The early Expansocene: 50 million years post-establishment

Now, 50 million years after the establishment of Chiroptosphere, the planet is very different from when it began. The supercontinent has entirely split into two smaller ones, meaning new species that evolve are now isolated to a single continent. The once-rich rainforests and savannahs have shrunk to a fraction of their original size, and hot desert dominates the tropical cell. The most significant change is that there is much more land in the colder areas of the planet, so now, temperate and taiga regions dominate the land, and tundras and ice caps are present as well. The animals will have to adapt to these new conditions, especially on the southern continent, where the ice caps slowly creep equatorward.

Digging gorats

The gorats are a clade of digging animals native to the northern continent. They evolved from a herbivorous line of chirats that sought refuge underground from predators. The two groups in the clade, the gonnets and the gommots, share some common traits, including a shovel-like head they use to dig, a short tail that no longer drops off when pounced on by predators, and wrinkles and grooves in their face that they use to direct sound waves toward their tiny ears. The echolocation abilities they inherited from their bat ancestors are very useful in the tunnels they call home.

The gonnets are gorats that still have some connection to the surface. They eat grass on the surface, and they use their tunnels simply as a hiding place from predators. Some northern species will store seeds and nuts in their burrows to avoid starvation during the winter. Though their limbs are small, they are still very functional, since they still need to run toward their burrows at the sign of a predator.

The gommots are gorats that have forsaken their surface life entirely. Because of the constant temperature underground, they have become mesothermic and lost their fur. They are eusocial, with one fertile queen, fertile breeding partners, and many infertile workers. These classes do not differ with each other in any other significant way, except that the queen is slightly bigger. They build complex tunnels, digging to try and find roots and other underground pieces of plants. When they find one, they will gnaw off pieces and bring them back to a large area near the home of the colony where they will plant them near the surface. The plant will then start to grow, and in time it will produce an entire network of roots for the colony to feed on and continue farming. They spend most of their time finding and killing underground invertebrates to fertilise the plant with. In the early days of a colony, before their farm is grown enough for them to eat, they often search instead for tubers.

The brachiozinos

The chirozinos, bipedal forest herbivores, have taken to the trees! Millions of years ago, a group of small chirozinos used their dexterous arms and hands to escape predators in the treetops. While they weren’t good at running along the branches with all four limbs, like most climbing animals, they were excellent at another form of locomotion that they were already predisposed to through their bipedalism- they would brachiate, swinging arm over arm through the trees. Now, the brachiozinos love their whole lives comfortably in the lush branches of the rainforest trees. They eat a varied diet of fruit, nuts, leaves, and sometimes honey. Their prior adaptation for their young, which is less developed than other animals’, to hold onto their chest for their first few months of life, benefits them greatly in the treetops.

Animals of the southern tundra

One crucial part in the development of life in the tundra has been that dromeolocators have for once been outcompeted there. See, they need large ears to use their echolocation abilities, but it is not advantageous to have such huge ears in a place where every unnecessary bit of exposed surface area makes the animal more likely to freeze to death. The dromeolocators therefore were not as equipped to deal with the cold as well as animals that quickly evolved to take their place in the freezing tundra. As a result of the lack of echolocating predators, animals in the tundra can finally afford to group together in packs or herds.

The tundra gazirolope is a genus of gazirolope well-suited for life in the tundra. They are large, shaggy, and sport two layers of thick fur. Their hollow horn has become very large, a good store of warm air, but moreso a very good method of communication. Their foghorn-like bellows echo through the snowstorms, making sure that nobody in the herd has gotten lost. Standing as tall as elephants, they are some of the largest animals in Chiroptosphere’s history, which has forced their predators to get creative.

The tundra rockodont is the apex predator of the harsh, expansive southern tundra. At only the size of a tiger, they do not have the strength or size of their prey, so they have to hunt their prey by means other than strength. Luckily, the absence of dromeolocators has allowed them to become the first social predators in Chiroptosphere’s history. A group of 5-10 tundra rockodonts will surprise a herd of tundra gazirolopes, usually during a snowstorm, and quickly identify the young members of the herd. They will harass the herd, throwing stones with their dexterous trunk, gradually herding a young gazirolope out of the herd where they can safely dispatch it with their powerful fangs. They have to be very careful at this task, as one well-placed stomp from an adult gazirolope can easily kill them, but their dazzling patterns make it harder for the gazirolopes to pick out a target. However, despite the danger, a single tundra gazirolope can keep a herd well-fed for several weeks.

It was perhaps a group of tundra rockodonts that wandered further southward that would evolve into the only land clade of animals on chiroptosphere that inhabits the almost inhospitable polar ice caps. The polar rockodont, unlike its cousins, eat fish. If they can’t find a hole in the ice, they use their large horn to slowly dig one, before using the hole as a fishing-spot. They often dangle remains of previous catches in the water as bait, before scooping up a fish with their trunk and goring it on their sharp horn to kill it. If they are well fed, they will often keep many fish stored on their horn for emergencies.

The next step: the mid-Expansocene