History Main / SpeculativeBiology

* ''WebOriginal/MultituberculateEarth'' is an alternate timeline in which [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multituberculata multituberculates]], rather than placental mammals, became dominant. Currently goes up to the alternative Oligocene.

* ''Series/TheFutureIsWild'' is a 2002 Creator/AnimalPlanet documentary. It is a SpiritualSuccessor to the speculative evolution book ''Literature/AfterMan''. In contrast to the book, the documentary says that humans simply left to live on another planet rather than went extinct. The documentary has been criticized for containing [[ArtisticLicenseBiology animals that are implausible]], such as a giant land squid millions of years into a future where mammals have died out and other species fill their niches. Nonetheless, the documentary has [[CultClassic a solid cult following]], and was popular enough to warrant a spin-off children's show courtesy of Creator/{{Nelvana}}, which is something one can't really say for most of the other Speculative Biology works on this page.

* ''Series/{{Primeval}}'' dips into this, with creatures from the far future (including [[{{Expy}} expies]] of creatures from ''Literature/AfterMan'') alongside those from the distant past that were never preserved in the fossil record.

These works often, but not always, take the form of a SpeculativeDocumentary. Related to FantasticScience and BizarreAlienBiology.

** Changelings become enormous four-legged insects who evolved to mimic ponies (their food source) and that feed on both emotional energy and solid matter. Their transformation in "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS6E26ToWhereAndBackAgainPart2 To Where and Back Again]]" is interpreted as Chrysalis essentially starving her hive by denying it both physical food (as she wrongly believed they didn't need it) and the social interaction they need for optimal feeding, only allowing them to grow into stunted neotenic forms. Thorax's takeover allowed them to start feeding properly again and morph into their true adult shapes.

[[folder:Film -- Animation]]

* ''Literature/AllTomorrows'' by C.M. Kosemen chronicles the evolution of various human descendants across dozens of planets over a billion years after some nasty intervention from the Qu, a [[AbusivePrecursors malevolent godlike alien race]]. It can be [[http://www.sivatherium.narod.ru/library/Ramjet/01_en.htm read here]].
* ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'': In the prequel novel ''The Ellimist Chronicles'', the Ketrans play a game that revolves around slightly modifying the conditions of their chosen virtual creatures' planet in order to influence their evolution towards a specific direction. Different players' creatures can even come into contact with one another through space travel.

* ''Literature/TheSnoutersFormAndLifeOfTheRhinogrades'', by the German zoologist Gerolf Steiner in 1957, may be one of the earliest semi-serious examples, as the book documents the bizarre endemic inhabitants of a fictional island chain, cartoonish shrew-like creatures that have evolved to do every conceivable activity with their noses (walking, eating, jumping, swimming, reproducing etc.). Despite the absurdity of the subject, the snouters are treated with absolute seriousness and strict scientific rigour.

[[folder:Live-Action TV]]

* ''Series/{{Dinosapien}}'' asks "what if non-avian dinosaurs hadn't gone extinct?" and goes with it. In it, an earthquake opens up and reveals a LostWorld where [[LivingDinosaurs dinosaurs survived the mass extinction]] and evolved for a further sixty five million years. The show specifically features two species, Eno, who is a species descend from dromaeosaurs and the Diggers, a pair of aggressive semi-bipedal Pachycephalosaur/Ankylosaurids.
* ''Series/DoctorWho'': [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E6TheLazarusExperiment "The Lazarus Experiment"]] has Richard Lazarus being mutated into a fearsome giant centipede/scorpion-like monster after an experiment with an anti-ageing machine goes wrong. The Doctor describes the monster as a creature of evolutionary potential -- something that evolution ''could'' have turned humanity into if it hadn't gone the "two arms and legs, ten fingers and toes" route -- lying dormant within Lazarus' genes.

[[folder:Web Original]]

* ''Literature/TalesOfKaimere'' is a low-fantasy universe where prehistoric animals from different time periods come to coexist in a fantasy world. Derived theropod dinosaurs called megaraptorans take the role of "dragons", large derived giraffids are "unicorns", and a wide variety of other fauna, such as hyena-like entelodonts, flightless ape-like pterosaurs, and manatee-like aquatic dicynodonts, to name a few.
* [[https://www.deviantart.com/avancna/gallery?q=tlaquanaru Tlaquanaru]] by avancna is essentially an alien planet where life forms evolved very convergently with earth's, essentially acting as an alternative evolution project as well. There are analogues for mammals, lizards, dinosaurs, mosasaurs among many groups, but looks can be deceiving: the "lizards", for instace, are more closely related to "mammals". It is in many ways a precursor to Dylan Bajda's Pluvimundus mentioned below.

* TheWikiRule even applies here. [[http://speculativeevolution.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page Speculative Evolution Wiki]] lists works about speculative biology, amongst other things.
* The Youtuber [[WebVideo/TreyTheExplainer TREY The Explainer]] usually focuses on actual paleontology; however, he has dabbled with this:
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7H6uW2fb9Y He once did a video]] on what he thinks aliens would actually look like. He is very much against the prevalence of {{Humanoid Alien}}s and TheGreys in media.
** In his videos on debunking cryptids, he discusses near the end what he believes they hypothetically would realistically be. For example, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHGecqSk53Y in his video]] on the [[StockNessMonster Loch Ness Monster]] he speculated that it wouldn't be a plesiosaur but instead would be a giant ''leech''.
** Likewise, his [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE9pEBEZk4Q video]] on TheFlatwoodsMonster ends with the theory that it would be a giant salamander, rather than an alien.
* Natural history Youtuber Ben G. Thomas does an excellent three-part history on speculative zoology that [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_but6TP_CY can be]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9hOcQzxpqU viewed]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK83PtweLf0 here]].
* [[Website/SpecWorld The Speculative Dinosaur Project]] is a modern-day SpiritualSuccessor to the 1980s book ''Literature/TheNewDinosaursAnAlternativeEvolution''. It's a speculative biology project on how dinosaurs could have evolved if the K/PG mass extinction had not occured.

* Literature/GreenAntarctica includes a whole ecosystem evolved from penguins, marsupials, sloths, monkeys, and other Gondwanan animals. However, many of the details are informed by RuleOfScary, and/or are inspired by Creator/HPLovecraft.

** The tongue-in-cheek ''An Ordovician Tomato'', where a time traveling accident sends a tomato back 479 million years, before there were even any land plants, and starts a parallel timeline that resets the history of all life on Earth. Sadly, the project appears to have been [[MissingEpisode deleted from the internet completely]].

* ''WebOriginal/{{Amphiterra}}'' by Javier Valdez, is an experiment dealing with an alternate timeline where ''frogs'', instead of mammals and reptiles, colonized the earth at the beginning of the Triassic period from the ancestral amphibian, ''Triadobatrachus''. While the early descendants resemble frogs of today, they quickly become a wide array of forms, such as barnacle-like sessile filter-feeders, arctic grazers with an insulating coat of secreted foam, or giant T. Rex-sized apex predators, as well as two sapient species that evolve 65 million years apart from each other.
* ''WebVideo/AlienBiospheres'' is a series of videos by Biblaridion dedicated to detailing the evolution of life on an alien planet. The two predominant groups of lifeforms in the series are the shelled cephalopod-like tentaclostomes and the spider-like sarcopods.
* ''WebVideo/LifeAroundARedDwarf'' by Project Rose is a speculative biology project dealing with three {{Tidally Locked Planet}}s orbiting a red dwarf star called Roseus, loosely inspired by the real life Trappist-1. The first season focuses on Nusku, the planet closest to the star and the most Earth-like of the trio. The creator says the idea and format were directly inspired by ''Alien Biospheres''.
* ''[[https://alphynix.tumblr.com/post/622194519729930243/so-in-the-light-of-the-ridiculous-titan-dolphin The Delphinus Archipelago]]'', a Tumblr project about the evolution of land dolphins that started with a criticism of the ''hideously inaccurate'' Titan Dolphin from the cancelled ''The Future Is Wild'' virtual reality game by Tumblr user Alphynix and was expanded on by various others. It features the evolution of dolphins that become terrestrial, modifying their tails and foreflippers into three hoofed legs, and evolve into a wide variety of forms, ranging from mostly-conservative seal-like forms, to truly absurd forms such as giraffe-like browsers, furry squirrel-like rodent-analogues, and a unicorn-like apex predator that chops its prey apart with its horn (even having a scientific nomenclature named after [[Film/GameraVsGuiron Guiron]]).
** The project was later added upon by Alphynix, adding long-necked brontolphins and herbivorous dolphalopes, and a further installment introduced the beaked dolphins with bird-like bills, which included mole-like burrowers, azdarchid-like ground hunters and even a gliding arboreal species.

* ''WebOriginal/{{Polinices}}'' is an art project by J. J. Aniorte that deals with a planet where harsh solar radiation leaves the surface uninhabitable but which has many strange asymmetrical and/or colonial organisms in its oceans.
* ''WebOriginal/{{Planetcopia}}'' downplays the biology part in favor of focusing on general climate and geography of imagined worlds. These worlds include our own Earth if it got tilted in such ways as to reposition the poles, ice caps, and latitude distribution of the continents (one called Jaredia is inspired by Jared Diamond's ''Literature/GunsGermsAndSteel'' and tilts the world to give it the largest possible east-west continent extension); Mars and Venus after a thousand years of {{Terraforming}}; and more alien worlds with very un-Earthlike land/sea ratios and distributions. The actual biology consists of transplanted Earth creatures and/or straightforward {{Intelligent Gerbil}}s, since the focus is more on how Earthlike organisms would adapt to weirder environments.
* ''WebVideo/{{Astrobiologica}}'', also called the ''Wallace Project'' (at least in the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv5PGQ3MXQY first episode]]; this alternate name isn't mentioned afterward), is about the binary planetary system of Ecco and Xea orbiting the twin stars Wallace (a yellow star like our Sun) and Sarowak (a smaller red dwarf) in a figure-8 pattern. As alien life emerges on the predominantly oceanic planet of Ecco, the barren world of Xea is settled by humans and Earth life. The series notably uses pixelated imagery reminiscent of 16-bit games from the early 1990s.

* ''WesternAnimation/StrangeWorld'' centers around a group of explorers venturing into uncharted territory that’s home to an alien ecosystem.

* WesternAnimation/StrangeWorld centers around a group of explorers venturing into uncharted territory that’s home to an alien ecosystem.

* Film/StrangeWorld centers around a group of explorers venturing into uncharted territory that’s home to an alien ecosystem.

* [[https://tribbetherium.tumblr.com/post/640506908600631296/hamsters-paradise-has-recieved-such-a-great a project by Reddit user Tribbetherium]]:

** Tribbetherium also [[PlayedForLaughs injects some humor into a fairly dry genre]] with a series of soft-spec-evo animals based on popular culture, such as [[https://www.reddit.com/r/SpeculativeEvolution/comments/k57fip/the_crewmice_a_social_burrowing_rodent_and_the/ the]] [[VideoGame/AmongUs crewmice and their mimicking predator the amongoose]], [[https://www.reddit.com/r/SpeculativeEvolution/comments/k8nj5e/the_deekay_an_arboreal_chalicothere/ an arboreal]] [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalicothere chalicothere]] called the [[Franchise/DonkeyKong deekay]] and its [[https://www.reddit.com/r/SpeculativeEvolution/comments/kbpr5z/some_descendants_of_the_deekay/ upright-walking relative]] the [[WesternAnimation/BojackHorseman boujac]], and a [[https://www.reddit.com/r/SpeculativeEvolution/comments/kc86kw/the_blood_phantom_a_flightless_carnivorous/ giant flightless vampire bat]] called the [[Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure blood phantom]].

* ''Literature/RustAndHumus'' is an extremely unique case in that it is also HighFantasy. It is pretty light on biological accuracy because of its surrealist tones, but it does closely follow evolutionary paths of the various life forms it chronicles.

* [[https://www.deviantart.com/avancna/gallery?q=tlaquanaru Tlaquanaru]] by avancna is essentially an alien planet where life forms evolved very convergently with earth's, essentially acting as an alternative evolution project as well. There are analogues for mammals, lizards, dinosaurs, mosasaurs among many groups, but looks can be deceiving: the "lizards", for instace, are more closely related to "mammals". It is in many ways a precursor to Dylan Bajda's Pluvimundus mentioned below.
* ''WebOriginal/MultituberculateEarth'' is an alternate timeline in which [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multituberculata multituberculates]], rather than placental mammals, became dominant. Currently goes up to the alternative Oligocene.

* The ''VideoGame/{{Pikmin}}'' series is best known for its dabbles in this in the enemy entries in the Piklopedia, with Olimar's notes giving them scientific names, attempting to classify the alien beasts into taxonomic families (such as the Mandiblard family, the Arachnorb family, the Grub-Dog family and the like), and describing and speculating on their behavior and ecological relationships with other species. In ''VideoGame/Pikmin3'', Alph adds his own observations on the creatures anatomy and physical structuring. Louie's notes, however, [[AlienLunch are just all about cooking them]]. Again, some of the creatures' hunting and defense mechanism border on fantastical elements such as Creatures like Gatling Groinks and Careening Dirigibugs hunting by creating bombs, Jellyfish-like creatures that can fly without any apparent parts to assist flight, [[spoiler: and all the final bosses, barring the Emperor Bulblax in the first game, either literally using man-made weapons as both hunting and defense mechanisms such as the Titan Dweevil, or near-otherworldly powers, such as a near-EldritchAbomination creature that can split itself apart to create copies of other animals and hazards like the Plasm Wraith]].

* ''Series/{{Cosmos}}'': One episode has Creator/CarlSagan discussing a theoretical ecosystem on Jupiter in which the animals had evolved into {{Living Gasbag}}s in order cope with the planet's conditions.

* ''Fanfic/RealisticPokemon'' is a series of fanarts depicting interpretations of Pokémon as if they were, or had evolved from, real-life animals. Some, like Zapdos and the Eeveelutions, remain largely what they are in canon, albeit with more realistic anatomy. Others get more drastic redesigns -- Giratina is interpreted as [[BigCreepyCrawlies a giant insect]] native to extremely deep caverns (the Distortion World) where the air pressure is high enough for its larval form (Giratina's Origin Forme) to "swim" through the air. Likewise, Voltorbs are drawn as red-and-white armadillos that "explode" by violently uncoiling.

* ''WebVideo/{{Astrobiologica}}'', also called the ''Wallace Project'', is about the binary planetary system of Ecco and Xea orbiting the twin stars Wallace (a yellow star like our Sun) and Sarowak (a smaller red dwarf) in a figure-8 pattern. As alien life emerges on the predominantly oceanic planet of Ecco, the barren world of Xea is settled by humans and Earth life. The series notably uses pixelated imagery reminiscent of 16-bit games from the early 1990s.

* ''WebVideo/{{Astrobiologica}}'', also called the ''Wallace Project'', is about the binary planetary system of Ecco and Xea orbiting the twin stars Wallace (a yellow star like our Sun) and Sarowak (a smaller red dwarf) in a figure-8 pattern. As alien life emerges on the predominantly ocean planet of Ecco, the barren world of Xea is settled by humans and Earth life.

* JustForFun/ThePokedexExtendedFanonEdition is a JustForFun series on Wiki/ThisVeryWiki that ratchets up the premise of ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' and documents the creatures as if writing a scientific article about real-world animals, dealing their biology, behavior, reproductive habits, diet and depiction in human culture.

** '''"Seeded Worlds":''' A more recent trending variant, which instead imagines settings where a select number of organisms, usually small and generalized ones, are placed on an uninhabited world to evolve on their own.

* ''Literature/FantasticBeastsAndWhereToFindThem'', a ''Literature/HarryPotter's'' prequel, has more of a focus on the fantastic beasts themselves and how their adaptations compare to their muggle counterparts.

These works often, but not always, take the form of a SpeculativeDocumentary. Related to FantasticScience.

* ''Film/{{Monsterverse}}'' takes a surprisingly scientific approach on its {{Kaiju}}, featuring the likes of Godzilla and King Kong in a more scientific light and portraying them as ancient superspecies from a more-radioactive Permian period. Granted, there is a lot of ArtisticLicenseBiology regarding how such big creatures can live in Earth's gravity or how they can sustain nutrition from radioactive material, but nonetheless the series explores the behavior, ecology and biology of the creatures of Skull Island and the Hollow Earth in a way that portrays them like an actual ecosystem that once existed in nature.

* ''WebOriginal/TalesOfKaimere'' is a low-fantasy universe where prehistoric animals from different time periods come to coexist in a fantasy world. Derived theropod dinosaurs called megaraptorans take the role of "dragons", large derived giraffids are "unicorns", and a wide variety of other fauna, such as hyena-like entelodonts, flightless ape-like pterosaurs, and manatee-like aquatic dicynodonts, to name a few.

* ''WebOriginal/{{Planetcopia}}'' downplays the biology part in favor of focusing on general climate and geography of imagined worlds. These worlds include our own Earth if it got tilted in such ways as to reposition the poles, ice caps, and latitude distribution of the continents (one called Jaredia is inspired by Jared Diamond's ''Literature/GunsGermsAndSteel'' and tilts the world to give it the largest possible east-west continent extension); Mars and Venus after a thousand years of {{Terraforming}}; and more alien worlds with very un-Earthlike land/sea ratios and distributions. The actual biology consists of transplanted Earth creatures and/or simple IntelligentGerbils, since the focus is more on how Earthlike organisms would adapt to weirder environments.

* JustForFun/ThePokedexExtendedFanonEdition is a JustForFun series on Wiki/ThisVeryWiki that takes the premise of ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' UpTo11 and documents the creatures as if writing a scientific article about real-world animals, dealing their biology, behavior, reproductive habits, diet and depiction in human culture.

* '''Future Evolution:''' Probably the most iconic of the subgenres and the one most people are familiar with. Instead of asking "what could have been?", this subgenre asks "what will happen in the future?" The most common situation discussed in these works is AfterTheEnd, and almost invariably involves dealing with the eventual fate of humanity. In some cases, exploring the fate of HumanitysWake is a major concern; one particular variant involves the hypothetical future evolution of humans into [[HumanSubspecies different species]].. In others, humans are written out early on, such as by having humanity go extinct or migrate off-world, to focus on the development of other creatures instead.

* '''Future Evolution:''' Probably the most iconic of the subgenres and the one most people are familiar with. Instead of asking "what could have been?", this subgenre asks "what will happen in the future?" The most common situation discussed in these works is AfterTheEnd, and almost invariably involves dealing with the eventual fate of humanity. In some cases, exploring the fate of HumanitysWake is a major concern; in others, humans are written out early on to focus on the development of other creatures instead, be it the extinction of humanity or them migrating off-world depending on the story, while one variant involves the hypothetical future evolution ''of'' humans into [[HumanSubspecies different species]].