The Evidence:- All players spawn with "specimen implants" in their inventory (and visible on their left wrist). The appearance suggests that these are of extra-terrestrial origin.
- The very fact that extinct animals from across time are all living in the same land (and oceans). A few modern day animals like humans (obviously), dung beetles, and electric eels amongst them suggests that in the ARK universe, Holocene animals have gone extinct too.
- Many of the dinosaurs in the game are implied to have evolved from their more famous prehistoric ancestors, often with bizarre (or inaccurate, if you will) traits like the Oviraptor's sexual pheromones and the Arthropleura's corrosive blood.
-Hybrids like the Triceratops styrax, which is stated to be a hybrid of Triceratops and Styracosaurus. There's also the game's spiders - known as "Araneomorphus amalgotantibus". While I'm not the best Latin/Greek reader, it means something akin to "amalgamation of spider types". A combination of several spider species, perhaps?
- Plant Species X. It bears no resemblance to any plant living or extinct, making it hard to pin down its exact nature. Not to mention its scientific name is a combination of two real kinds of plant genus. Gene splicing appears to be the culprit.
- Those massive obelisks and mysterious supply drops. Definitely extra-terrestrial in origin.
- The bosses like the Dragon, the Broodmother, and the Megapithecus. Massive one-of-a-kind animals that have no prehistoric ancestor. Not to mention the Broodmother is implied to have created the island's caverns and mothered the giant spider population. Perhaps alien science is at work here.
- The island's size. The place must be very vast to support so many species of massive animals. An island that big would have been found by explorers centuries ago. Not to mention the many sea monsters probably would have been sighted easily. So maybe it's not located on Earth.
- The ecosystem is not very balanced with numerous large carnivores and herbivores that fill similar niches. A real-life ARK would collapse quickly from the intense competition. It would appear that whoever made the island was going for awesome rather than realistic.
- The Big Creepy-Crawlies. Even the real versions of the giant insects were nowhere near as big. Take for example Titanomyrma. the real animal is as big as a hummingbird while the in-game ones are the size of Chihuahuas. It's implied that a queen exists too and she's hinted to be impossibly vast (like the Broodmother). Impossibly high levels oxygen is the obvious culprit, but earth has never reached levels to produce such monsters. Alien atmosphere?
- Or genetic modifications to the arthropods themselves (i.e. a more efficient respiratory/circulatory system)!
- The biomes. How else would a freezing tundra be located next to a steaming jungle?
- The water. You are able to drink any and all water within the ARK, including water from the ocean which you'd expect would be salt water like most oceans today. Also, take into account different species of water-based animals from different eons of history would potentially have different tolerances for salt content and you have the potential for all organisms to have been modified to survive in fresh water so drinking is never a problem.
- Sort of Jossed, the ending of Extinction reveals that the AR Ks were a human Fantastic Nature Reserve instead, being created to preserve life from the Element corrupted Earth, and once the corruption got weak enough, return to destroy what Element was left and spread the preserved life across the planet.
As of the end of ARK
the ARK constructs have returned home, restarting Earth's biome. That means brutal creatures and superhuman heroes are a common sight. Perhaps the ending of ARK results in a huge war, becoming the enigmatic dragon war of Monster Hunter's past. By the time of Monster Hunter, thousands of years later, high technology has died out and the biome has had time to settle and evolve, becoming the one we see in Monster Hunter. The Pteranodon in the game are not actually Pteranodon.
They are misidentified
Caulkicephalus. This is evidenced by the dossier using a
Caulkicephalus skull as opposed to an actual
Pteranodon skull, not to mention the fact
Pteranodon do not have teeth. Also, whoever wrote the dossier calls the pterosaur a dinosaur suggesting he or she
may not be familiar with pterosaur research.
- The Unreliable Narrator idea of the dossier writer makes sense given the in-game Brontosaurus is very likely actually an Argentinosaurus.
The non-human animals respawn, too
The Allosaurus in the game are not actually Allosaurus.
Similar to the above mentioned
Pteranodon case, the thing called an
Allosaurus in-game is actually a different genus. It's larger brow crests, body size, and longer jaws actually closer resemble the related genus,
Saurophaganax.
Saurophaganax as a genus has long been debated as to if it's one and the same as
Allosaurus for years, it only recently has support for it as a distinct genus been greater than the argument it's not. And given the in-game islanders and the dossier writer's preference for more common names, it makes sense they'd use
Allosaurus instead of the more obscure
Saurophaganax.
The Yutyrannus' feathers will be expressive
There seems to have been a bit of an uproar over the official revelation of what the
Yutyrannus model looks like, being extremely fluffy to the point that it's been compared to a Pomeranian, in contrast to the sleeker appearance in the dossier. However, the model as shown is clearly in a static position, so maybe the
Yutyrannus actually
does have its sleeker dossier appearance for the most part, but the feathers are movable features of its body that shift position depending on its mood.
I can't be the only person to think this. Both are islands lost to time and people from across the world somehow end up there with no way to escape. Both islands have a population of dinosaurs that have evolved, one became smarter and peaceful, while the other became bigger, fiercer and more violent. The dinosaurs and humans work together in both universes but for wildly different reasons, Dinotopia dinos do so out of their own volition but in ARK they do so only after being overpowered or coerced. The citizens of Dinotopia are notably pacifists while those of the ARK often employ the 'munch first, ask questions later' way of thinking. The Obelisks call to mind Dinotopia's Sunstone Beacons, perhaps indicating that the Obelisks run off of of Sunstones or something similar.
- Major ARK spoilers: Dinotopia could be one of the many, many ARK stations in orbit around Earth. Like in Dinotopia, the humans of ARK have memories from many different time periods (though they're clones of the original, in reality).
The Implants are what actually allow us to control our tames.
It's likely that every creature on the Ark has something similar to the Implants, though perhaps not as sophisticated as the ones humans have. If so, rather then the taming process being something that simply "convinces" or "pacifies" whatever big nasty you are taming it instead slowly syncs their implant to yours, effectively giving you some control of their brain. This would explain why we can tame things like giant bugs who would be far too stupid to actually pacify in such a manner and why larger creatures need to be put through a longer taming process. The creatures mood affects how quickly the sync happens which would explain why higher quality food speeds up the tame: a content creature resists the sync less then a upset one.
They are clearly a species of non-mammalian vertebrate, the queens have fins on their necks, start life in a larval stage before metamorphing and their parasitic reproductive method developed due to the fact amphibian eggs need to be laid in water but the places they lived in had extremely radioactive lakes and rivers.
Most mutated Ferox during taming aren't actually intentionally aggressive
In fact, they get super happy when they're given Element to eat, and are just very excited to show the player what they can do when they're big, strong and energetic. However, the transformation also clouds their mind somewhat, so they don't realize that they're hurting the player and other things around them until they are fully tamed. On the other hand, the occasional Ferox that transforms simply by walking up to a player is one that's gotten too addicted to Element and simply can't control itself, trying to kill the player in hopes that they have Element to satisfy their addiction (regardless of whether they actually have it or not).
The anime
WILL make a
Doctor Who reference. Maybe many.
David Tennant, an older Doctor, is going to be in it, which in itself isn't a big deal, until you actually put together the lore.
Ark takes place after an apocalypse has devastated Earth. You're in a Fantastic Nature Reserve created by humans when technology contaminated the Earth with element, which began to spread and corrupt living creatures. That sounds like a Doctor Who episode to me, and the creators will probably realize this, and make plenty of jokes about it. If not... well...
Rockwell was driven off of Earth
It's not explicitly stated how Rockwell got on the Genesis ship but it's implied he used the same connection Arat Prime has with with the ship that HNL-A used. The reason is because when he was forced to flee the Earth after he attempted to take over when his ark crash landed. His mutated form in Aberration was able to be defeated by a small tribe of survivors so it's doubtful that he'd do any better against multiple arks worth of survivors, not to mention the functioning arks purging the element from the Earth would weaken him further which is why his face on his Rockwell Prime form looks somewhat less monstrous and his starting central body is smaller than his Aberration boss form before he started to spread over the ship. It's also the reason why he's so quick to proclaim his godhood in Genesis part 2 as he's still bitter about being beaten and forced to run.
It's a multi-purpose metal, gold in color while presumably not being gold itself, (then it would be too malleable to be of much use for everything that it's used to make) and at least on The Island is most abundant in the high mountains, "orichalcum" as a word meaning "mountain copper."
