HOME | DD

Description

Species from the Cryocene of Serina:

above: a variety of hydrambularans - a clade of large starfish-like hydras - native to Serinan seas 50 million years PE.
The driftwood stinger is among the most primitive walking hydras; it can move freely only early in its life. The stinger feeds on small fish and plankton caught in its stinging tentacles and is sessile as an adult. Young stingers attach their foot firmly to a piece of floating wood and cement themselves permanently with a glue-like secretion, spending the rest of their lives in place and budding off smaller clones until a small colony is established. If food is abundant, the clones remain around the parent and a large group develops, but if food is scarce they will detach and float away to find a new log to colonize.
The deadman's hand is a primitive walking hydra that retains a body and a foot it uses to inch itself along the sea floor in search of small worms and fish buried in the sand, which it stings with its tentacles. Its venom is weak, only enough to stun small prey, and of little harm to larger predators, so this species spends much of its time hiding in the sand.
The bloody mary is the most derived species pictured, having reduced its body into a flat round form that most closely resembles a starfish. This species is also a bottom-dwelling predator of sand-dwelling prey, but it is marked boldly with spots and stripes of red and white, advertising rather than hiding itself. This is because the bloody mary is particularly venomous and will quickly turn around and sting any creature that attempts to bite it severely enough to cause death through cardiac arrest.

Abundant in this earlier era, these species did not survive into the Ultimocene.

Description

Species from the Cryocene of Serina:

above: a variety of hydrambularans - a clade of large starfish-like hydras - native to Serinan seas 50 million years PE.
The driftwood stinger is among the most primitive walking hydras; it can move freely only early in its life. The stinger feeds on small fish and plankton caught in its stinging tentacles and is sessile as an adult. Young stingers attach their foot firmly to a piece of floating wood and cement themselves permanently with a glue-like secretion, spending the rest of their lives in place and budding off smaller clones until a small colony is established. If food is abundant, the clones remain around the parent and a large group develops, but if food is scarce they will detach and float away to find a new log to colonize.
The deadman's hand is a primitive walking hydra that retains a body and a foot it uses to inch itself along the sea floor in search of small worms and fish buried in the sand, which it stings with its tentacles. Its venom is weak, only enough to stun small prey, and of little harm to larger predators, so this species spends much of its time hiding in the sand.
The bloody mary is the most derived species pictured, having reduced its body into a flat round form that most closely resembles a starfish. This species is also a bottom-dwelling predator of sand-dwelling prey, but it is marked boldly with spots and stripes of red and white, advertising rather than hiding itself. This is because the bloody mary is particularly venomous and will quickly turn around and sting any creature that attempts to bite it severely enough to cause death through cardiac arrest.

Abundant in this earlier era, these species did not survive into the Ultimocene.