A mock-up for if it were a book.
Spec World, or the Speculative Dinosaur Project, is a massive, massive world-building work in progress. It's basically an attempt to imagine how the world would be if the K/Pg Extinction Event hadn't happened 65 million years ago as seen from the perspective of dimension-hopping explorers and scientists from our world ("Home-Earth").
The best thing you can do is just start reading
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The project has stalled out since 2008 (mostly due to unexpected discoveries in paleontology that made many of the concepts outdated) and there are many lost illustrations and broken links. But the imagination, wonderful creature designs, good biology (for the time, anyway) and offbeat humor more than make up for it.
The project isn't entirely dead, as DA pictures from the staff like this suggest that, once the main site is updated, things will get very interesting... (A summary including some of the new ideas can be found here.)
Tropes Used:
- Alternate History: More like alternate prehistory, but the principle is the same. Specworld is what the Earth might have been like if the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs never hit.
- Alternate-History Dinosaur Survival: The entire premise is a in-depth look at how dinosaurs and other organisms (but mostly dinosaurs) might have evolved had the K-Pg extinction event not occurred. In this case, a Framing Device of a parallel universe is used showing human scientists exploring the alternate Earth.
- Aquatic Sauropods: The mokeles are a group of semi-aquatic titanosaurs, which are the most speciose group of living sauropods due to their ability to swim across the ocean and colonize remote islands. The project of course does its research, the mokeles are descended from terrestrial animals and are now extremely derived to suit their swimming habits, such as nostrils placed on top of their head, a duckbill-like mouth, comparatively dense bones to keep from bobbing at the surface, and thick armour to protect them from crocodilians.
- Armless Biped: The terror-bird-like gobblers have only a few tiny bones remaining of their wings.
- Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": Species are named after Earth animals, fictional Earth animals, fictional characters... Justified, as scientists from our world are doing the naming.
- Dead Fic: Updates stalled out around 2008 as scientific knowledge of dinosaurs continuously made a lot of content outdated. An archive of the project is currently maintained on the Speculative Biology Wiki.
- Death World: Many of Spec's lifeforms are overly dangerous (ex. there's a species of raptor that likes cutting people's heads off for no reason and penguin-piranhas that are so aggressive they'll even attack the moon) and a lot of animals and plants that want to either kill you or ruin your day.
- There's a type of venomous tree!
- Excuse Plot: The bit about scientists crossing from Home-Earth to Specworld. How they did it isn't important, just that they got there.
- Expy: Some animals are analogues of Real Life modern ones.
- Semi-justified that similar niches would probably be held by animals similar in appearance (i.e. the ciraf is an African high-browser like the giraffe - but the coloration is very unoriginal and it has a close relative that is very similar to the okapi).
- Feathered Fiend: Any of the predatory or aggressive coelurosaurs, particularly the penguins of death!!!, the cityfinches and the nerds-of-paradise (also known as the chunderbird).
- Giant Squid: The Baleen Squids, which fill the niche of baleen whales in Spec's oceans. They actually aren't squid at all, but descendants of Mesozoic creatures called belemnites.
- In Spite of a Nail: In the Spec Earth, there are numerous taxa which would not have existed during the Late Cretaceous, but still evolved during the Cenozoic and survived to the present day down familiar lines in spite of the massive difference in global ecology, designated as parallel species (or just P-, for short). This may vary from order level (primates, several bird groups) all the way down to parallel species (such as P-Crocodylus niloticus, the Nile crocodile).
- Left Hanging: There are still several incomplete pages, incomplete descriptions and illustrations, and dead links that haven't been fixed.
- Maniac Monkeys: Primates on Specworld evolved from lemur-like stock into small cat- or fox-like predators.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: Many creatures resemble these. Scowls, basically owls with raptor faces, are among the
cuter examples. Other notable examples include the puffindingo (a small grassland theropod with puffin-colored faces) and the Moby Duck (a whale-sized platypus relative), as well as many of the other spec monotremes, which are essentially platypuses crossed with beavers, weasels, badgers, skunks and other small-to-medium sized mammals. - The Mockbuster: Not of the site itself, but still worth mentioning. In 2017, a Thai mockbuster of Dinosaur King was released called "Dinosaur Duel Master", which used the K'z'k Tuskhorn as one of the dinosaurs, apparently under the impression it was a real animal.
- Mokele-Mbembe: The mokeles are a clade of sauropods adapted to an aquatic lifestyle. Their adaptations to this lifestyle have also led to them becoming very physically distinct from their terrestrial kind, and as a result are very crocodile-like in appearance.
- Name of Cain: A noasaurid, and fastest predator of Madagascar. It kills and eviscerates its prey entirely with its hands. On an unrelated note it has a symbiotic relationship with a spider that protects it from parasites.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Lots, examples include the imperial sabre-tyrant, the white ninja, the horned molok, the giant psycho-killer penguin of DEATH!!!, the king kronoshark, and the cockatrice. Among plants there's the Tree of Pain (ironically, animals don't actually feel pain when stung by this tree, they die before that).
- Never Smile at a Crocodile: Crocodilians are the top predators of Madagascar and parallel species grow on average larger than on our world, while there are quite a few other types such as...
- The cuttercrocs; basically identical to "normal" crocodilans except that they have slicing teeth that leave much bloodier wounds.
- The crunchercrocs: hyenas if they were crocodilans, the carcass of a full-grown titanosaur will not exist after 3 days when a group of crunchcrocs find it.
- The croctiger and the croclion, huge, saber-toothed top predators of Madagascar.
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot and Rule of Cool: The Spec ecosystem seems to run on these tropes. The thing is, it's still believable.
- Our Cryptids Are More Mysterious: Because Spec is an alternate timeline where dinosaurs still exist, it has to designate its "cryptids" differently. "Cryptids" in Spec are alleged, undiscovered species of dinosaurs and other creatures whose only reports are eyewitness accounts and unconfirmed sightings, and their existence is usually the topic of much discussion. Fittingly enough, most of them are expies of several alleged cryptids from our world.
- Raptor Attack: Averted. While raptors are abundant, they are all correctly depicted with feathers, and most (though not all) of them are not pack hunters. The Cain, Madagascar's top predator, does look the part of a Hollywood-style scaly "raptor", but it is a noasaur rather than a dromaeosaur. Many of the illustrations are rather outdated though: they aren't nearly feathered enough.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: Specworld is not without these despite being a Death World. For example, the marsupial known as the sugar cat◊ is every bit as cute as its name implies.
- Shout-Out: There are many pop culture references intermingled in the creature names and descriptions:
- Most obviously, to Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (there's a bird literally called the Alfred's hitchcock).
- There are a group of mammals called pokemuses, native to Spec-Japan. Two species are called the pikachilla and the raichilla.
- Also, a giant whale-like platypus relative, called the Moby Duck.
- One species of caripoo is known as the Annelk, noted for its frequent and obnoxiously loud coughing noises.
- There's a group of baleen squids known as cthulumorphs, with one semi-cryptid deep sea species known as the great ktulu, a smaller related species called the ktulu spawn, and a mosasaur predator that hunts them called the Nodens.
- Speculative Biology: A whole site dedicated to what the world would look like if the Cretaceous extinction never occurred.
- Speculative Documentary: Err, website.
- Take That!:
- Not on the main website, but in the spinoff The Saga of the Caripoo, Brian Choo mentions that he'd "rather watch Highlander II than meet another caripoo."
- This is also the reason why you won't find anything even remotely similar to a sapient creature on Spec; it's a silent protest against the idea of Dinosauroids (to the point where the group of dinosaurs to whom Dale Russel's absurdly humanlike Dinosauroid belonged is almost extinct!)
- The Orang-B'narni. Enough said.
- Temper-Ceratops: The K'z'k Tuskhorn is an incredibly vicious ceratopsian from South America, said to be responsible for more human deaths than all of the continent's predators.
- Threatening Shark: The king kronoshark.
- Toilet Humor: A fair bit, most of it courtesy of contributor Brian Choo, such as the self-explanatory rectal probe bird and the dino faeces-eating caripoo.
- Toothy Bird: Certainly, as several varieties of toothed birds have survived on Spec.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: The Nerd-of-Paradise is a bird that uses its own vomit to subdue prey and fend off predators. It cannot be poisoned because it vomits out any toxins in its body.
- Zerg Rush: Cityfinches do this. One account notes how an injured molok (a species of abelisaur) accidentally fell on one of their nests and after an hour its mutilated carcass was found to be stuffed with dead cityfinches through every orifice.
