Speculative Musings

I think it's about time I did some real updating on my speculative worlds/alternate Earths so people don't think I forgot about them.

Maniraptoran Earth is definitely in the backburner as long as The Speculative Dinosaur Project does not run its course, whatever it may be. Call it conflict of interests: I'd rather keep my commitment to that project, that of being official mapmaker. (Yes, I'll get to it!)

Sauridiotherian World is the personal project to follow for now.
Here's how it's going to be:
- Much like Dougal Dixon or Wayne Barlowe did in their time, this will be a solo op. I will accept critiques, reviews, suggestions and will freely acknowledge them if I ever get published on this. Just in case, I won't mind fanart but I will officially disavow any knowledge of it.
-I will not name any of my creatures after any person. I'm sorry if any of my Internet friends had their heart set on this but I find the habit of naming creatures after people tacky, unhelpful and lacking in creativity. (The reverse is also true: you will rue the day you name one of your creatures after me. If you start having such thoughts, instead show me the creature with a good description and I'll name it for you, and acknowledge my contribution. No, you cannot use my Internet handle either.)
-There will be no exploratory shenanigans in this setting. This is and will remain a thought experiment. What would happen, as S. J. Gould aptly put it, if I wound back the reel of time to the beginning of the Middle Permian and rewrote the story from there? Unheard of until now, in these creative endeavours, I will use the concept of branching timelines to explore more of the variability of evolutionary processes, though I will focus my attention only on important extinction events and important evolutionary adaptations as branching points. The importance of those historical items will be determined subjectively, obviously, but I'll try to build a sufficiently solid façade of objectivity for them.

Planet Helicohelminthes will only be developed after Sauridiotheria World is more or less completed.

*Looks at the text above*

Uh… This recent assertive streak better not get me into trouble…

Anyway...

*drumroll*
*chorus of trumpets*

Presenting:

Sauridiotherian World

This alternate timeline diverges from our own some time around the beginning of the Middle Permian when a combination of biotic pressures selects incipient bipedal locomotion heavily for in the ancestral theriodont population.
Further radiations as each of the faunas characteristic of this time period succeed one after the other develop their bipedal locomotion further. This results that in the begining of the Late Permian we have a few lineages with a fully developed bipedal parassagital gait.   The concomitant mild mass extinction at that time opens up niche space for these animals to diversify further into. So bipedal look-alikes of gorgonopsians, therocephalians, and cynodonts* appear along with other lineages.
The Great Dying, 251 million years ago, comes and goes, proving to be the demise of some lineages and the luck of others. The cynodont-like lineage diversifies further in the Triassic while archosaurs have a muted heyday when compared to Home Earth's   . Late Triassic floral turnovers come and go leaving archosaurs struggling and the cynodont-like lineage takes over from there with a few stragglers from others.
Then we follow this group through its further 250 million years of history, talking along the way of other fauna and the flora.

* _{This is only a shorthand; I'll be very sure to be original as Tiina told me to.}

That's all I've got for now in very broad brushstrokes. What I need now is to read up more on the subjects at hand.

Have you any comments, critiques or references on pertinent biota and climate?
Many thanks in advance.
dracontes