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Description

Somewhere along the fringe of the Unbroken Ocean, 280 million years hence. Although this is by far the largest single habitat in the world, stretching for tens of millions of square miles, life here is sparse. Much of the region is nutritionally deficient, leaving it a biotic wasteland; what few animals live here spend their lives constantly on the move, their thin populations spread over thousands of miles as they cross the globe again and again in the search for scattered food sources that appear and disappear as the currents shift and churn. In the vast deep blue, even the largest megafauna are lost in the watery void, so it would be here where the largest animals of the Late Ultimocene call home.

A shoal of large escardines darts through the sunlit surface waters. Reaching up to nine feet long and nearly three-hundred pounds, these, known as ikazuna, are some of the largest of the group. They are fast, pelagic hunters of baitfish and smaller escardine shoals, hunting in coordinated schools with lightning-quick reflexes and spike-like ejectable mandibles. However, there are far, far larger beasts beneath the sea; as the ikazuna reach the continental shelf that roughly divides the shallower depths of the Equinoctial Sea with the vast blue of the Unbroken Ocean, murky shapes gradually emerge from the distance. The crescent shape of immense wings propelling bodies of streamlined flesh the scale of which has no equal in this day and age. These are the largest animals to evolve since the near-extinction of the dolfinches some ten million years ago, but these are much more closely related to the far smaller and fish-like ikazuna than any bird. These are, like them, marine snarks, although they evolved from the devilfish-like shimmershiners rather than the long-tailed ancestors of the escardines.

Many shimmershiners have grown to truly massive proportions in the hothouse seas; with no real competition for their role as oceanic filter-feeders, they rapidly ballooned to scales matched only by some of the largest marine vertebrates of times long past and far surpassed the largest snarks of ancient times. This species, the celestial shimmershiner, is the largest of them; the very biggest can exceed seventeen metres in wingspan and tip the scales at up to twenty-nine metric tonnes. To fuel such massive bodies, the shimmershiners spend their lives endlessly on the move; adults can travel thousands of kilometres each year following the seasonal and periodic blooms of plankton along the Equinoctial Sea, having to move across the globe to continuously keep up with their nutritional demands. Their lifestyle has changed relatively little in millions of years, and they still rely upon sieving mandibular radula to extract minute food items from the water column. At this scale, this can include shoals of baitfish and small escardines as well, swallowed up all at once in an expanding maw that can stretch over five metres across.

Smaller shimmershiners often dwell in dense schools of several dozen, but social groupings of such size are impossible to sustain at a scale of the celestial shimmershiner. Adults live only in pair bonds, although adolescent animals may live in creches or nestle themselves within the school of a smaller shimmershiner species. Despite their strange appearance, shimmershiners are highly intelligent and their social needs are just as important for survival as dietary ones; pairs may live together for nearly a century and often when one perishes, the other will stop eating, physically deteriorate from stress, and follow within several weeks (either from starvation or predation). This has as much do with practicality as with despair; shimmershiners prefer to pair bond with individuals of similar age, while young, the population density of the species is naturally very low, and a shimmershiner without a partner is extremely vulnerable to predators, so the likelihood of finding a compatible unpaired shimmershiner before dying is extremely low. The increase in size over millions of years was largely induced by pressures of predation, but even at this size there are predators capable of hunting them, and they struggle to get much larger before mortality from starvation and malnutrition stunts the population; there simply is not enough food to support marine filter-feeders larger than this. Living in pairs granted them the ability to protect one another without straining their food supplies by association in great numbers.

The species only breeds once every three or four years, building up their fat reserves to provide for their offspring. Pairs will initiate copulation through a graceful courtship dance, a ritual rarely witnessed by any other living thing due to it only happening in the most remote depths. Females generally release between two and ten offspring at once, which are already nearly four metres in wingspan at birth. Postnatal care is deferred primarily to the male, as most of the female’s energy is used up to produce the offspring, and the father feeds the offspring on the nutritious secretions within his oral secretions, forgoing eating for several days. The young may double in weight within the week, and become independent within a month as their bristle-like radula grow in. Young live in the shallower, more nutrient-rich waters of the Equinoctial Sea, where they can grow more quickly, and they are not as obstructed in their movements through the shallower, more vegetated waters. Adults may breed seldom, and can take over twenty years to reach sexual maturity, but can remain fertile for well over a century. However, ultimately, the majesty of the gargantuan celestial shimmershiners is drawing to a close, and their species is gradually dwindling.

In the history of all life, countless species arise and disappear even without any manner of mass extinction event. In the case of the celestial shimmershiners, they evolved rapidly to refill the niche of enormous filter-feeder which had recently been vacated, and in the early hothouse era, enjoyed a tranquil existence with few competitors or predators, but other marine organisms have since diversified and caught up. The celestial shimmershiners only recourse was to grow ever larger to outsize competition and predators, but this road has led to a dead end, with the caveat that it breeds seldom and is never numerous, and yet its predators still grow larger and remain capable of hunting them. In the oceans of the future, shimmershiners will still soar beneath the waves in great numbers, but it will be those which have adapted through other mechanisms beyond sheer size, strange new species which must evolve different forms for survival in the strange new times of the late hothouse, but the dance of the magnificent celestials is destined to fade from memory.

Description

Somewhere along the fringe of the Unbroken Ocean, 280 million years hence. Although this is by far the largest single habitat in the world, stretching for tens of millions of square miles, life here is sparse. Much of the region is nutritionally deficient, leaving it a biotic wasteland; what few animals live here spend their lives constantly on the move, their thin populations spread over thousands of miles as they cross the globe again and again in the search for scattered food sources that appear and disappear as the currents shift and churn. In the vast deep blue, even the largest megafauna are lost in the watery void, so it would be here where the largest animals of the Late Ultimocene call home.

A shoal of large escardines darts through the sunlit surface waters. Reaching up to nine feet long and nearly three-hundred pounds, these, known as ikazuna, are some of the largest of the group. They are fast, pelagic hunters of baitfish and smaller escardine shoals, hunting in coordinated schools with lightning-quick reflexes and spike-like ejectable mandibles. However, there are far, far larger beasts beneath the sea; as the ikazuna reach the continental shelf that roughly divides the shallower depths of the Equinoctial Sea with the vast blue of the Unbroken Ocean, murky shapes gradually emerge from the distance. The crescent shape of immense wings propelling bodies of streamlined flesh the scale of which has no equal in this day and age. These are the largest animals to evolve since the near-extinction of the dolfinches some ten million years ago, but these are much more closely related to the far smaller and fish-like ikazuna than any bird. These are, like them, marine snarks, although they evolved from the devilfish-like shimmershiners rather than the long-tailed ancestors of the escardines.

Many shimmershiners have grown to truly massive proportions in the hothouse seas; with no real competition for their role as oceanic filter-feeders, they rapidly ballooned to scales matched only by some of the largest marine vertebrates of times long past and far surpassed the largest snarks of ancient times. This species, the celestial shimmershiner, is the largest of them; the very biggest can exceed seventeen metres in wingspan and tip the scales at up to twenty-nine metric tonnes. To fuel such massive bodies, the shimmershiners spend their lives endlessly on the move; adults can travel thousands of kilometres each year following the seasonal and periodic blooms of plankton along the Equinoctial Sea, having to move across the globe to continuously keep up with their nutritional demands. Their lifestyle has changed relatively little in millions of years, and they still rely upon sieving mandibular radula to extract minute food items from the water column. At this scale, this can include shoals of baitfish and small escardines as well, swallowed up all at once in an expanding maw that can stretch over five metres across.

Smaller shimmershiners often dwell in dense schools of several dozen, but social groupings of such size are impossible to sustain at a scale of the celestial shimmershiner. Adults live only in pair bonds, although adolescent animals may live in creches or nestle themselves within the school of a smaller shimmershiner species. Despite their strange appearance, shimmershiners are highly intelligent and their social needs are just as important for survival as dietary ones; pairs may live together for nearly a century and often when one perishes, the other will stop eating, physically deteriorate from stress, and follow within several weeks (either from starvation or predation). This has as much do with practicality as with despair; shimmershiners prefer to pair bond with individuals of similar age, while young, the population density of the species is naturally very low, and a shimmershiner without a partner is extremely vulnerable to predators, so the likelihood of finding a compatible unpaired shimmershiner before dying is extremely low. The increase in size over millions of years was largely induced by pressures of predation, but even at this size there are predators capable of hunting them, and they struggle to get much larger before mortality from starvation and malnutrition stunts the population; there simply is not enough food to support marine filter-feeders larger than this. Living in pairs granted them the ability to protect one another without straining their food supplies by association in great numbers.

The species only breeds once every three or four years, building up their fat reserves to provide for their offspring. Pairs will initiate copulation through a graceful courtship dance, a ritual rarely witnessed by any other living thing due to it only happening in the most remote depths. Females generally release between two and ten offspring at once, which are already nearly four metres in wingspan at birth. Postnatal care is deferred primarily to the male, as most of the female’s energy is used up to produce the offspring, and the father feeds the offspring on the nutritious secretions within his oral secretions, forgoing eating for several days. The young may double in weight within the week, and become independent within a month as their bristle-like radula grow in. Young live in the shallower, more nutrient-rich waters of the Equinoctial Sea, where they can grow more quickly, and they are not as obstructed in their movements through the shallower, more vegetated waters. Adults may breed seldom, and can take over twenty years to reach sexual maturity, but can remain fertile for well over a century. However, ultimately, the majesty of the gargantuan celestial shimmershiners is drawing to a close, and their species is gradually dwindling.

In the history of all life, countless species arise and disappear even without any manner of mass extinction event. In the case of the celestial shimmershiners, they evolved rapidly to refill the niche of enormous filter-feeder which had recently been vacated, and in the early hothouse era, enjoyed a tranquil existence with few competitors or predators, but other marine organisms have since diversified and caught up. The celestial shimmershiners only recourse was to grow ever larger to outsize competition and predators, but this road has led to a dead end, with the caveat that it breeds seldom and is never numerous, and yet its predators still grow larger and remain capable of hunting them. In the oceans of the future, shimmershiners will still soar beneath the waves in great numbers, but it will be those which have adapted through other mechanisms beyond sheer size, strange new species which must evolve different forms for survival in the strange new times of the late hothouse, but the dance of the magnificent celestials is destined to fade from memory.