whakau/creatures

One folder per organism. Contents as follows:

• About.md: Should begin with a machine-readable header with the following information where available and applicable:
  • Time of first appearance (million years since beginning of model).
  • If extinct then time of extinction.
  • Location of initial appearance (once map exists)
  • Immediate ancestor
  • Immediate descendants (I will probably write a program to populate this)
• Model.pov: A 3D model of the organism.

While Latin and Greek form the primary basis for scientific naming in terrestrial biology and most of its fictional counterparts: early brainstorming for this project yielded organisms so divergent from what most of us think of as familiar that I felt a different linguisic basis for their nomenclature only seemed appropriate. In light of this I will be primarily drawing names from Te Reo Māori and Insular North Frisian.

Notes on Speciation, Extinction, etc

In general, each creature listed here will be distinct from its ancestors in some significant way. This would imply that creatures with no significant differences are ignored, but in fact I will be treating them as members of the ancestral group and more derived ones as new types. This is a minor strike against the accuracy of this project but I believe an indispensible one.