The Passage of Time

[MithLuin]

Hmmmm....let's see if I can piece this together well.

Here's a visual overview of the time of history we're looking at:

The idea is to show the beginnings of plant life on land (so start with the Devonian), and then quickly move into more interesting time periods with trees and such. I'm toying with the idea of the Time of the Lamps just being the Mesozoic Era (Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous), thus making their destruction a rather catastrophic extinction event. We could even play around with meteoric impact crater fallout issues, if we wanted to.

Still working out what to do with the time leading up to the War, and where in pre-history I want to cut this off. I want the elves to arise at a time period that seems 'natural' for them - so, not while there are dinosaurs around. It doesn't have to coincide precisely with the introduction of hominids, but, well...there should be some precursors in place so the elves fit into this world.

 

[MithLuin]

Sample Critters - these can inhabit Arda *before* the foundation of Almaren!

From the Devonian, we have TikTaalik, is it a fish or is it an amphibian? Neither!

And Pederpes, which had true legs and could crawl on land more effectively (an early tetrapod):

More interesting stuff is going on in the sea during this time. It was the age of armored fish, such as this guy:

And tree ferns (from the Carboniferous, so maybe correlating to the end of Episode 2) look like this:

Also, lycopods:

(As you can see, they've survived to modern times.)

I'll look into the bugs later. I think we have flightless insects in the Devonian, but at some point we have giant bugs.

 

[Haakon]

Alternately, we could consider a massive volcanic eruption as part of our War:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oruanui_eruption

I suppose it's not too important to answer the question 'How long ago was the Third Age?' but we should probably pick a sufficiently distant time period to avoid overlapping with recorded history. The Younger Drayas was only 12,000 years ago, and with the 3rd Age being 3,000 year and the 2nd being over 2,000....well, we're cutting it close, is all.

Also, after the fall of the Lamps, things could progress at different rates in Valinor and Middle Earth - so having some more 'prehistoric' stuff running around in Middle Earth after the Valar move into more 'modern' times is a possibility - maybe a contrast we'd want to introduce. [Light of the Trees = magic, so....anything goes ]

Yes. We could let life in Valinor evolve faster. (That would mean that the Valar could have horses as early as we want, basically) And then, after the War, Middle-earth could catch up.

 

[Haakon]

Hey you've been busy!

 

[Haakon]

Here are some megafauna animals from Pleistocene:

I think we can agree that we shouldn't use all of these. For example, I don't want to see apes in this series. Let's just assume there can be apes, but off screen. The sabre tooth cat is perhaps also something we might want to avoid. Among the others, I think we can use almost all: the rhinoceroses and the great elk, and also the mammoth, the one that looks almost like an elephant, the giant sloth (?), the wolf-like animal, the glyptodon and the emu (?). Some of them might survive into elven times, such as the elk and the "wolf", but the glyptodon will probably perish in or after the War, as well as the sloth, the"elephant" and the emu. And the rhinoceroses.

 

[MithLuin]

For the late Cretaceous (Episode 6), we will have our Lamp-lit forests of Dawn Redwoods:
[I even found a possible shooting location for these! http://dawnredwood.org/ABOUT.htm ]

And the first flowering plants, which might resemble the surviving Amborella:
(since money is no object, we can send our design team to New Caledonia to study them in the wild )

Brief evolutionary history of plants to this time available here:
https://www.paleodirect.com/plant-fossils/

And while the pterosaurs will be destroyed when the Lamps fall, we do get some of the first birds now (coloration chosen by artist):
Confuciusornis:

and the smaller Iberomesornis:

(Yes, yes, and T-rexes and anklosaurs, if we want them )

Wasps first appeared during the Jurassic, and bees in the Cretaceous, so they are both available in Episode 6. Bees, of course, are wonderful, so we can serve honey-wine at Tulkas and Nessa's wedding [Personally, I consider wasps to be the most evil-looking creatures ever; a wasp resting on a vine of poison ivy demonstrates all that is wrong with the world. Parasitic wasps are, of course, the most horrifying.]

 

[MithLuin]

I am agreed on avoiding apes, and focusing on creatures that we know will appear - oliphants, wolves, elk, etc.

It also occurs to me that the arrival of Melkor in Episode 4 can coincide with some of the glaciation of the Carboniferous Period. There were fluctuating sea levels during that time, which fits our plot. Which means that the creature Melkor and Yavanna work together to 'adapt' to this environment could be....

Dimetrodon

This is *not* a dinosaur, but a synapsid (mammal-like reptile) from the early Permian. Now, the fin on its back *might* have had something to do with regulating body temperature, but it is thought to more likely be a product of sexual selection. So, while I am fine with having them experiment with interesting adaptations to survive in colder climates, this might not be the best example to use.

While the critter above is clearly a carnivore, there is a similar herbivore from the same time: Edaphosaurus

Ophiacodon *does* have adaptations that make it partially warm-blooded, but it doesn't look nearly as cool, alas:

I'm not sure we want any of these for the 'Behold the walrus!' scene, but I figured I should start looking, at least....
This is also the time when the largest insect of all time lived - a giant dragonfly named Meganeuropsis. How big was it? This size:

And I realize this might seem a bit innocent to have any influence from Melkor involved, but.....

(Yes, this is the time period for giant 3-ft scorpions [Pulmonoscorpius], as well.) The first true spiders emerge at this time, but we'll save those for Ungoliant's lair in Episode 5, I imagine! And they're normal-sized, no larger than modern spiders.

 

[MithLuin]

While this concept of relating ages of prehistoric history to times in Season one was not explicitly brought up or discussed in the podcast, the idea of having 'ancient' forests in Arda in season one was well-received, as was the idea of fern-trees and some of Melkor's beasts being dinosaurs. So, I will take it that this idea is acceptable until I hear otherwise!

 

[Haakon]

Good! We go ahead!