The Future is Wild Biome Descriptions
5 million years
Mediterranean Basin
The Earth is in an Ice Age, a cycle
which typically lasts about 100,000
years. Humans are extinct and much
of the world’s fresh water is locked
up in the huge ice caps that reach as
far South as Paris and North as
Buenos Aires. On the edges of the
ice, animals have adapted to the
bitter cold and vicious winters; in
the tropics, the rainforest has all but
disappeared, and been replaced by
a dry savannah.
Yet change is in the air – a sudden
increase in volcanic eruptions pours
greenhouse gases into the
atmosphere, the planet begins to
warm up, and the melting ice
creates massive, devastating floods.
Movement of the African and European plates has
left the Mediterranean land locked.. Global
temperatures are five or six degrees Celsius below
the present day. It has brine lakes and salt flats
surrounded by karst – dry, ridged limestone. There
are deep cracks in the limestone, called Grykes.
Mountains rise out of the plains. They were once
Mediterranean islands. Otherwise the surface is
completely flat and white. The salt flats shimmer.
Here and there are lakes of very salty water – ten
times the salinity of seawater. In Southern Europe,
beyond the icecaps, there are clusters of rowan and
birch trees
North European Ice
Northwest Europe is battered by westerlies so
there will be severe blizzards in the winter. Ice
sheets cover most of N America and all of
Scandinavia, and reach down into Northern Europe.
Huge icebergs float in the freezing ocean. The sea
level has fallen by 500ft (150m). Winter night-time
temperatures are -60oC. Meltwater gathers in the
summer. There are cracked and broken rocks all
around. Domes, called pingos, rise up where frozen
water has pushed up the rocks.
North American Desert
The drier climate has had dramatic effects on the
interior of the North American continent, turning it
into a vast, cool desert frequently battered by
fierce sandstorms. The desert is as bitterly cold as
the Gobi desert once was. It stretches about 2,500
kilometres to the base of the Rocky Mountains. The
piercing winds that stir up the sandstorms scour
away the soil. A little snow falls infrequently on
high ground. Tornados frequently rip across the
area.
Amazon Grasslands
The Amazon grassland lies at the tip of what was
once South America. In the Amazon basin, the
extensive rainforests are now reduced to a few tiny
pockets, surrounded by extensive areas of tall grass
savannah with scattered trees. Rainfall is low and
the Amazon river has dwindled. In these dry
conditions there are frequent bushfires, triggered
by lightning or the Sun. The fires cover huge areas
at great speed. Grasses rapidly recover from these
fires; slow-growing trees are few.
Producers
Consumers
Producers
Consumers
Salt loving bacteria, algae,
rowan trees, and birch trees
Insects, brine flies, cryptile
lizard, scrofa, gryken
Cottongrass, lichens,
heather, willow trees
Flies, migrant birds,
gannetwhate, shagrat,
snowstalker
Producers
Consumers
Desert turnip
Desert rattleback, spinks,
deathgleaner
Producers
Rain forests, tall grasses,
scattered trees
Fish, babookari, carakiller,
rattleback
Consumers
100 million years
Antarctic Forest
Volcanoes belching out
greenhouse gases eventually turn
the Earth into a hothouse –
sweltering, steamy and wet.
Rainforests coat the land and the
atmosphere is rich in carbon
dioxide and oxygen. Animals
adapt to the damp warmth;
insects grow huge, flying insects
have metre wingspans, and the
world’s biggest creatures walk the
Earth. But the Earth itself is
restless. Although volcanoes have
been active throughout, now,
huge eruptions bring the planet to
the brink of its worst disaster
ever. 100 million years from now;
the Earth warms up. The Ice Age
has ended. The ice has melted,
and sea levels have risen,
changing the shape of the
coastlines. The continents are still
moving. Australia has collided
with Asia, pushing up a huge
mountain range. Part of Africa has
split off and become fused to the
tip of Asia. Antarctica has been
pulled north by a subduction zone
at the bottom of the Indian ocean
and now lies partially in the
tropics.
Instead of snow, ice and penguins, there is now
dense tropical rainforest. This rainforest has evolved
from whatever plant species made it to the isolated
continent first. Similarly, the animals there have
radiated to fill all the available niches have evolved
from relatively few ancestors, as reaching this virgin
continent was so difficult. New species have been
developed by adaptive radiation. Antarctica lies in
the tropics, with trade winds bringing warm rain all
the year round. The forests are temperate and wet.
Bengal Swamp
The Bay of Bengal is now enclosed, cut off from the
open sea by the arrival of Mozambique and
Madagascar moving east. What were the Himalayas
are eroded to low hills. Water run-off from the
mountains has washed fertile sediment into the
landlocked sea, making it shallower and rich in
nutrients. The sea is a vast, brackish swamp. The
water is thick and impenetrable to light. Average
temperatures are 40°C. Humidity is 99% all the year
round. These greenhouse conditions are ideal for
plant growth. Crowded trees and other plants
stabilize the mud with their network of roots.
Great Plateau
The collision of Australia and Asia has resulted in a
massive mountain chain, far higher than the
Himalayas – 10,000 meters high. The mountains
have sharp peaks. Rock compression has thrown up
the Great Plateau, the broadest tract of uplands on
Earth. The climate of the peaks is harsh, but a higher
concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
makes life easier for plants. There is heavy rain on
the mountains, and heavy seasonal rain on the
plateau.
Shallow Seas
Shallow seas spread across Northern Europe and
Asia, with rocky islands – mountain peaks not yet
covered by water. The seas are rich in nutrients and
in bright sunlight, ideal conditions for reefs to form.
The calcareous skeletons of reef organisms make a
solid foundation colonized by more reef plants and
animals. The corals are extinct. The reefs are built by
red algae; they photosynthesize vigorously in the
light. The red algae offer browsing reef animals a
protein meal; and in eating this, the animal carries
away the algae’s sticky spores.
Producers
Consumers
Spitfire trees, lichens,
mosses, algae, seeds, fruit
Spiders, insects, birds.
Falconfly, spitfire birds,
spitfire beetle
Producers
Consumers
Trees, grasses, shrubs, algae
Lurkfish, swampus, toraton
Producers
Consumers
Seed bearing plants
Silver spiders, crustaceans,
large arthropods,
windrunners, poggle,
Producers
Consumers
Red algae, reef plants
Ocean phantom, reef glider,
spindletrooper
200 million years
Central Desert
After the last great mass extinction,
just a few life forms had survived,
and free from old pressures and
competition, they have evolved into
strange and bizarre creatures –
beyond imagination. The slow drift
of the continents over the globe has
finally brought the landmasses
together into one super-continent,
and most of the world is covered in
a huge ocean. There is now one
The Central Desert is a wilderness of sand and
gravel, without clouds or rainfall. At night, this
desert is as cold as the Earth has ever been. Beneath
it, there is a labyrinth of limestone caves. Constant
rain on the seaward slopes soaks into the rocks and
accumulates in the caves. Average temperatures
range from over 50°C in the summer to -30°C in the
winter. The only water is from subterranean springs..
large supercontinent, “Pangea II”,
the bulk of which is north of the
equator. The centre of this
continent is a huge extreme
desert, with virtually no rainfall. A
single world ocean has a major
effect on weather patterns. Water
travels westward around the
equator, being warmed by the Sun
as it goes. Heating the ocean
leads to frequent and very strong
hurricanes. The sea is whipped up
by these frequent hyper-canes.
But the resulting rain does not
travel far inland instead falling on
a coastal mountain range. In
today’s world there are continents
in the way of this equatorial
current, that deflect it to the
north or south before it has
chance to get too warm. The
rotation of the Earth has slowed,
adding an hour to the day – now
25 hours.
Global Ocean
The Global Ocean has a huge anti-clockwise current
circulating around the southern hemisphere. Life can
migrate easily in this powerful current. Because of
this powerful current, there is little water movement
between north and south. As a result, there is a
steep temperature gradient between high and low
latitudes. The single ocean supports complex food
chains and highly-evolved species.
A mass extinction has affected life on land and in the
seas. Clouds of ash and an increase in acidity killed
the plankton in the surface water. As the ocean food
chain collapsed many bony fish died out. Their place
was taken by surviving creatures from the deep.
Rainshadow Desert
The Rainshadow Desert is close to the huge peaks of
this volcanic mountain range. The moisture rich
clouds crossing the Earth rise over the mountains,
losing water as they go and starving the land behind
of moisture. The hyper-canes provide high humidity;
they also supply food in the form of sea creatures
whipped from the surface waters and dumped in the
desert.
Northern Forest
Along latitudes about 30 to 60 degrees north, the
prevailing winds are westerlies that bring huge
amounts of rain to the northwest coast of the
continent. This creates extensive, lush areas of
temperate forest, something similar to the rainforest
of northwest USA but much, much more extensive.
Constant rain from saturated onshore winds,
frequent westerly storms and little sunshine causes
rain to fall relentlessly on the north-western region
of “Pangaea ll”. The conditions are warm and humid
with an atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide. These
hothouse conditions, ideal for plant growth, have led
to a vigorous forest, teeming with life. The
continuous torrential rain has made great rivers,
lakes and swamps. The tallest trees are conifers,
growing to the same height as the redwoods that
have dominated the region since the Triassic.
Flowering plants are rare in the forest; only lichens –
symbiotic associations between algae and fungi –
grow everywhere. In the moisture of the forest, they
have grown to tree size. The low level of the forest is
a tangle of lichen trees. Their trailing feathery
structures absorb moisture and photosynthesize.
Their spores, bursting from sacs as animals brush by,
are easily distributed.
Producers
Consumers
Garden worm, algae
Slickribbon, terabyte
Producers
Consumers
Chemosynthetic autotrophs
Ocean flish, sharkopath,
silverswimmers
Producers
Consumers
Tough desert plants
Ocean flish, sharkopath,
silverswimmers,
bumblebeetle, desert
hopper, grimworm
Producers
Consumers
Coniferous forests, lichens
Forest flish, megasquid,
squibbon