User blog:Mr.Robbo/New Civilization

All of the civilizations that I have created so far on this wiki have been high-tech, multi-species civilizations, so I think it's about time I designed a low-tech, single species civilization. I'm still in the planning stage at the moment, but plan to have it on the wiki by Guy Fawkes Night.

I'll be using this blog post to display photographs of the planning sketches I make, any advice would be welcome. Also, I have no scanner, and draw very lightly (in pencil; I despise pens), so I apologise for the poor quality of the images, and do not expect you to be able to read the notes.

Points
I plan for the home planet to orbit a red dwarf star. It will be tidally locked with about twice the gravity and three times the atmospheric pressure of Earth. Due to rainstorms thrown out by a permanent 'subsolar hurricane', the majority of the most diverse regions will consist of swamps and large river deltas.

Draft Ideas
My original plan actually started out as a heron-like creature, hunting fish. I gave it an extra pair of legs and a more horizontal body posture to spread out the weight distribution under the higher gravity. I also decided that most large-scale life on this planet will have evolved from parallels of the jawless fish found in the early oceans of Earth. In the end, the creature looks more like a horse than a heron, though it is still only about 1.4 metres in length.

Note that there are 10 limbs in total; 4 legs, 2 arms, 2 wings, 2 vestigal wings.

I'm guessing that the creature would have a weight of about 63kg. Presuming that it has a similar wing structure to a pterosaur, a wingspan of 535cm would be required (I did the maths after the sketches).

Interestingly, flight could be easier on high-gravity planets, if the high gravity also results in a higher atmospheric pressure, because the wings can act against a denser medium than on Earth, counteracting the effects of the higher gravity.