Awbar

When people think of extinct life, they usually have images of fossils and artistic reconstructions in their head. Extinction is a phenomenon seemingly relegated to the far past, to dinosaurs and mammoths. In reality, extinction happens all the time, throughout the present. It is a process as natural as life and death itself. Yet, it leaves us mourning when it happens in front of our own eyes.

The awbar were a fascinating species which the first astronauts encountered on Mars, including myself on some of my early missions. They lived in a peculiar area of the Argyre Basin. Mars lacks a global magnetic field like Earth does, making it an all-around more irradiated and hostile place. However, some areas contain highly magnetized rock formations, which have managed to save some remnants of the prehistoric magnetosphere, creating local shields against UV and other harmful radiation from space. In these so-called UV-oases, flora and fauna can lead a more sheltered life and attain higher biodiversity than in other areas of the planet. The awbar lived in one such oasis - only one – together with the organisms it depended on.

The awbar is thought to have been a goniopod, a group of dinosauresque deltadactylians, but unlike its bigger cousins, the cecrops and syncarpus, it was generally not included within the more exclusive Thecocerata, as it lacked the characteristic hornlets inside of its beak. This decision has often been criticized, as the lack of that trait may instead have resulted from its specialized diet. Other unique traits were that it felt comfortable walking both on two and three legs and that it exhibited multioculy (having more than two eyes), a trait otherwise rare in goniopods.

It was a nimble creature, able to fit inside a human hand. From its back grew a fleshy fin, adorned with a peculiar oval spot. Undoubtedly this served some display function, but what exactly is now forever uncertain. Awbar lived in close association with a plant dubbed the sporangobush, a type of fractarian. Its sporangia ended in hairy bulbs, each hair drenched in some kind of viscous liquid. Awbar were most often seen climbing up the bushes and licking these furballs with their long, retractable tongue. Many authors have assumed that this could have been a symbiotic relationship. Assuming the liquid produced by the sporangia was some kind of nectar, the Martian may have been lured into licking up the plant’s spores. Inside the stomach and guts of the creature, these spores may have combined with those of other sporangobushes and exited the body through excretion, already fertilized. It is impossible to test any such hypotheses anymore, however. There may not have been a mutual benefit at all to such behaviour, the creature could have been licking the sporangia for reasons entirely unintended by the plant. Perhaps the liquid was toxic or unappealing to some herbivores but was unintentionally alluring to the little creature, the same way spicy plants on Earth have unintentionally garnered the attention of humans. Or the relationship between the organisms was much more intricate and complicated than we can ever imagine, seeing as how little we still know about these ecosystems.

The extinction of the awbar was not brought about by a catastrophe like the dinosaurs’ or through human interference like the dodo’s. It was the end of a slow process already well on its way long before man set his foot on the red planet. The magnetization held within the surrounding rocks had simply begun to fade. With each passing year, the local magnetosphere grew weaker and more radiation reached the soil. The changes must have been incremental at first. With each blooming, the number in each organism’s generations must have grown less, rates of cancer and other ailments must have risen and gradually lowered their lifespan. The margins and tall hills of the oasis became barren first, the eggs of the sporangobushes and tube-cycads in the soil simply failing to germinate. These blank spots were then quickly colonized by more UV-resistant flora and planimals from outside the region, like chiropedes and the aggressive red weed. From that point on, the collapse of the previous ecosystem progressed at a geometric rate, as now the local organisms did not only face environmental degradation but also competition from outsiders they would have normally been able to outbreed. Local nekhbets failed to spawn and were gradually replaced by wadjets and more delicate spongisporians died from mutations before they could bloom, losing ground to their thorny upland counterparts. The ecosystem transformed and many were simply not able to adapt quickly enough to the changes. It was a prolonged evolution of the landscape, observed by us humans over a span of about twenty years. When the shield was finally gone, very little remained of the previous ecosystem. The last sporangobushes failed to reproduce and aged into misshapen mutants before mercifully fading away. The last awbar was already sighted five years before their extinction.

It is a curious feeling, to know that these little creatures used to crawl over my feet one day and are now forever gone. Though less spectacular than the great fossils dug out from the ground, their loss is a much more personal one. A more painful one. It is the difference between reading about Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in a schoolbook and seeing your own father pass away at the hospital. The many questions you ask yourself. Was this inevitable? Were there ways I could have helped? Why didn’t I try to help? Why did I not do more with the time we were given together? But such things, speculating about changing a past that can no longer be changed, hypothetical realities, is a futile misery. There was nothing I could have done. The magnetized rocks would have faded regardless of me being there or not and none of our expeditions were ever equipped to preserve species. We were just there to observe and study. And by the point I knew my father was sick, it was already too late for us to bond in the way be both wished we would have. Years of neglect had eroded any emotional foundation that could have been built upon. He was my father, and a good one at that, but he was never my friend.

Puraeus

Although Venus has no trees, even it has more arboreal organisms than Mars, most of them living in the floating jungles of the upper atmosphere. Martians meanwhile have not much to climb on except for rocks, boulders, mountains and maybe a few tall shrubs here and there. The degrading climate has stopped supporting the growth of tree-like organisms millions of years ago. The only exception is the region of the Hellas Basin, but even here the scale-trees and tube-trees grow only sparsely, making the region resemble an open savannah more than forest. As such there are not many organisms specially adapted to dwell on them.

One of the few savannah-dwellers that can actually be called arboreal is a relic from an earlier time. The puraeus is one of the last remaining flagrobrachians. These are one of the groups which make up the insect-like phylum Aspiderma, to which also belong the wadjets. The relationship is immediately apparent, with the six lens-eyes, large head-plates and even little external gills, which look like they could be the archaic precursors to wings. Yet this animal cannot fly, but instead slithers and hangs between the branches of the scale-trees like a serpent. Neither are flagrobrachians the ancestors of wadjets, they are their own group that, as fossils show, made their way independently out of the vanished Martian oceans onto land.

Their most distinguishing feature are their mandibles, which have been repurposed into a pair of raptorial arms from which sprout long, prehensile tendrils. The puraeus is an ambush-predator, which lies in wait hanging from trees, ensnaring any smaller creatures which might climb or fly by, such as nekhbets. As the puraeus can no longer utilize its mandibles to kill and chew its prey, its jawless mouth has evolved a syringe-like spur, hidden underneath the headshield. With this it injects venom into its prey, as well as a strong acid, which digests it from the inside and allows the predator to simply suck it dry, like a spider.

The venom is also useful as a defensive weapon, as the puraeus can fall prey to various flying creatures such as ballousaurs. It is usually not strong enough to kill the attacker, but based on the behaviour of those bitten, it appears to cause a lot of stinging pain. Of course, no astronaut has ever volunteered to test that hypothesis themselves.

Puraeus also nest in trees, usually in holes beneath the bark. There they also raise their young. Once two puraeus have mated, only the impregnated partner will care for the offspring, but does so quite dutifully until they are old enough to hunt themselves. Until then it will usually feed them with regurgitated juices.

Perchloraven

The toxic salt deserts of Mars are not home to many animals, most of them being small-to-microscopic extremophiles. But some creatures have learned to exploit the hostile landscape. In the northern hemisphere we have already encountered the caraxor, a flying pedicambulate which rules alone over the perchlorate wastes there.

In the wastes which pepper the highlands and tundra of the southern hemisphere can be found an organism roughly equivalent in ecology but highly aberrant in every other aspect, appearing like the Martian parody of a flamingo. The perchloraven is a member of the rare and elusive Monopoda, which are secondarily flightless ballousaurs. For whatever reason, their wings (former hindlegs) have atrophied. In some of the more archaic members they can still be used for gliding, whereas in more derived members like the perchloraven they can only be used anymore for social displays and balancing. This leaves only their single front-leg (formerly an arm) as an organ for locomotion.

This anatomy is obviously quite awkward and fragile, which makes it perhaps no wonder why these organisms are rare and only found in environments that lack competition or predators. The perchlorate deserts are obviously just such a place. Surrounded by kilometres of toxic plains and dust, the thermally heated brine pools which the perchloraven inhabits are isolated from the rest of Mars almost perfectly. Here it can awkwardly hop and shuffle around on its leg without fearing any danger.

Much like the caraxor, it can survive here thanks to a high resistance to saltwater and even perchlorate itself, having six nephridia (equivalent to kidneys) instead of the standard four that most other deltadactylians have, a genuine atavism it shares with more archaic onychognaths. Another surprising adaptation revealed by dissection is that the dark dots which colour its back and wings are actually caused by unicellular proteroareozoans which endosymbiotically live inside the organism’s skin. Highly infused with melanin, these microbes show signs of being radiotrophic, much like the fungi discovered in Chernobyl, being able to absorb and use cosmic rays and perhaps even ultraviolet radiation in order to metabolize. If this symbiosis simply exists to protect the perchloraven from the radiation it experiences at higher elevations or if it also gains energy from this relationship is not known. Some of these organisms can be found freely swimming inside the brine pools, so it is likely that the animal acquires them though its diet.

The perchloraven’s main method of feeding, filtering the briny water for small organisms, is evident by the long baleen-like bristles which grow out of its lower jaw, like the teeth of the bizarre pterosaur Pterodaustro. What the headcrest and attached skinflap are for is less obvious, though it likely serves as some form of social display. Perchloravens mate in pairs and give birth to live young raised in rocky nests. An advantage they have over their aerial cousins is that the loss of flight has made the pelvis much less rigid and narrow, allowing the chicks to be born much better developed. Usually they are able to stand, hop and feed by themselves a day or so after birth.

Why exactly the perchloraven is completely naked instead of having feather-scales like its relatives is a good question. Mainly living in thermally heated pools, it seems like there was no need anymore for insolation, allowing the organism to revert back to a more ectothermic metabolism in order to save energy.

On a zoogeographical note, it is also interesting that there is such a north-south divide between perchloraven and caraxor habitats. It has been proposed that the shrubland habitats which line the equator may prevent either organism from crossing into the other hemisphere, as they cannot feed in these zones and would also have to face predators which they have no natural defence against (Watzlawick 2114). What speaks against this is of course the fact that the caraxor can fly.

References:

• Watzlawick, Paul: Wide-scale niche partitioning across Mars, in: Journal of Xenobiology, 189, 2114, p. 310 – 377.

Yateveo

Winter in the tundras of Mars is desolate and hostile. The flora enters a near-death state, only protected by anti-freezing fluids. Small animals that can only crawl or are sessile enter a deep state of hibernation, hidden underground. The animals with legs wander north to the warmer shrublands. But there is one exception.

The yateveo is a wanderstalk which stays in the frozen wasteland, even though it should be able to migrate like its relatives. But it does not like using its legs much, instead preferring to stay in one spot for most of its life. Yet, despite its sessile nature, it is the most skilled carnivore among its clade. Most wanderstalks capture their wadjet prey by lying valve-open like a venus fly trap, waiting for a hapless victim to land on them, perhaps attracted by pheromones. Once the prey lands, tentacles ensnare it and the valves clap shut. Yateveo does not have that patience.

Its natural weapons are two highly modified arms which can shoot out sharp needles attached to silk-like strings. Biological harpoons. In principle they function somewhat like a multicellular version of the nematocysts of jellyfish. When not in use, the needles sit inside a pressurised chamber, ready to dart out. When attacking, the chamber opens a little, pushing all the air out and the needle with it. Once it has pierced its prey, muscular action retracts the string, reeling the harpoon in. How this organ may have evolved remains a mystery. If it can also regrow if severed is also an open question.

What is known is that this artillery is so efficient compared to its relatives that the yateveo rarely has to change location but can spend most of its life in a single place and simply snipe poor little fliers out of the air. This also means that it can easily accrue enough storage of nutrients and fat inside its stalk and legs that it can easily sleep through the winter, thanks to its low metabolism.

However, there is one occasion where yateveo do get up and walk and that is during the thawed-red summer months where they try to find a mate. During these times, they can rarely be observed hunting on foot, which is quite an odd sight to behold. Combining eyesight, leg-movement and aiming speaks for coordination-skills that are uncharacteristically high for such an otherwise primitive organism.

Irsu

“And I will send the beast of the field among you, which shall rob you of your children, destroy your cattle and make you few in number; and your ways shall become desolate.”

-Leviticus 26:22

The Hellas Basin could be called the “most functioning” ecosystem on Mars, in that its vegetation cover allows for more or less fleshed out trophic levels at all heights. Unfortunately for everyone involved, that includes active predators. Of these, the Irsu is the most ferocious, the most deadly, non-venomous animal so far discovered on the planet. Its jaw alone is the largest among any Martian, its hardened, self-sharpening tooth-plates reaching up to the length and height of butchering knifes, able to bite through bone like butter.

This is a survivor of a past age, one where pedicambulates ruled the planet. And it does its best to not let that memory die. It alone rules over these desolate plains, always stalking through and ambushing from the fronds and spongine growths with great efficiency, its spotted pattern presumably helping it camouflage. It lays waste to both onychognath prey, whose chest-lungs it loves to tear open, and others of its own clade, whose internal shells its teeth cut through with ease. Other predators, such as sutekh hounds or the heremakhet, fear it and rarely fight over carcasses with it. Living solitarily, Irsu are not even safe amongst themselves outside of breeding season. In a stark contrast, they make for decent parents. Usually only laying one large egg, the chick is cared for greatly by its single parent until it is old enough to hunt by itself.

Among the favourite prey of Irsu are the great ushabtis and their relatives, their glass skeletons being easily broken by its teeth. These dumb animals being, by coincidence, quite humanoid, has led to some obvious and quite perilous problems for human space explorers. The Soviets were the first to explore the great basin and, infamously, these first cosmonaut pioneers were not given guns, as they did not initially expect this kind of life to be found here (at least this was the official explanation, some rumours state that they were not issued weaponry for budgetary reasons or due to fear of suicide or homicide within the team). Alas, all that his friends could find of poor Yuri was vomited-out flesh and one of his boots, his foot still inside. Being of a different biochemistry, the alien was presumably unable to completely digest the man. Though this still leaves the question open where the rest of his spacesuit (and skeleton) went. There is an urban legend among astronauts that parts of Yuri can still be found strewn across Mars. A glove there, a helmet-piece here, maybe a knucklebone somewhere right by the Great Face. Indeed, there are now rumours that the Chinese recently found a heavily corroded human mandible… at the opposite end of the basin from where he died. If true, either some scavenger has carried this bone very far or there are more casualties the other space agencies do not want to tell us about.

Back on Earth, the Irsu has become a popular choice for plush-toys. My grandson owns one, he calls him Ogilvy, after me.