Despite becoming known to the Europeans, the remoteness of the island and the harsh, arid climate made colonization unfeasible until the 17th century, where Jesuit missionaries began to set up shop in the island to Christianize the indigenous peoples. From then on, a permanent European presence was established on the island, to the detriment of the indigenous peoples whose population would crash in the face of western disease and plagues, the survivors ultimately becoming absorbed into the Hispanic population by the 19th century and the last speakers of the indigenous language dying in the early 20th century.
As interest in the natural sciences grew, Isla de Santa Cruz became increasingly recognised for its unique fauna and flora not found anywhere else. The island has been isolated from the North American mainland since the Serrvallian, and is thus home to a variety of species which lack any particularly close relatives on the mainland, and some who represent the last of their clade. However, this long isolation has been a double-edged sword, as many endemic species are poorly-equipped to deal with competition or overhunting, as happened when the first humans arrived on Isla de Santa Cruz.
Although the island was able to escape the initial wave of human-induced extinction due to its isolation, by 10,, years ago an established human population had arrived on the island leading to the extinction of many iconic species found nowhere else by around 7, years ago. Against the odds, many species were able to survive the onslaught of humanity and adapt to their presence, with many exploiting ecological vacuum left by the extinction of once prevalent creatures to develop in unexpected ways.
When European explorers ventured into the xeric shrubland of Santa Cruz Island, they became intruiged by what they found. Traps laid out in the night caught foxes of enormous size and unbridled ferocity. Hunters came back with creatures that looked like deer, but had four horns of unusual placement. What was a hedgehog doing in an island off Mexico? Even familiar animals like rodents and rabbits showed significant difference from the mainland.
This increasing recongition of the uniqueness of Santa Cruz Island, combined with an increasing fear that man-made pressures like hunting, invasive species and ecological degradation, led to much of the remaining wilderness of Santa Cruz Island being designated as nature reserves in order to protect the remnant wildlife during the early 20th century.
Shortly after, archeological sites have been discovered which show a far greater, and more complete assemblage of unique species from the Pleistocene, cementing the uniqueness of Sant Cruz Island's wildlife. Inbetween, the island consists largely of hilly xeric shrubland, home to a variety of species well-adapted to an arid environment. Its name meaning "No one" in latin, the landmass was so desolate and distant from the rest of the world that even the intrepid Polynesians had never set foot there, indeed they had no record of the island in their tales, hence the name.
But "barren" it was not, as behind the crashing waves and perilous cliffs hides a lush world lost to time. The Nemo Archipelago as of the 21st century The Nemo Archipelago lies on its own tectonic plate, the aptly named Nemo Plate, which seperated from the greater Antarctic Plate during the Early Oligocene. Since this seperation, the plate has been moving north at a rapid rate, and now lies on the same latitude as the South Island of New Zealand.
Though it was most likely larger in the past, today the total exposed landmass of the archipelago is only slightly smaller than that of Tasmania. As the Nemo Plate moves north and pushes along the Pacific, it brings up regular volcanic activity along the islands.
This has resulted in the craggy, mountainous landscape of the islands, but also has led to very fertile soils. From the southern shores, the Humboldt Current brings cool, wet winds that sweep across the southern lowlands, resulting in the growth of open woodland and heathland.
Crossing the interior mountains, the northern half of the island, shielded from these icy winds, reveal a starkly different landscape, one of lush, dense temperate rainforest.
Due to this early seperation and a very late human presence, the islands hold a variety of organisms found nowhere else in the world. Many endemic species bear close similarities to animals once found in South America and Antarctica, but have perished as a result of climate change or human activity. Nevertheless, the very small available landmass of the Nemo Archipelago means that the biodiversity of these islands is quite limited. While these islands were amongst the last places outside Antarctica where man set foot, his influence is still felt.
In the years after the arrival of Cook, European settlers founded a small port town on the main island, called Port Endeavour, where they made a living hunting whales for blubber and seals for pelt. Within a few decades, the endemic fur seal population had declined from millions to barely a hundred, and the local government issued limits on the amount of seals bagged a year, and later outlawed the industry altogether. Despite this, poaching remained a problem until the mid-late 20th century.
The harsh, rocky landscape of the interior meant that agriculture was restricted to the southern lowlands, and the northern rainforest and central mountains remain relatively untouched by man. Even if humans did not settle the inland forests, their stowaways have, and rats and cats were easily able to penetrate the islands causing ecological havoc.
Modern efforts have been able to limit the negative effects of these invasives, but they are far from eradicated. In the 21st century, Port Endeavour is still settled, but is a very different place. With the collapse of the sealing and whaling industries, the only major settlement on the island has become a sleepy fishing town home to around permanent residents alongside short term visitors, like tourists and scientists.
The warm oceans of this planet, were barren and lifeless, the land dry and dead. The Archons thought this a shame - why leave such a promising young world to rot without anyone to enjoy it? So they sought to change that, but the starborne Archons had no interest on living on the surface. Instead, they went to the nearest inhabited world - a little blue dot its locals would someday call "Earth", and grabbed a genetic selection of the local plants and animals, taking only a single terrestrial vertebrate - the wild horse, Equus ferus ferus , from the steppes of North America, several insect species, grasses and other small plants, and a panoply of small aquatic organisms, largely freshwater, along with a variety of invertebrates, fungi and microbes required to maintain a stable environment.
With their god-like technology, the world was soon available for the first generation of horses to be grown and released upon the steppes of the world. In the absence of predators, the horses spread rapidly across the planet's single supercontinent - wherever there was grass, there were great herds of horses dashing across the plains.
But without predators, the horse population went out of control. Within a few generations, the local horses had become overcrowded, and the grasslands began to decline in quality.
Mass starvation ensued, leading many to perish, their bodies fertilising the next generation of grasses until once more the horse population had exploded, and the grasses died back again, continuing this cycle of boom and burst. This carried on for thousands of years, but eventually the growth of the grasses and the breeding rate of the horses would stabilise, allowing a more stable ecosystem to form.
Though the boom and burst cycles would continue, they would become less frequent, and eventually decline alltogether over millions of years as descendants of the horse became increasingly divergent from their ancestors.
Though the single supercontinent was beginning to break apart, the biota had not had enough time to diverge much on seperate continents. More noticeably from the surface, endless plains were no longer present by this point.
While vast steppe were still present, where basal horses more akin to their ancestors continued to roam, one clade of plants, the dandelions. While the original dandelions were small, familiar plants, and many similar wildflowers similar to them still exist today, one genus known as Parascalesia has in the absence of competition developed into tall trees. This diverse genus has by now spread far and wide across Epona, with both tropical and decideous forms extant in various parts of the world wherever the humidity is high.
Some have also spread inland, where they form open woodland in drier climates. While many smaller dandelion descendants retain the wind-borne dispersal of their ancestors, many more advanced species of Parascalesia now produce more conventional, fleshy fruit, growing on large clusters attached to a seedhead. However, while there are abundant insects to pollinate flowers, there are no frugivorous birds or squirrels running across the treetops which would be able to disperse their seeds.
So what does? Upon maturity, the seeds of Parascalesia fall onto the forest floor, where they become the favoured food of a little animal - the Woodhorse, Leptohippus.
Though horses originally evolved as forest-dwelling browsers, the decline in forest environments and competition with other browsers meant that by the Pleistocene the only horses extant were large, cursorial grazers.
But when vast swathes of Parascalesia woodland began to appear on the warm, humid coasts, in the absence of competition other than insects one group of horses once again adapted to life in the woods.
The size of a large dog, woodhorses are small, slinking creatures coloured in mottled white patches over a reddish-brown pelt. To more easily traverse dense woodland, their long, powerful legs, adapted for dashing across the open steppe, shortened to enable them to creep through closed forests without getting trapped in vines or branches. While much of their diet consists of low-growing shrubbery and young shoots, the fallen fruit of Parascalesia offer a sweet treat irresistable to the little ungulates.
So when the fruiting season comes, they feast on the fruit en masse, dispersing the seeds within with a dollop of their own self-made fertiliser, hopefully far away from the parent plant. Woodhorses are social creatures, living in small herds, but unlike their ancestors their groups are less solid and they move between herds regularly.
Where the forests become more open, giants roam. Though they share a close common ancestor with the little woodhorse, Behemoths Gigantotherium are among the largest creatures on Epona, rivalling the Asian Elephant in size and weight.
Also a browser, behemoths feed not on fresh shoots and fallen fruit, but also on canopy branches and foilage, with proportionally short, but sturdy legs with massive hooves to support their great weight, and a long neck for reaching into the treetops. Unlike other horses, behemoths posses forelegs slightly longer than their hindlegs, giving them a structure similar to the extinct Paraceratheres of the Oligocene.
Due to their immense size, behemoths require a large amount of food, and are generally rather solitary, maintaining large territories covering vast tracts of lush woodland. Despite that, they are not asocial, and communicate regularly with their neighbours via infrasound rumbles that travel great distances.
These giants are one of the most long-lived equids around, and can reach an average lifespan of around 60 years. Mothers raise a single foal for up to five years before it is capable of being independent, and it may remain in its mother's territory for up to five years more before it is kicked out. These newly independent juveniles must establish their own territories, which is where they experience their greatest mortality rate, inbetween injuries suffered when challenging established adults and inexperience when dealing with predation.
A vast steppe of grasses and wildflowers ranges to the horizon, grazed by vast herds of horses that have changed little since their introduction. There are Parascalesia trees here too, though more basal ones, which have not lost the ancestral wind-dispersed way of spreading their seeds, producing massive clouds of fluffy, floating seeds in the windy dry season which germinate when the rains come.
Without birds, the skies are patrolled by creatures of the six-legged type - insects. Large mason bees nest in soft, decaying wood of old dead trees, emerging in the morning to pollinate a vast variety of wildflowers.
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