cartographers, to consider.

I don’t know how much of this section’s remaining paragraphs would carry over onto the new map, but on the older one…
On the old map, much of the area that had become occupied by the nation called Malabra was actually on a sub-plate that broke away from the main southern one just after the middle of the Cretaceous period and began to collide with the northern plate during the earlier stages of the following Paleogene (the first of two periods into which the former ‘Tertiary’ is now split). The effects of this collision included a mountain-building process in the northern continent, which helped to explain the ranges now existing not only directly north of Malabra but also paralleling the continent’s southern coasts for some distance westwards from there, as well as some uplift and “buckling” elsewhere. They also “tipped” the continent slightly, raising coastlines in the south (cutting off a sea that had extended northwards and then eastwards with its inner end covering the northern parts of what is now Bears Armed’s main section and some other areas around that, which has long since drained away, and uniting some quite large islands that had formed an archipelago off of the south-western corner with the mainland) while lowering them in the north (and separating some areas from the mainland there to form the large islands that exist today). The main rivers in Malabra had previously flowed northwards, but the mountain-building dammed them up and created an inland sea until the waters cut through a ridge to establish the pattern of southwards drainage that exists today. (A similar phenomenon occurred on RL Earth, where the precursor of the River Amazon had originally flowed into the Pacific rather than the Atlantic but the flow of waters was re-directed by the creation of the Andes range…).
What is now the north-eastern corner of the South Continent was also a large island or even an archipelago at various times.

Land-bridges between north and south have existed temporarily at a few stages during the Cenozoic, at either one end or the other of the Iapetus Sea but never at both ends simultaneously. The first of them formed as a reaction to Malabra’s collision with the North Continent, which temporarily pushed upwards the bed of the shallow sea “behind” it. The latest bridge at the western end formed (during parts of the Miocene epoch) around a series of islands that had been thrown-up by a volcanic hotspot over which the two plates were passing on their slow journey north.]]> https://theidu.us/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2067 .

BASIC PRESUMPTIONS

Presumption #1: The Planet
Although our pattern of lands and waters differs from that of RL Earth, this still is an ‘Earth’ in all fundamental respects: Astronomical position, positions & sizes of the solar system’s other members, lengths of the day and the year, frequency of eclipses, age, basic chemical composition, types (and approximate ratios) of rocks & minerals present, basic atmospheric composition, basic biochemistry, and so on.

Presumption #1.B: Departures and Arrivals
When old nations CTE, and new nations arrive among us, this often involves history being retrospectively altered so that IC the current situation has “always” been the case. What I think has probably happened (sort-of-IC) in these cases is that the areas concerned have been “swapped” for ones from Parallel Earths with different histories. This involves a phenomenon, sometimes called ‘Fractal Reality’, that has already been evoked to explain some such changes not only elsewhere in NS (along with explaining the fact that many NS nations can claim to occupy the same RL nations’ locations...) but even by some of the earlier players in this very region. The accompanying changes to IC memories and histories would then be either an [inexplicable?] side-effect of the relocation or direct action through whoever or whatever had deliberately (whether using “sufficiently advanced science”, outright supernatural powers, or something else…)made the swap.
This phenomenon would also explain, obviously, the “movement” of various nations from our older map into the current one…

Presumption #2: Coordinates
We need to determine climates for the nations on our regional map. This is necessary not only for sorting-out “reasonable” ecosystems but also for determining their likely weather for use in role-plays, their agricultural possibilities, and even their basic habitability.
We need to know latitudes and scale to determine the nations’ ‘proper’ climates, and related details such the probable directions of ocean currents and the relative lengths of daylight & night locally through the year.
Modifying the suggestions that I made about the old map (and that were partly based on details already agreed by various other nations’ players) to fit the new one, and going with the Equator being along the line that our Cartographers have already designated, what I now suggest is:
(1) That we take the northern edge of the map currently shown as being a bit further north than the Arctic Circle, but not actually as the North Pole: 65[sup]o[/sup] or 70[sup]o[/sup] North, perhaps. (Would the Cartographers be willing to consider extensions if & when players of nations close to that line specifically request them?) Also, of course, that we treat the map as being symmetrical so that the north-south scale is the same on both sides of the equator.
(2) That we use degrees themselves for the map’s scale, rather than miles (either standard or nautical) or kilometres or leagues or whatever, which means that we don’t have to worry about using any ‘projection’ system — with the inherent inaccuracies over large distances which that would automatically entail — to depict the planet’s curved surface on a flat map.
People can find the lengths for degrees of latitude and longitude at any particular latitude, and thus the [OOC/“external”] dimensions for their nations sizes using either of two online calculators that I’ve already found ( http://www.csgnetwork.com/degreelenllavcalc.html and https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/gccalc.shtml ) or alternative ones that they find for themselves or that other players have found and listed in this thread.

Presumption #3: Climatology
The fact that the waters around the North Pole on our world are not as enclosed as their counterparts on Earth-RL, combined with the plausible lack of either a land-mass or an enclosed (or, as in RL’s Arctic, almost-enclosed) sea centred over the South Pole, means that although there would still be zones of permanent snow on the highest mountain ranges — especially at higher latitudes — our world would probably lack any major icecaps. This would make the world moister and warmer, on average, than is Earth-RL. The wide expanses of open sea surrounding our continents, although now slightly more constrained than on the old map, would still allow currents to circulate quite freely and redistribute that higher warmth more evenly so that the high latitudes here would be warmer than those of Earth-RL while the tropics would be slightly cooler than the higher average temperature might otherwise suggest. These circumstances mean that temperate forests could exist closer to the polar regions, and also that they could stretch further inland so that — depending on the positions of major mountain ranges as well, of course — we have less desert or even steppe than would have been predictable for continents of these sizes at these latitudes with a more “Earth-like” situation. There could still have been some relatively minor glaciations, but we would not have had a major ‘Ice Age’ here during the Pleistocene epoch.
EDIT (30th January 2020; added sentence): This also means that seasonal migrations from north to south (or vice versa) by birds are likely to be less extensive than on RL Earth, but there will still be cases in which they occur and even intercontinental migration should still be considered a possibility.
(I’m currently thinking that we might have had a milder ‘Ice Age’ covering part of the rather earlier Oligocene epoch instead, here, to help explain some details in the evolution of the wildlife around then. Some geographical features caused by this might still be visible, in northern lands and mountain ranges (and now in those relatively close to the southern edges of the southern continents, as well…), although erosion would probably have softened them significantly during the intervening millions of years. If any player who runs any of these nations absolutely want their lands to have had more recent glaciation then I’d suggest that those lands’ actual geographical features might have been “swapped-in” at some point from other Earths with different geological/climatic histories…)


Presumption #4: Plate Tectonics
(The player who runs Malabra agreed to their parts of this when we discussed the situation a few years ago…)

There was a single large ‘supercontinent’ here at the start of the Mesozoic Era (or “Age of Dinosaurs”), but this broke up — and the central ocean, which probably began that period as a sea extending some way into the supercontinent from the south — opened up during the early stages of the Cretaceous period. Our four continents today are basically on four separate tectonic plates, with at least the eastern pair and probably the north-western one as well all moving slowly northwards but not necessarily always moving at the same speed as each other… The south-eastern continent has probably been disconnected from any of the others for longest, and might be moving in a different direction: These points — which would be likely to affect the patterns of mountain ranges, and the likelihoods of earthquakes & volcanos in different areas, as well as ecosystems — would [presumably] be a matter for the owners of nations now on it, as well as for cartographers, to consider.

I don’t know how much of this section’s remaining paragraphs would carry over onto the new map, but on the older one…
On the old map, much of the area that had become occupied by the nation called Malabra was actually on a sub-plate that broke away from the main southern one just after the middle of the Cretaceous period and began to collide with the northern plate during the earlier stages of the following Paleogene (the first of two periods into which the former ‘Tertiary’ is now split). The effects of this collision included a mountain-building process in the northern continent, which helped to explain the ranges now existing not only directly north of Malabra but also paralleling the continent’s southern coasts for some distance westwards from there, as well as some uplift and “buckling” elsewhere. They also “tipped” the continent slightly, raising coastlines in the south (cutting off a sea that had extended northwards and then eastwards with its inner end covering the northern parts of what is now Bears Armed’s main section and some other areas around that, which has long since drained away, and uniting some quite large islands that had formed an archipelago off of the south-western corner with the mainland) while lowering them in the north (and separating some areas from the mainland there to form the large islands that exist today). The main rivers in Malabra had previously flowed northwards, but the mountain-building dammed them up and created an inland sea until the waters cut through a ridge to establish the pattern of southwards drainage that exists today. (A similar phenomenon occurred on RL Earth, where the precursor of the River Amazon had originally flowed into the Pacific rather than the Atlantic but the flow of waters was re-directed by the creation of the Andes range…).
What is now the north-eastern corner of the South Continent was also a large island or even an archipelago at various times.

Land-bridges between north and south have existed temporarily at a few stages during the Cenozoic, at either one end or the other of the Iapetus Sea but never at both ends simultaneously. The first of them formed as a reaction to Malabra’s collision with the North Continent, which temporarily pushed upwards the bed of the shallow sea “behind” it. The latest bridge at the western end formed (during parts of the Miocene epoch) around a series of islands that had been thrown-up by a volcanic hotspot over which the two plates were passing on their slow journey north.]]> https://idugov.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=1982 Mon, 14 Oct 2019 11:59:17 -0500 Bears Armed]]> https://idugov.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=1982 Location
The section of this nation that is located in the IDU basically occupies a peninsula extending southwards from the South Continent’s southern coast. It is not this nation’s main territory, which centres in the area that the name would presumably lead you to expect on a more RL-like version of Earth instead: This is just an outlying territory, called ‘Diamant', which the nation’s people reached using their advanced spacecraft.
(The nation’s player and people say that they travelled across the stars, to a different solar system, and that — although they agree with me about wildlife from Earth ending up here — the physical similarities between this planet and Earth [and between their solar systems, too] are just a happy coincidence: I think, however, that their vessels’ ‘interstellar’ drive must actually have turned out to be an ‘inter-dimensional’ one that moved them between two alternative versions of the same solar system instead. We’ll probably have to agree to disagree about this…)

The 'Basic Presumptions & Overview’ from which I am currently working place this nation approximately from 6[sup]o[/sup]S to 9[sup]o[/sup]S, with a maximum width of approximately 2 degrees of longitude: This would give it a N-S distance of around 210 standard miles, and a maximum E-W distance of around 150 standard miles, unless a “Tardis Effect” applies and it’s actually bigger on the inside than on the outside.
From what I remember of the region’s old topographical map, and as agreed by this nation’s player, there is a line of mountains running roughly N-S through the peninsula. I see that OOC the CTEd nation which formerly occupied these lands (although IC memories have presumably been retconned to say that it, like so many other CTEd nations, never existed at all…) apparently had one of its main cities on the eastern coast: This version of the peninsula is being retconned, however, to have all of its best “habitable” areas in the west instead. This change seems advisable due to the change in latitude involved now that we’ve expanded the map’s presumed scale, and I’m calling it a side-effect of whatever cosmic incident caused the latter retconned alteration in the structure of Reality… Making this change means that the “habitable” areas now all in the west are shielded from some of the equatorial rains and heat — and from hurricanes — by those mountains. The western side has a ‘dry season’ & ‘wet season’, but due to the different pattern of lands & seas these are be less extreme than those in RL experienced by [e.g.] India (i.e. the ‘Monsoons’).

________________________________________________________________

Basic Ecotypes
The nation’s natural habitats are basically arranged in a series of strips, running approximately north-south parallel to each other and mostly widest (where the nation as a whole is) in the north. Between the opens seas in the west and the open (and stormier) seas in the east, these, are:

Coral reefs

Coastal waters, sheltered to some extent by the reefs, and some enclosed as lagoons; some of these areas include ‘seagrass meadows’.

Shoreline: mostly consists of sandy beaches, although near the peninsula’s southern tip a branch of the mountains reaches the shore and provides both cliff-backed coves and offshore islets where (with reasonably safety from land-based predators) sea-lions emerge from the water to breed or just to rest.

Coastal plain: This is mostly covered by forests that are ‘tropical evergreen’ but are not actually ‘rainforest’.

Inland plains: There is a fairly gentle & long slope from the coast up to the actual foothills of the mountainous spine. Tropical evergreen forests extend inland along the river valleys, but further from the waters (inland and/or uphill) they shade through ‘tropical seasonal forest’ (including ‘thorn forest’) and scrub into wooded savannah, and then into open grassland. Some areas have sandy soils, low in both nutrients and moisture, within which those transitions in vegetation occur over shorter distances.
There is a significant area of marshland where two of the main rivers that join these plains meet, inland from the coastal forests, which usually undergoes flooding during the ‘west season’ to become a wider swamp. This area is generally considered to mark a “boundary” between the northern and central sections of those plains.
For approximately the southern one-third of the peninsula’s length, the seasonal forests & scrub inland from the coast merge almost directly with those of the mountain’s foothills, with little or no wooded savannah — let alone open grassland — in between.

Foothills: The last of the rain brought by winds from the east flows down from the mountains “behind” these, allowing the river valleys and the hills’ lower slopes to bear more wooded savannah, scrub, or even woodland, than generally exists along the stretches of the same rivers that flow through the open plains below. (Some areas may be suitable for growing Coffee.)

Mountain slopes (western side): These become steeper after the foothills, but still typically less so than on the eastern side. Scrub exist near the base but becomes patchier with height, leading into a predominantly grassy cover that includes quite sizeable stretches of relatively level ‘meadows’ in places. There are patches of scrub and even small trees in hollows where water can temporarily collect, but then there are also expanses of bare or almost-bare rock where the surface is so close to vertical that plants — and soil itself — cannot sit there easily.

Mountain summits: The almost-continuous cover of vegetation that exists lower down is replaced by scattered clumps, as one gets close to the snow-line (on any mountains high enough to have one…), and the seed-bearing plants largely give way to more primitive types.

Mountain slopes (eastern side): With much more water & a bit more warmth available, there is only a relatively thin belt of meadow before the ‘scrub belt’ starts. Bamboo, and “giant” forms of both heather and stinging nettles, are common members of the latter level’s plant communities. Below this is a belt of ‘’cloud forest’, where lower temperatures at higher altitudes cause humid air rising from below to release much of its moisture, resulting in extensive fogs and a considerable reduction in the direct sunlight received by plants: This is thickest in the ‘saddles’ between peaks, or other hollows, where that moisture is likeliest to be deposited, and may be “broken” by areas of direct connection between the two adjacent belts in between those. Ferns and mosses fare relatively well alongside the seed-bearing plants in these damp — but not too sunny — conditions. Below this, again, is a belt of ‘tropical montane rainforest’, largely containing species of trees that are better adapted to steeper slopes & thinner soils than are those of the lowlands.

Coastal plain: This is basically covered by ‘tropical lowland rainforest’. Its relative narrowness, combined with the way in which it slopes towards the sea, means that it has numerous small rivers but these don’t manage to combine into just a few large ones as would happen in larger & flatter expanses of this habitat (such as the RL basins of the Amazon or the Congo…): These conditions also mean that there are no large expanses of ‘flooded forest’ or swamps such as would also occur in larger & flatter rainforests. However, there is an intermittent line of lakes & swampy areas running parallel to — and only a few miles inland from — the middle half of the coastline [more-or-less], because a seam of relatively soft rock reaches the surface here and has been eroded more deeply than the harder rocks to either side. To the south of this, much of the area between the mountains and the shore is occupied by a ‘karst’ landscape of heavily-eroded limestone with some quite spectacular landscape features (including at least one major set of caves, containing an underground river).

Shore: Much of the eastern coast is formed by cliffs, although fairly low ones, where relatively soft rocks have been eroded away leaving more resistant strata along the modern shore. Some of these have ‘wave-cut platforms’ at their bases. There are some lower areas, where certain rivers meet the sea and at this coast’s northern end where the main rock-types are different, and these have mangrove swamps present. Coral is relatively scarce here, compared to the more sheltered western side, but some smallish outcrops do occur particularly offshore from the karst region.

Coastal waters, less sheltered (and narrower) than those on the western side, shading quite quickly back into open seas.]]> Location
The section of this nation that is located in the IDU basically occupies a peninsula extending southwards from the South Continent’s southern coast. It is not this nation’s main territory, which centres in the area that the name would presumably lead you to expect on a more RL-like version of Earth instead: This is just an outlying territory, called ‘Diamant', which the nation’s people reached using their advanced spacecraft.
(The nation’s player and people say that they travelled across the stars, to a different solar system, and that — although they agree with me about wildlife from Earth ending up here — the physical similarities between this planet and Earth [and between their solar systems, too] are just a happy coincidence: I think, however, that their vessels’ ‘interstellar’ drive must actually have turned out to be an ‘inter-dimensional’ one that moved them between two alternative versions of the same solar system instead. We’ll probably have to agree to disagree about this…)

The 'Basic Presumptions & Overview’ from which I am currently working place this nation approximately from 6[sup]o[/sup]S to 9[sup]o[/sup]S, with a maximum width of approximately 2 degrees of longitude: This would give it a N-S distance of around 210 standard miles, and a maximum E-W distance of around 150 standard miles, unless a “Tardis Effect” applies and it’s actually bigger on the inside than on the outside.
From what I remember of the region’s old topographical map, and as agreed by this nation’s player, there is a line of mountains running roughly N-S through the peninsula. I see that OOC the CTEd nation which formerly occupied these lands (although IC memories have presumably been retconned to say that it, like so many other CTEd nations, never existed at all…) apparently had one of its main cities on the eastern coast: This version of the peninsula is being retconned, however, to have all of its best “habitable” areas in the west instead. This change seems advisable due to the change in latitude involved now that we’ve expanded the map’s presumed scale, and I’m calling it a side-effect of whatever cosmic incident caused the latter retconned alteration in the structure of Reality… Making this change means that the “habitable” areas now all in the west are shielded from some of the equatorial rains and heat — and from hurricanes — by those mountains. The western side has a ‘dry season’ & ‘wet season’, but due to the different pattern of lands & seas these are be less extreme than those in RL experienced by [e.g.] India (i.e. the ‘Monsoons’).

________________________________________________________________

Basic Ecotypes
The nation’s natural habitats are basically arranged in a series of strips, running approximately north-south parallel to each other and mostly widest (where the nation as a whole is) in the north. Between the opens seas in the west and the open (and stormier) seas in the east, these, are:

Coral reefs

Coastal waters, sheltered to some extent by the reefs, and some enclosed as lagoons; some of these areas include ‘seagrass meadows’.

Shoreline: mostly consists of sandy beaches, although near the peninsula’s southern tip a branch of the mountains reaches the shore and provides both cliff-backed coves and offshore islets where (with reasonably safety from land-based predators) sea-lions emerge from the water to breed or just to rest.

Coastal plain: This is mostly covered by forests that are ‘tropical evergreen’ but are not actually ‘rainforest’.

Inland plains: There is a fairly gentle & long slope from the coast up to the actual foothills of the mountainous spine. Tropical evergreen forests extend inland along the river valleys, but further from the waters (inland and/or uphill) they shade through ‘tropical seasonal forest’ (including ‘thorn forest’) and scrub into wooded savannah, and then into open grassland. Some areas have sandy soils, low in both nutrients and moisture, within which those transitions in vegetation occur over shorter distances.
There is a significant area of marshland where two of the main rivers that join these plains meet, inland from the coastal forests, which usually undergoes flooding during the ‘west season’ to become a wider swamp. This area is generally considered to mark a “boundary” between the northern and central sections of those plains.
For approximately the southern one-third of the peninsula’s length, the seasonal forests & scrub inland from the coast merge almost directly with those of the mountain’s foothills, with little or no wooded savannah — let alone open grassland — in between.

Foothills: The last of the rain brought by winds from the east flows down from the mountains “behind” these, allowing the river valleys and the hills’ lower slopes to bear more wooded savannah, scrub, or even woodland, than generally exists along the stretches of the same rivers that flow through the open plains below. (Some areas may be suitable for growing Coffee.)

Mountain slopes (western side): These become steeper after the foothills, but still typically less so than on the eastern side. Scrub exist near the base but becomes patchier with height, leading into a predominantly grassy cover that includes quite sizeable stretches of relatively level ‘meadows’ in places. There are patches of scrub and even small trees in hollows where water can temporarily collect, but then there are also expanses of bare or almost-bare rock where the surface is so close to vertical that plants — and soil itself — cannot sit there easily.

Mountain summits: The almost-continuous cover of vegetation that exists lower down is replaced by scattered clumps, as one gets close to the snow-line (on any mountains high enough to have one…), and the seed-bearing plants largely give way to more primitive types.

Mountain slopes (eastern side): With much more water & a bit more warmth available, there is only a relatively thin belt of meadow before the ‘scrub belt’ starts. Bamboo, and “giant” forms of both heather and stinging nettles, are common members of the latter level’s plant communities. Below this is a belt of ‘’cloud forest’, where lower temperatures at higher altitudes cause humid air rising from below to release much of its moisture, resulting in extensive fogs and a considerable reduction in the direct sunlight received by plants: This is thickest in the ‘saddles’ between peaks, or other hollows, where that moisture is likeliest to be deposited, and may be “broken” by areas of direct connection between the two adjacent belts in between those. Ferns and mosses fare relatively well alongside the seed-bearing plants in these damp — but not too sunny — conditions. Below this, again, is a belt of ‘tropical montane rainforest’, largely containing species of trees that are better adapted to steeper slopes & thinner soils than are those of the lowlands.

Coastal plain: This is basically covered by ‘tropical lowland rainforest’. Its relative narrowness, combined with the way in which it slopes towards the sea, means that it has numerous small rivers but these don’t manage to combine into just a few large ones as would happen in larger & flatter expanses of this habitat (such as the RL basins of the Amazon or the Congo…): These conditions also mean that there are no large expanses of ‘flooded forest’ or swamps such as would also occur in larger & flatter rainforests. However, there is an intermittent line of lakes & swampy areas running parallel to — and only a few miles inland from — the middle half of the coastline [more-or-less], because a seam of relatively soft rock reaches the surface here and has been eroded more deeply than the harder rocks to either side. To the south of this, much of the area between the mountains and the shore is occupied by a ‘karst’ landscape of heavily-eroded limestone with some quite spectacular landscape features (including at least one major set of caves, containing an underground river).

Shore: Much of the eastern coast is formed by cliffs, although fairly low ones, where relatively soft rocks have been eroded away leaving more resistant strata along the modern shore. Some of these have ‘wave-cut platforms’ at their bases. There are some lower areas, where certain rivers meet the sea and at this coast’s northern end where the main rock-types are different, and these have mangrove swamps present. Coral is relatively scarce here, compared to the more sheltered western side, but some smallish outcrops do occur particularly offshore from the karst region.

Coastal waters, less sheltered (and narrower) than those on the western side, shading quite quickly back into open seas.]]> https://idugov.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=1978 Sat, 12 Oct 2019 11:11:48 -0500 Bears Armed]]> https://idugov.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=1978

INTRODUCTION

I understand that our current Cartographer [nation]Sanctaria[/nation] is unwilling to set coordinates or a scale for the regional map, and his argument that this makes it easier to add more nations without limiting their sizes to ones that are as small IC as they look OOC, and I do have some sympathy with this reasoning.

Nevertheless, it remains a fact that without any such agreed coordinates and scale there are several aspects of nations that can not be determined consistently across the map: Each nation’s player could and quite possibly would still make decisions about those aspects of their own country for themselves, of course, but without a set of underlying guidelines for them to use this could lead to jarringly incongruous differences between adjoining nations such as an area of boreal ‘taiga’ forest or even tundra sandwiched between two areas of tropical rainforest (without that middle section being raised-up on high mountains and/or a large plateau which would make that situation slightly more plausible).

I am therefore suggesting these guidelines for use by those players who do want to design their nations’ details so that they fit in consistently & fairly realistically with the details of other nations designed on the same basis. They do increase the size of the region’s lands significantly from the original version, but do so without moving various nations for which I know significant amounts of detail had already been determined (whether by their players alone, or in consultation with me in my ‘Regional Ecologist’ role) into climates too different from those previously thought right for them.
Malabra was always more tropical than its location previously would have implied (since before I became involved with this region), an anomaly that was “explained” by ‘leakage’ from lands with a genuinely tropical location in a Parallel Earth: Its latitudes under these proposed guidelines would now require rather less of that ‘leakage’ to justify things. On the other paw, from what certain other nations’ players have said, at various times, I suspect that some parts of the former nation ‘Keeslandia’ — which was in our northern continent’s north-eastern corner — might be anomalously cold…

Players who want to use these guidelines for developing details of their nations, but who want to make those nations larger than this would do, would have either to invoke a ‘Tardis Effect’ that somehow makes them larger on the inside than on the outside (not unprecedented in this region, original regional cartographer Domnonia did so for their own nation; certain logical consequences of such a situation would have to be ignored, though…) or expand into “adjacent” areas on one or more [previously-uninhabited?] ‘Parallel Earths’. It is possible, although I will not confirm the fact here, that my Bears have already taken the latter approach…

I have already sent my basic suggestions for this policy, by TG to the players whose nations’ ecosystems I’ve already helped to design: Some favourable replies, and none unfavourable, have been returned.


(This article expands CONSIDERABLY on an earlier ‘Overview’ thread, now un-stickied, which you can find @ https://theidu.us/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1297)]]>

INTRODUCTION

I understand that our current Cartographer [nation]Sanctaria[/nation] is unwilling to set coordinates or a scale for the regional map, and his argument that this makes it easier to add more nations without limiting their sizes to ones that are as small IC as they look OOC, and I do have some sympathy with this reasoning.

Nevertheless, it remains a fact that without any such agreed coordinates and scale there are several aspects of nations that can not be determined consistently across the map: Each nation’s player could and quite possibly would still make decisions about those aspects of their own country for themselves, of course, but without a set of underlying guidelines for them to use this could lead to jarringly incongruous differences between adjoining nations such as an area of boreal ‘taiga’ forest or even tundra sandwiched between two areas of tropical rainforest (without that middle section being raised-up on high mountains and/or a large plateau which would make that situation slightly more plausible).

I am therefore suggesting these guidelines for use by those players who do want to design their nations’ details so that they fit in consistently & fairly realistically with the details of other nations designed on the same basis. They do increase the size of the region’s lands significantly from the original version, but do so without moving various nations for which I know significant amounts of detail had already been determined (whether by their players alone, or in consultation with me in my ‘Regional Ecologist’ role) into climates too different from those previously thought right for them.
Malabra was always more tropical than its location previously would have implied (since before I became involved with this region), an anomaly that was “explained” by ‘leakage’ from lands with a genuinely tropical location in a Parallel Earth: Its latitudes under these proposed guidelines would now require rather less of that ‘leakage’ to justify things. On the other paw, from what certain other nations’ players have said, at various times, I suspect that some parts of the former nation ‘Keeslandia’ — which was in our northern continent’s north-eastern corner — might be anomalously cold…

Players who want to use these guidelines for developing details of their nations, but who want to make those nations larger than this would do, would have either to invoke a ‘Tardis Effect’ that somehow makes them larger on the inside than on the outside (not unprecedented in this region, original regional cartographer Domnonia did so for their own nation; certain logical consequences of such a situation would have to be ignored, though…) or expand into “adjacent” areas on one or more [previously-uninhabited?] ‘Parallel Earths’. It is possible, although I will not confirm the fact here, that my Bears have already taken the latter approach…

I have already sent my basic suggestions for this policy, by TG to the players whose nations’ ecosystems I’ve already helped to design: Some favourable replies, and none unfavourable, have been returned.


(This article expands CONSIDERABLY on an earlier ‘Overview’ thread, now un-stickied, which you can find @ https://theidu.us/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1297)]]> https://idugov.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=1960 Fri, 16 Aug 2019 12:02:43 -0500 Bears Armed]]> https://idugov.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=1960
Poll introduction
The Free Bears of Bears Armed wrote: Our regions distribution of lands & seas and consequent pattern of ocean currents means that its larger continent should probably have temperate forests extending further north, and both continents have less desert, than is the case for Earth-RLs continents and we probably didn’t have as much of an Ice Age, either. This means that we probably never had enough habitat for large herds of Mammoths, but we could have had Mastodons or even (in warm temperate or hotter climates) true Elephants, at least before humans also arrived here and started hunting them. If your nation is on a continent or a large island close to this, and not too mountainous, and bearing in mind how much room any surviving herds would need, do you think that it has or had_

Poll Results
Mastodons, now extinct?: Aertemedia, Anglia-Saxia, Comhar, Rosewald, Gonhog, Laeral, and North Cross.
Mastodons, surviving?: (nobody)
"true" Elephants, now extinct?: Lauchenoiria.
"true" Elephants, surviving?: (nobody)
Other (both types, Mammoths [in the "upper" north, or north-central plains], or some other type), as explained in RMB?: (nobody)
Whatever fits bearing in mind the neighbouring nations' choices?: Naboompu, Bears Armed, Gardavasque, Xiomera, Libertas Omnium Maximus, Trive 38, Zamastan, and Christos.
None of the above?: (nobody)

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

The now-extinct Elephants in Lauchenoiria were probably the same species as Earth-RL Eurasia’s now-extinct ‘Straight-Tusked Elephant’ Paleoloxodon antiquus, which was more closely related to the surviving African Elephant than to the Asian Elephant & the Mammoths. Looking at the other responses given, this might also have ranged [through Conternia?] into the lowland parts of Libertas Omnium Maximus. Lauchenoiria could also have had — and, indeed, could still have — Gompotheres (specifically Notiomastodon, of the type originally labelled ‘lowland mastodon’) spreading into at least its eastern edge from [nation]Malabra[/nation].
The now-extinct Mastodons in some of the region’s more northerly lands (Anglia-Saxia, Gonhog, Laeral, Christos, and probably Bears Armed, at the least) were probably from the same species as Earth-RL’s ‘American Mastodon Mammut americanum, but might have developed into an endemic sub-species here. It would be helpful if we knew whether they also occurred in a continuous range across certain other lands in that part of the region (High Fells, Skoden, Kivasek, Legionas, any of the Schnauzerlands, Sanctaria, Sciongard...).
As for the southern continent, I still need [nation]Sanctaria[/nation]’s reply to a request for information that I posted in the Map Discussion Thread before I can make “informed” suggestions.]]>
Poll introduction
The Free Bears of Bears Armed wrote: Our regions distribution of lands & seas and consequent pattern of ocean currents means that its larger continent should probably have temperate forests extending further north, and both continents have less desert, than is the case for Earth-RLs continents and we probably didn’t have as much of an Ice Age, either. This means that we probably never had enough habitat for large herds of Mammoths, but we could have had Mastodons or even (in warm temperate or hotter climates) true Elephants, at least before humans also arrived here and started hunting them. If your nation is on a continent or a large island close to this, and not too mountainous, and bearing in mind how much room any surviving herds would need, do you think that it has or had_

Poll Results
Mastodons, now extinct?: Aertemedia, Anglia-Saxia, Comhar, Rosewald, Gonhog, Laeral, and North Cross.
Mastodons, surviving?: (nobody)
"true" Elephants, now extinct?: Lauchenoiria.
"true" Elephants, surviving?: (nobody)
Other (both types, Mammoths [in the "upper" north, or north-central plains], or some other type), as explained in RMB?: (nobody)
Whatever fits bearing in mind the neighbouring nations' choices?: Naboompu, Bears Armed, Gardavasque, Xiomera, Libertas Omnium Maximus, Trive 38, Zamastan, and Christos.
None of the above?: (nobody)

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

The now-extinct Elephants in Lauchenoiria were probably the same species as Earth-RL Eurasia’s now-extinct ‘Straight-Tusked Elephant’ Paleoloxodon antiquus, which was more closely related to the surviving African Elephant than to the Asian Elephant & the Mammoths. Looking at the other responses given, this might also have ranged [through Conternia?] into the lowland parts of Libertas Omnium Maximus. Lauchenoiria could also have had — and, indeed, could still have — Gompotheres (specifically Notiomastodon, of the type originally labelled ‘lowland mastodon’) spreading into at least its eastern edge from [nation]Malabra[/nation].
The now-extinct Mastodons in some of the region’s more northerly lands (Anglia-Saxia, Gonhog, Laeral, Christos, and probably Bears Armed, at the least) were probably from the same species as Earth-RL’s ‘American Mastodon Mammut americanum, but might have developed into an endemic sub-species here. It would be helpful if we knew whether they also occurred in a continuous range across certain other lands in that part of the region (High Fells, Skoden, Kivasek, Legionas, any of the Schnauzerlands, Sanctaria, Sciongard...).
As for the southern continent, I still need [nation]Sanctaria[/nation]’s reply to a request for information that I posted in the Map Discussion Thread before I can make “informed” suggestions.]]> https://idugov.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=1945 Tue, 23 Jul 2019 11:46:51 -0500 Bears Armed]]> https://idugov.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=1945 Sesquiavis
This is a species of prehistoric Bird, currently known from only one fossil which was found in Bears Armed five ago, that has now been scientifically described. The type specimen is unfortunately incomplete, which has hindered its more detailed classification.

Discovery
This fossil was uncovered during routine operations at a limestone quarry in the Treur Khrahr’neth hills to the south of Urrath-am-Barrah, in June 2014. Quarrying work was immediately halted so that this item could be studied in situ before its careful removal — along with surrounding material, which included some smaller fossils of other organisms as well — for preservation and analysis at Kings’ University. Professors Arranna RedRose and Mirrach White, both of that establishment, led the project.

Age
This fossil was found in a stratum that is attributed to the earliest stage of the Palaeocene epoch, as it lies just above the thin layer of Iridium-rich clay which is thought to have been deposited due to the ‘K-T Event’ that ended the Mesozoic Era. Several of the other species found with it represented types of organism previously thought to have died out during or even slightly before that ‘Event’, however, which — presuming that that clay layer has indeed been correctly explained — raises the possibility that at least some of these fossils had been re-deposited there after the erosion of even earlier sediments in which they had originally been buried. Thus, the possibility that this bird was actually a resident of the Upper Cretaceous instead cannot be ruled out completely even though such a large bird being already extant alongside the [‘non-Avian’] Dinosaurs would be unprecedented in our current knowledge and seems improbable.

Description (Summary)
The only specimen for this species that has been found so far takes the form of a partially-disarticulated, but mostly complete, skeleton. The limbs are separated from the body, but are basically complete except that the lower half of the right leg (other than its 1st & 2nd toes, detached) is missing. The lower neck is also separated from the body, with the upper neck and all of the head missing.
The species represented by these remains was definitely a true Bird, rather than a [‘non-Avian’] Dinosaur. Certain anatomical features, including its possession of a triangular pygostyle (OOC: the bony structure at the base of a modern bird’s tail) place it clearly within the Ornithurae, although assigning it confidently to any specific family or order is not yet possible: Indeed, the absence of its head makes even certainty about whether it belonged to the Palaeognathae (along with Ostrichs & their kin) or the Neognathae (along with Fowl, Waterfowl, and the Neoaves (OOC: Neoaves = all of the other ‘modern’ birds’]) impossible, and there is therefore even a possibility that it belonged to some even older — and otherwise unknown to us — lineage instead. However, it is sufficiently different anatomically from the previously known Palaeocene species of large birds found in the IDU, belonging to the orders Palaeogalliformes* and Gastornithiformes**, that its having being ancestral to any of those is considered highly improbable.
Even without taking the head and upper neck into account, this bird — as reconstructed from these remains — would have stood around six feet tall. It was clearly flightless, with only rudimentary wings, but its strong legs & feet (with three toes, all pointing forwards, on each foot) would have allowed it a good running speed instead. Its dietary habits cannot be identified without more information about the head and especially the beak… Professor Urrth’hro SilverBear, at National University (at Council Groves) has suggested that some of the smaller fossils of other organisms found in association with these remains were actually there because the living bird had swallowed lumps of limestone already containing them for use as gastroliths (OOC: gastroliths = stones swallowed by a bird or other animal to help grind up tough food in its stomach), which might indicate a diet based on tubers or coarse vegetation, but this seems unlikely bearing in mind the general unsuitability of limestone for such a role.

Naming
The full binominal assigned to this species is Sesquiavis sesquiavis, which translates into English as ‘One-and-a-half-bird one-and-a-half-bird’. Professors Redrose & White acknowledge that this was inspired by one of their crew using the expression “That’s a bird and a half!” when they first saw the fossil clearly, but deny firmly that their repetition of the genus’s name as the specific designation as well was because another person present at that uncovering responded to the original statement with “You can say that again!”

_____________________________________________________________________

* Palaeogalliformes is an order endemic to (i.e. native only to) the IDU’s geographical region, almost certainly a sister-group to the more widespread order Galliformes (which includes chickens, pheasants & partridges, grouse, turkeys, and so on…).
** Gastornithiformes was the now-extinct order that included the gigantic birds known today as Gastornis or Diatryma, and was almost certainly quite closely related to the surviving order Anseriformes (which includes the ducks, geese, & swans, as well as some lesser-known groups).



:bear:]]> Sesquiavis
This is a species of prehistoric Bird, currently known from only one fossil which was found in Bears Armed five ago, that has now been scientifically described. The type specimen is unfortunately incomplete, which has hindered its more detailed classification.

Discovery
This fossil was uncovered during routine operations at a limestone quarry in the Treur Khrahr’neth hills to the south of Urrath-am-Barrah, in June 2014. Quarrying work was immediately halted so that this item could be studied in situ before its careful removal — along with surrounding material, which included some smaller fossils of other organisms as well — for preservation and analysis at Kings’ University. Professors Arranna RedRose and Mirrach White, both of that establishment, led the project.

Age
This fossil was found in a stratum that is attributed to the earliest stage of the Palaeocene epoch, as it lies just above the thin layer of Iridium-rich clay which is thought to have been deposited due to the ‘K-T Event’ that ended the Mesozoic Era. Several of the other species found with it represented types of organism previously thought to have died out during or even slightly before that ‘Event’, however, which — presuming that that clay layer has indeed been correctly explained — raises the possibility that at least some of these fossils had been re-deposited there after the erosion of even earlier sediments in which they had originally been buried. Thus, the possibility that this bird was actually a resident of the Upper Cretaceous instead cannot be ruled out completely even though such a large bird being already extant alongside the [‘non-Avian’] Dinosaurs would be unprecedented in our current knowledge and seems improbable.

Description (Summary)
The only specimen for this species that has been found so far takes the form of a partially-disarticulated, but mostly complete, skeleton. The limbs are separated from the body, but are basically complete except that the lower half of the right leg (other than its 1st & 2nd toes, detached) is missing. The lower neck is also separated from the body, with the upper neck and all of the head missing.
The species represented by these remains was definitely a true Bird, rather than a [‘non-Avian’] Dinosaur. Certain anatomical features, including its possession of a triangular pygostyle (OOC: the bony structure at the base of a modern bird’s tail) place it clearly within the Ornithurae, although assigning it confidently to any specific family or order is not yet possible: Indeed, the absence of its head makes even certainty about whether it belonged to the Palaeognathae (along with Ostrichs & their kin) or the Neognathae (along with Fowl, Waterfowl, and the Neoaves (OOC: Neoaves = all of the other ‘modern’ birds’]) impossible, and there is therefore even a possibility that it belonged to some even older — and otherwise unknown to us — lineage instead. However, it is sufficiently different anatomically from the previously known Palaeocene species of large birds found in the IDU, belonging to the orders Palaeogalliformes* and Gastornithiformes**, that its having being ancestral to any of those is considered highly improbable.
Even without taking the head and upper neck into account, this bird — as reconstructed from these remains — would have stood around six feet tall. It was clearly flightless, with only rudimentary wings, but its strong legs & feet (with three toes, all pointing forwards, on each foot) would have allowed it a good running speed instead. Its dietary habits cannot be identified without more information about the head and especially the beak… Professor Urrth’hro SilverBear, at National University (at Council Groves) has suggested that some of the smaller fossils of other organisms found in association with these remains were actually there because the living bird had swallowed lumps of limestone already containing them for use as gastroliths (OOC: gastroliths = stones swallowed by a bird or other animal to help grind up tough food in its stomach), which might indicate a diet based on tubers or coarse vegetation, but this seems unlikely bearing in mind the general unsuitability of limestone for such a role.

Naming
The full binominal assigned to this species is Sesquiavis sesquiavis, which translates into English as ‘One-and-a-half-bird one-and-a-half-bird’. Professors Redrose & White acknowledge that this was inspired by one of their crew using the expression “That’s a bird and a half!” when they first saw the fossil clearly, but deny firmly that their repetition of the genus’s name as the specific designation as well was because another person present at that uncovering responded to the original statement with “You can say that again!”

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* Palaeogalliformes is an order endemic to (i.e. native only to) the IDU’s geographical region, almost certainly a sister-group to the more widespread order Galliformes (which includes chickens, pheasants & partridges, grouse, turkeys, and so on…).
** Gastornithiformes was the now-extinct order that included the gigantic birds known today as Gastornis or Diatryma, and was almost certainly quite closely related to the surviving order Anseriformes (which includes the ducks, geese, & swans, as well as some lesser-known groups).



:bear:]]> https://idugov.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=1937 Wed, 10 Jul 2019 12:08:22 -0500 Bears Armed]]> https://idugov.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=1937 https://idugov.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=1846 Wed, 30 May 2018 11:27:30 -0500 Bears Armed]]> https://idugov.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=1846 Basic Conditions: Location, Climate, Geology
The region runs approximately from 20[sup]o[/sup]N to 60[sup]o[/sup]N, so your nation's location on the northern shore of the Agrimaj Ocean should give it a basic climate roughly comparable to that of southern France but with a bit more & more reliable] rain along the coast and in the west. Your eastern neighbour Malabra, however, has an anomalously hot climate (except in the mountains, of course) which is likely to make the inland sections (below the mountains) of your country's eastern end warmer and drier than would otherwise be expected.
The river-valley forming most of your border with Malabra is part of the "seam" where the proto-Malabran land-mass collided with the region's northern continent several tens of millions of years ago: Unless you object, I'd say that (a) the lower reaches of that river are deep and rather brackish, rather than mainly freshwater; (b) there's at least one waterfall some way inland, where the land drops suddenly, probably just below the lower of the two large lakes, which blocks navigation further upstream but also keeps salt-water out of the higher reaches; and © that valley is prone to relatively frequent, but [usually] relatively mild, earthquakes.
The mountain-range along your northern border is relatively narrow, as they go, but tall enough for steep slopes and for some of the higher peaks to have permanent snow & ice at their tops.

Basic Ecosystem Suggestions

Obviously these are only suggestions, and you're free to reject any of them -- or to say that some of these species were present within [what's now] your nation but have been hunted to [local] extinction -- but anyway...

Any single species that in RL is native both to Eurasia and to North America is probably native to at least part of the IDU as well: e.g. Brown Bear, ['Gray'] Wolf, Barn Owl, Golden Eagle, Peregrine Falcon, Osprey.

Any basic type of animal with one or more species native to RL Eurasia and another one or more native to RL North America probably also has at least one of those species native to at least part of the IDU, too, or has one or more other species 'endemic' to (i.e. native only to) at least part of the IDU; e.g. Black Bear, Red Fox (if that isn't just one single species, in RL, anyway), Beaver, [European] 'Red Deer'/[American] 'Elk', Bison, [European] Otter/[American] River Otter, White-tailed Eagle/Bald Eagle.

Smaller species tend to have shorter generations than larger ones, allowing faster evolution, so are more likely to be endemic.

You probably have temperate forest as the native vegetation (where that hasn't been cleared for agriculture, construction, etc.) in the west and along the coast, shading into subtropical forest in the south-east. This would be mainly "˜broad-leaved' trees, some of them evergreen (e.g. Holly, Laurel, Bay-tree, Evergreen Oak), with conifers only on the poorer soils. Magnolias and wild Lilac are likely, and Gingko/Maidenhair Tree would be a possibility. In the foothills of the mountains in the north-east you might even have groves of the 'Puzzle-Pine' which -- instead of being a "true" Pine -- is actually quite a close relative of the RL 'Monkey-Puzzle' tree. Here in RL today that family has two species in South America but is otherwise restricted to the SW Pacific/Australasia/SE Asia regions: It was far more widespread in prehistory, however, with both the semi-precious 'Whitby Jet' [in the UK] and Arizona's 'Petrified Forest' being derived from trees of this general type... and in the IDU the ancestors of this one species, at least, also survived past the Cretaceous/Paleogene transition. The seeds, similar to large 'pine kernels', are a good food although collecting them is labour-intensive and supplies are limited.
The drier areas in the eastern interior would tend more towards scrub and grassland, with reed-beds & tall grasses more abundant than trees in the lower parts of the river-valley along the Malabran border. Vegetation in the mountains would go [with increasing altitude] from temperate forest or scrub through bands of mixed or coniferous woodland to more scrub (with extensive bamboo groves in the moister areas), and then to heathers and grassland below the snow line: Bears Armed has some species of "˜Tree-heathers' among its upland shrubs, and their range could plausibly extend to here.

I would expect this nation's species of large mammals[on land] to include Brown Bear probably [Iduvian] Black Bear (in the densest woods), Puma/Cougar/'Mountain Lion', IDU endemic the 'Snow-Cat' (a smaller relative of the Puma; in mountainous areas, mainly above the tree line), possibly Tiger (as it occurs both in Malabra and in the south-east of Bears Armed; likeliest to survive in the tall grasses of the river-valley on your eastern border, I think...), 'Gray' Wolf, possibly either Coyote or Golden Jackal but probably not both of those as they have very similar ecological roles, Wild Pigs, possibly Bison but more probably Wild Oxen(related to the now-extinct Aurochs of RL Europe; maybe replaced completely by domestic stock, or surviving now only in protected parks?), Sheep/Goats/Goat-antelopes of several species [i](in the mountainous areas), possibly Musk Deer [ditto], [Iduvian] Red Deer, [Iduvian] Fallow Deer, possibly Roe Deer, Iduvian Water Deer (related to the RL Chinese species); possibly wild Horses/Ponies of one or more kinds, possibly a 'Hairy' [non-tropical] species of Rhinoceros, and maybe even a surviving species of Chalicothere. In the drier & less wooded lands of the eastern interior you might also have "” extending their ranges westwards from north-western Malabra "” Blackbuck, Nilgai, Armadillos of various kinds (possibly even a species of Pampathere), the Giant Anteater, and Ground Sloths of various sizes...
Although we tend to think of Monkeys as tropical, some RL species do live in more temperate climates instead: This area could plausibly have a species of 'Macaque' (similar to the 'Barbary Ape' & the Japanese Macaque of RL) and/or a species of leaf-eating Snub-nosed Monkey (as one such species in RL manages to survive in montane woodland in central China), even in areas where the winter weather may include snow.


___________________________________________________________________________

I have some ideas about smaller land mammals, marine mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and even fish, as well... if you're interested?

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Some possibilities:

Ailurus cyaneus: Blue Panda (very similar to the RL Red Panda, apart from its colouring)
Hystrix malabraica: Malabran Crested Porcupine

Chrysolophus chlorochrysos: the Gold-and-Green Pheasant (a close relative of the RL "˜Golden Pheasant' from which it differs mainly in the colouring of the adult males' body-feathers; foothills & lower slopes of the mountains)
Snowcock (further up in the mountains)
Cygnus fidelis: Swan (known further north as the "˜Loyal Swan', because unlike the other species that are found there "” which your nation probably lacks "” it doesn't migrate)
Grus tener: Dainty Crane (breeds in Laeral, then over-winters in western Malabra& so maybe also in your nation's eastern lands).
Several species of Heron, at least one of Cormorant, and possibly the region's endemic species of Pelican.

In the eastern river, and maybe elsewhere, one species of medium-sized Champsosaur (a fish-eating reptile, basically crocodile-like in shape but with "˜paddles' rather than legs, from a group that in managed to out-last the Dinosaurs by several tens of millions of years even in RL)?

One or more species of "˜Scaly Salamander', from the Amphibian order Allocaudata.]]> Basic Conditions: Location, Climate, Geology
The region runs approximately from 20[sup]o[/sup]N to 60[sup]o[/sup]N, so your nation's location on the northern shore of the Agrimaj Ocean should give it a basic climate roughly comparable to that of southern France but with a bit more & more reliable] rain along the coast and in the west. Your eastern neighbour Malabra, however, has an anomalously hot climate (except in the mountains, of course) which is likely to make the inland sections (below the mountains) of your country's eastern end warmer and drier than would otherwise be expected.
The river-valley forming most of your border with Malabra is part of the "seam" where the proto-Malabran land-mass collided with the region's northern continent several tens of millions of years ago: Unless you object, I'd say that (a) the lower reaches of that river are deep and rather brackish, rather than mainly freshwater; (b) there's at least one waterfall some way inland, where the land drops suddenly, probably just below the lower of the two large lakes, which blocks navigation further upstream but also keeps salt-water out of the higher reaches; and © that valley is prone to relatively frequent, but [usually] relatively mild, earthquakes.
The mountain-range along your northern border is relatively narrow, as they go, but tall enough for steep slopes and for some of the higher peaks to have permanent snow & ice at their tops.

Basic Ecosystem Suggestions

Obviously these are only suggestions, and you're free to reject any of them -- or to say that some of these species were present within [what's now] your nation but have been hunted to [local] extinction -- but anyway...

Any single species that in RL is native both to Eurasia and to North America is probably native to at least part of the IDU as well: e.g. Brown Bear, ['Gray'] Wolf, Barn Owl, Golden Eagle, Peregrine Falcon, Osprey.

Any basic type of animal with one or more species native to RL Eurasia and another one or more native to RL North America probably also has at least one of those species native to at least part of the IDU, too, or has one or more other species 'endemic' to (i.e. native only to) at least part of the IDU; e.g. Black Bear, Red Fox (if that isn't just one single species, in RL, anyway), Beaver, [European] 'Red Deer'/[American] 'Elk', Bison, [European] Otter/[American] River Otter, White-tailed Eagle/Bald Eagle.

Smaller species tend to have shorter generations than larger ones, allowing faster evolution, so are more likely to be endemic.

You probably have temperate forest as the native vegetation (where that hasn't been cleared for agriculture, construction, etc.) in the west and along the coast, shading into subtropical forest in the south-east. This would be mainly "˜broad-leaved' trees, some of them evergreen (e.g. Holly, Laurel, Bay-tree, Evergreen Oak), with conifers only on the poorer soils. Magnolias and wild Lilac are likely, and Gingko/Maidenhair Tree would be a possibility. In the foothills of the mountains in the north-east you might even have groves of the 'Puzzle-Pine' which -- instead of being a "true" Pine -- is actually quite a close relative of the RL 'Monkey-Puzzle' tree. Here in RL today that family has two species in South America but is otherwise restricted to the SW Pacific/Australasia/SE Asia regions: It was far more widespread in prehistory, however, with both the semi-precious 'Whitby Jet' [in the UK] and Arizona's 'Petrified Forest' being derived from trees of this general type... and in the IDU the ancestors of this one species, at least, also survived past the Cretaceous/Paleogene transition. The seeds, similar to large 'pine kernels', are a good food although collecting them is labour-intensive and supplies are limited.
The drier areas in the eastern interior would tend more towards scrub and grassland, with reed-beds & tall grasses more abundant than trees in the lower parts of the river-valley along the Malabran border. Vegetation in the mountains would go [with increasing altitude] from temperate forest or scrub through bands of mixed or coniferous woodland to more scrub (with extensive bamboo groves in the moister areas), and then to heathers and grassland below the snow line: Bears Armed has some species of "˜Tree-heathers' among its upland shrubs, and their range could plausibly extend to here.

I would expect this nation's species of large mammals[on land] to include Brown Bear probably [Iduvian] Black Bear (in the densest woods), Puma/Cougar/'Mountain Lion', IDU endemic the 'Snow-Cat' (a smaller relative of the Puma; in mountainous areas, mainly above the tree line), possibly Tiger (as it occurs both in Malabra and in the south-east of Bears Armed; likeliest to survive in the tall grasses of the river-valley on your eastern border, I think...), 'Gray' Wolf, possibly either Coyote or Golden Jackal but probably not both of those as they have very similar ecological roles, Wild Pigs, possibly Bison but more probably Wild Oxen(related to the now-extinct Aurochs of RL Europe; maybe replaced completely by domestic stock, or surviving now only in protected parks?), Sheep/Goats/Goat-antelopes of several species [i](in the mountainous areas), possibly Musk Deer [ditto], [Iduvian] Red Deer, [Iduvian] Fallow Deer, possibly Roe Deer, Iduvian Water Deer (related to the RL Chinese species); possibly wild Horses/Ponies of one or more kinds, possibly a 'Hairy' [non-tropical] species of Rhinoceros, and maybe even a surviving species of Chalicothere. In the drier & less wooded lands of the eastern interior you might also have "” extending their ranges westwards from north-western Malabra "” Blackbuck, Nilgai, Armadillos of various kinds (possibly even a species of Pampathere), the Giant Anteater, and Ground Sloths of various sizes...
Although we tend to think of Monkeys as tropical, some RL species do live in more temperate climates instead: This area could plausibly have a species of 'Macaque' (similar to the 'Barbary Ape' & the Japanese Macaque of RL) and/or a species of leaf-eating Snub-nosed Monkey (as one such species in RL manages to survive in montane woodland in central China), even in areas where the winter weather may include snow.


___________________________________________________________________________

I have some ideas about smaller land mammals, marine mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and even fish, as well... if you're interested?

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Some possibilities:

Ailurus cyaneus: Blue Panda (very similar to the RL Red Panda, apart from its colouring)
Hystrix malabraica: Malabran Crested Porcupine

Chrysolophus chlorochrysos: the Gold-and-Green Pheasant (a close relative of the RL "˜Golden Pheasant' from which it differs mainly in the colouring of the adult males' body-feathers; foothills & lower slopes of the mountains)
Snowcock (further up in the mountains)
Cygnus fidelis: Swan (known further north as the "˜Loyal Swan', because unlike the other species that are found there "” which your nation probably lacks "” it doesn't migrate)
Grus tener: Dainty Crane (breeds in Laeral, then over-winters in western Malabra& so maybe also in your nation's eastern lands).
Several species of Heron, at least one of Cormorant, and possibly the region's endemic species of Pelican.

In the eastern river, and maybe elsewhere, one species of medium-sized Champsosaur (a fish-eating reptile, basically crocodile-like in shape but with "˜paddles' rather than legs, from a group that in managed to out-last the Dinosaurs by several tens of millions of years even in RL)?

One or more species of "˜Scaly Salamander', from the Amphibian order Allocaudata.]]>