Exhibition Statement

Introduction

Ever wondered what the world was like 300 million years ago, or a world without humans? That thought probably hasn’t crossed your mind but for a very long time, humans weren’t the dominant species on the planet, in fact we’ve only been here for a sliver of time! My capstone project aims to recreate the landscape and environment of the late Devonian Gogo Reef, from roughly 300 million years ago. It will be done in the format of a museum with several smaller tanks and one large tank for the main reef structures built in Minecraft, and populated with animals coded in by me.

Literature Review

This project uses what we know about the ecology of the time period to create a realistic environment through the use of a Minecraft build where the animals would be able to thrive in a plausible way. There are no inspirations from popular media although I know that the concept of building parks in minecraft is very popular. Many of the animals being showcased in this build are recent discoveries, having zero appearances in any media outside of scholarly papers. However I was mainly inspired by the game Prehistoric Kingdom, which is a park tycoon game revolving around dinosaurs(there will be no dinosaurs in this build however). In researching this project, I read a few papers on the Gogo Formation of Australia, the environment I will be focusing on for this capstone project. These papers describe the environment and ecology of the formation as well as the fauna that inhabited it at the time.

Methods

The methods used for this capstone include Java coding, in order to implement the animals, and blockbench modeling for minecraft. Modeling is done by overlaying fossil material of the animal onto a canvas and tracing in order to get accurate proportions and then adjusting to account for any compression. I also researched the Gogo Formation of Australia and used what I learned to reconstruct the environment in minecraft. The Gogo Reef was a massive Barrier reef environment with the reefs themselves actually made out of Stromatoporoids, a type of sponge, rather than Corals like the Australian Great Barrier Reef is. It supports a massive community of completely endemic animals found nowhere else in the world and the collapse of the Reefs at the end of the Devonian is what caused a mass extinction in all marine environments. The medium for the capstone is Minecraft Java Edition, version 1.12.2

Audience

My project’s intended audience is for anyone who is interested in nature because I want to teach people about how these animals would have looked and behaved as well as help them maybe become more interested in paleontology or just natural history in general. A general understanding of animals and nature is required to understand what is going on (ie: you need to know what a fish is and what their general body plan is like.) The audience should feel awe and intrigue when they see a weird looking fish swimming around and decide maybe they want to learn more about it (a description of key animals will be provided on the trifold). My goal for myself is also to learn more about obscure prehistoric animals that I've never heard of, and also to improve my skills in Java programming as well as modeling in 3D.

References.  

Rust, Jes, et al. “The Hunsrück Biota: A Unique Window into the Ecology of Lower Devonian Arthropods.” Arthropod Structure & Development, Elsevier, 27 Jan. 2016, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1467803916000050 

Long, J. A., et al. “Taxonomic Revision of Buchanosteoid Placoderms (Arthrodira) from the Early Devonian of South-Eastern Australia and Arctic Russia.” CSIRO PUBLISHING, CSIRO PUBLISHING, 26 May 2014, https://www.publish.csiro.au/zo/fulltext/zo13081 

Long, John. (PDF) The Late Devonian Gogo Formation Lagerstatte of Western Australia https://www.researchgate.net/publication/213772849_The_Late_Devonian_Gogo_Formation_Lagerstatte_of_Western_Australia_Exceptional_Early_Vertebrate_Preservation_and_Diversity 

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Acknowledgements:

Harold - faculty advisor

Heather - faculty advisor