Universes

The universes are not singular, but are rather branchlike, splitting up after each different scenario happens. There are countless universes, all stemming from just one and stemming into many more, that are extremely sensitive and can produce wide effects in a similar manner to the "Butterfly Effect." Here are some of the most important universal categories below:

## Earth Universe

This is a universe which your branch is synced with right now. In one particular solar system in one particular galaxy was a rather inhospitable planet, filed with volcanic activity and meteor crashes.

Eventually, over billions and billions of years, this planet cooled down. Water formed, along with an atmosphere, and many chemical reactions were occuring. Many molecules combined together into the first molecules of life, which eventually found a way to reproduce on its own after many attempts.

When these organisms attempted to clone themselves through asexual reproduction, there would occasionally be tiny mistakes in the genomes, called mutations. Over time, these mutations would build up, causing some microbes to look and function completely different than others, taking on their own niches. This did not happen without the help of natural selection of course, only allowing the fittest to survive and reproduce. Multicellular life eventually evolves.

It has been three billion years. Life has flourished and diversified; these were mainly sexual organisms, those who reproduced with another member of their species, resulting in offspring that had mixtures of both their genomes. This helped with the ever-changing climates of Planet Earth and allowed organisms to quickly adapt to these changes. An event known as the Cambrian Explosion has occured and resulted in the largest abundance of life of all time, including the introduction of arthropods such as trilobites and anomalocarids, as well as the world's first vertebrates, organisms such as Haikouitchys which have evolved an internal skeleton and a spinal cord to supply an effective nervous system.

Eventually, life made it out onto land. After the first terrestrial plants- such as Cooksonia- grew, insects and arthropods developed niches on land to feed on these plants. In turn, certain fishes, vertebrates which have adapted predatory life in the water, evolved in order to catch these insects and arthropods. These fish developed lungs to last longer on the land, and their fins eventually evolved into the first arms and legs, more effective for crawling on the land than fins that other fish had. These were the first amphibians.

From amphibians came reptiles, which were cold-blooded but had developed a system to live full lives out of the water. Their eggs had developed a solid shell, and they evolved scales that could keep in moisture much longer than their amphibian ancestors.

In the middle of the Carboniferous was a reptile that had developed warm-blood and a four-chambered heart for temperature regulation, and whiskers for feelimg their surroundings on land, along with a thin fur covering for insulating its heat. This was closely related to the ancestor of crocodiles, and from these whiskered reptiles diverged synapsids and dinosaurs, which would take turns dominating the planet for nearly three hundred million years.

Synapsids grew larger in the Permian when the Earth became more arid and open land was abundant. Their reign ended after fifty million years of growing when the continets collided into a landmass called Pangaea, which triggered volcanic activity which suffocated the atmosphere, reduced water oxygen, and damaged the Earth's ozone layer. The ancestors of dinosaurs took over the lost niches, using their bipedality to their unfair advantage. After another minor extinction wiped out small competition from large crocodylomorphs and other apex predators, these took over the large terrestrial niches while the synapsids (now mammals) became nocturnal and sheltered in burrows.

After one hundred sixty million years, the dinosaurs went extinct too and were replaced by the surviving mammals. Just one branch of flying dinosaurs had survived; the toothless beaked avians were thriving in the new Cenozoic environments. Mammals diverged into entirely new predators and prey, and evolutionary races happened between them. Whales became aquatic and eventually became the largest animals to have ever existed, some growing over one hundred feet in length and weighing over two hundred tons.

## Draconian Universe

Sharing the same previous history as the Earth Universe was the Draconian Universe, until it was separated by a factor of the movement of a bacterium cell from the Late Jurassic. For most of the Cretaceous period, these changes were dormant. A Gorgosaurus had developed an arm duplication mutation and successfully survived and reproduced. Eventually, winged tyrannosaurids emerged, and eventually evolved into dragons and wyverns.

While a certain universe was not hit by the asteroid that caused the dinosaur's demise, a widespread illness however killed off most of the pterosaurs instead, opening up niches for prodragomorphs and marking the beginning of the Dracossic period, named after the variety of dragons that inhabited it.

## Pivot Universe

Introduced for DCR and to symbolize the classic Pivot dinosaur fights with the white backgrounds was the Pivot Universe. It is pretty simple, with an unknown history, and is completely barren in terms of landmasses.

## Future Cenozoic I

This is a series of universes branching off of one of the mammalian Cenozoic Earth universes. After the temporary reign of the hominids ended, a group of human descendants took over the predatory niches in what is North America.

These descendants became what were known as the synapsid dinosaurs. Over time and time, the efforts of Homo sapiens could not keep up with their demands, and thus civilizations would slowly die down.

The first of the synapsid dinosaurs was Parapithecus. It's name meant "Distant Ape," and it took over the predatory niches in what are now the states in the United States East of the Mississippi river. It functioned in a similar manner to a theropod dinosaur, using its mouth to bite and using its arms to slash at prey.

Over time, these new predators developed adaptations in order to hunt more efficiently. For example, Rostruvenator is a scavenging synapsid dinosaur and preyed on small animals, such as insects, frogs, and fish. On the other hand, Velocinychus (first image) has separate nasal olfactory systems for a "3D" sense of smell and an extension of the pelvic bone that functions as a tail.

## Future Cenozoic II

Although these above have since been scrapped, the Future Cenozoic is still a thing. Africa connects to Eurasia some 10 million years in the future with the absorption of the Mediterranean Sea, and Australia connects to the supercontinent some 30 million years in the future via the solidification of Indonesia. The Quaternary continues on until some 47 million years in the future, and ends with an extinction event that is caused by lowering levels of carbon dioxide cooling the environment and causing freezing to become abundant in areas more extreme than 35° latitude, with glaciers extending to the equator. Many of the placental mammal lineages become extinct and pouched marsupials from the Asia-Australia interchange take over Afroeuraustralasia, with the help of insulating their young in pouches and also in burrows. Migratory animals, including most insectivorous birds, are highly affected by this. Bats that can hibernate in caves better survive the event, and they replace many of the carnivorous birds.

The Quinary Period begins. The Earth begins to thaw, but global temperatures remain lower than usual. Mammals--namely marsupials--begin to rediversify after the recovery from the prior extinction event. South America is isolated from the rest of the continents and retains rodents, which reclaim the mammalian niches there.

115 million years after the influence of man, the climate warms up big time. Mammals, bats, and the last remaining birds all but dissapear from the record. Underdog classes become more dominant afterwards, with with the descendants of squamates becoming the most successful.

The biggest hit to Earth's life and biodiversity since the Permian Extinction occurs after some 260-270 million years. The Earth rapidly cools and is sent into a freeze, wiping off most complex life without a defense. All terrestrial vertebrates are wiped out, along with insects, non-perciform fish, and sharks. This mass extinction event marks the beginning of the Pentozoic, an era that ends with the extinction of vertebrates. The ray-finned shark Neopistris concitocanthus shows up 277 million years in the future.

What didn't kill the small things made them stronger. Springtails, formerly restricted to detritivorous niches, found a chance to shine. On land, frost-tolerant springtails grew larger in order to feed on the remaining plants, and eventually developed a complex respiratory system that allowed them to reach larger sizes. Forty million years after the recovery from this extinction event, giant springtails become the primary clade on land, achieving the sizes of today's mammals.