I discovered recently the project of Yuko Ota and Evan Dahm’s speculative evolution project, The Exquisite Beast. Both designers have decided, each in turn, to draw each step in the evolution of an imaginary creature. And I love this concept!

The eigth beast :

holterya:

Exquisite Beast phylogenetic tree, featuring all the beasts drawn by Evan and Yuko so far, plus the fan-made contributions from Aaron Diaz and the rest (I found that last one just by searching Tumblr, it hasn’t been mentioned on the official blog yet but I’m assuming it will since it’s pretty sweet). Of course, I am a phylogenetics noob so hopefully I haven’t disgraced myself with this effort.

I am considering some ideas for my own contributions to this growing menagerie, too. But I’ve got some comics to draw first.

But I’d like to propose an another tree based on the fact that all the creature proposed by Yuko and Evan represent one “step” in the evolution, so it would be evry common ancestor you will find along. And each fan art represent a divergent evolution. So the tree would look like this :

Click on the image for full size