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thomastapir — Styracomorph
Published: 2008-03-14 07:20:02 +0000 UTC; Views: 1990; Favourites: 44; Downloads: 25
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I read an Isaac Asimov story a long time ago where the protagonist compared planets to laboratory test tubes, and suns to incubating lamps. I’ve thought about this idea a lot in terms of directed panspermia…What if populations of terrestrial creatures were relocated to other planets, to see how they would adapt to differing gravities, radiation levels, stellar luminosities? I’ve always loved countershaded creatures (probably picked this up from Wayne Barlowe’s Darwin IV wildlife), and wanted to do an entire planet of leathery, stringy, countershaded dinosaurs. I had to work backwards from the morphology and aesthetics, though, and find a convincing rationale for their characteristics. How about a population of dinosaurs relocated in the distant past to an archipelago world orbiting a hot, white sun, vegetated with terrestrial flora to turn the entire planet into a giant mangrove swamp? How would the dinosaurs adapt to the radiation levels, the heat, the lack of fresh water? How would they consume the tough, radiation-shielded vegetation? Would they evolve salt-filtration organs, like flamingos? Would most become amphibious to negotiate the shallow seaways between island chains...? The possibilities are endless.Related content
Comments: 10
Another interesting concept, I'd like to see more of it
I think the civilization responsible for this experiment would need planetary engineering technology to terraform uninhabitable lifeless planets. These would the best option because it would be an ethics conundrum doing the same to planets with native life, or maybe they don't have such compunctions, your call.
For purely effort economy reasons the best stock would be relatively unspecialized, small-sized, fast breeding animals with a good range of genetic variability.
You could think of it as giving a new break to psittacosaurs, troodontids, etc, elsewhere paying with close attention to the altered variables and at least three replicates for each to establish statistical significance. Quite the undertaking
On your Styracomorph, I love the shading technique and the choice of brown paper as medium: such a nice effect 
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Thanks for your feedback on the shading, I'm glad you like it! I picked this up from a guy in one of my art classes who would do the most amazing drawings on toned paper with just a couple of grayscale markers and a white Prismacolor. The ink cross-hatching was influenced by John C. McLouglin.
I pictured whoever did this (the dinosaur ecosystem, not the drawing) using automated, Von Neumann-style self-replicating probes to terraform planets millions of years before seeding them with terrestrial life, using either lifeless worlds or those with simple microbial life (proceeding from the “Rare Earth” hypothesis that complex life is extremely rare in the galaxy, if not the universe).
Another idea I was playing with—going more with the directed panspermia—was that perhaps the planets are seeded with custom microbes carrying “gene libraries” for the expression of the different organisms intended for colonization. The microbes themselves rapidly (on the scale of geological time) “terraform” the planet, taking it through an accelerated evolution to the point where the environment is ecologically suited to support the various terrestrial seed organisms. When the conditions are right, the proper genetic set is triggered and the dinosaurs (or whatever) are spontaneously produced as offspring from the current generation of vertebrates…It’s a kind of genetic sabotage of the reproductive process, like an evolutionary cuckoo phenomenon. (Thus answering the question, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”
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No problem and do keep it up
Though I like the concept, I can’t help think what would happen if some of those Van Neumann probes went haywire. Maybe some kind of supervision-in-presence would be necessary to prevent and correct errors. Maybe an interesting conflict can arise from that.
As my Microbiology teacher said there are no free lunches, even for microbes.
If the experimenting civilization used that method it would encounter a number of problems.
First the “gene libraries” would be such an enormous resource sink as far maintaining and duplicating them is concerned that the terraforming process would be excruciatingly slow compared to that promoted by more genetically streamlined microbes. For that reason, and even if the gene library had a hok/sok system to prevent the jettisoning of that cumbersome genetic material from being advantageous, it would only take that failsafe mutating into inoperancy for the new sleek microbes to take over like that *snap of fingers*
Also what safeguards does one have that mutation doesn’t affect the gene library itself compromising the results of the experiment? I’d rather have robotic probes store that information than microbes.
Uh... I hope I didn't come on too strong with that
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How about a fairly stripped-down gene library to begin with, periodically supplemented by synthetic viruses carrying the necessary upgrades? The orbiting probes could disseminate these viruses at the appropriate times, giving the appearance of punctuated equilibrium. The robot proves would then actually maintain the gene bank in the form of data, only encoding it physically (virally) when the upgrades are required.
I don't know, I understand where you're coming from on the potential for error and instability in the control system, but I guess I'm thinking of something at least as sophisticated as life on Earth, with the same level of redundancies and safeguards. If terrestrial living organisms were that fallible, it seems likely that every living thing on the planet would already be extinct due to fatal transcription error. Or that life never would have had the necessary stability to get started in the first place...Still, a lot can happen in T millions (or billions!) of years, so maybe it really would be that problematic. I'd like to think the system would be sufficiently intelligent and well-regulated that custom viruses could be produced to reinforce the desired traits and eliminate unwanted or unfavorable mutations if necessary, and that the expected mutations and genetic drift could be directed towards an acceptable degree of random variance within the intended scope of the "project" (the desired diversity of forms on the intended types or templates).
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Yep, that's a more interesting, less fallible way to do it. As you say further along it could even be used for the correction of mishaps
I’m sorry but my scientific side took the better of me. There are just too many ways such an experiment can go wrong. Perhaps that’s just what the alien civilization is doing, as they have the time and resources to spare, figuring out the best way to seed a planet with life and keep it seeded. By that token, fatal errors are as much a result as a planet teeming with organisms. Both give invaluable insight into the problems at hand.
So I’m not talking about fatal replication errors: the diversity of life is a result of the ones that weren’t that fatal. I’d be more worried if I was a manager of a planetary replicate coming back after 250’000 years to look at the result and saying things didn’t go exactly as predicted would be a millennial understatement. While being on a tight budget that just can’t happen
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Your comments on the bureaucratic aspects of the project remind me of a story I wrote a long time ago in which a galactic supercilivization "discovers" Earth and decides to charge humanity for the sunpower consumed over the past 100,000 - 2 million years! : )
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That would be an interesting read 
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You know, it's still around, but unfortunately only in analog format...I have the hardcopy but the original Word file is long gone. : / One of these days I'll have to transcribe it (and of course update it), and when I do, you'll be the first to get a copy!
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Actually there's a quicker way to do it: you scan in the pages and put them through OCR (Programs/Microsoft Office Tools/Microsoft Document Imaging or Scanning). If the printout was of good quality then all you have to do is export the text to Word. Not that I am eager or anything, I'm just sayin'...
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Hey, thanks for the tip! That's interesting, I'll have to give it a shot...
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