In The Beginning
Back in 1980, I was a young child thinking up imaginary creatures of another dimension. These animals had strange names of the times, kiddie names that only a 7-year old could really think up. But since I was not fully scientifically refined, these animals I created were not made as accurate as I would have liked. By the time I was in my teen years, I had dumped the idea of these strange beasts, and took up studies of modern, real animals. Animals such as panthers, mongooses, lemurs and kangaroos had taken over my thinking, and at the same time, I studied how to draw these animals. Though at this time, the idea of evolution actually made me crack a smile of ridicule as I was raised a hardcore Christian.
Even as late as 1991, I was still laughing at the idea of evolution. But the following year, 1992, I was thinking differently. The kickstarter was actually when I took a live-in nanny job with a couple named Patti and Chris Shultze. That job totally changed my life, mostly for the better. They were not inspirational people, so it was nothing they said to me that made me change, it was more based on how I was treated while I was on that job, and when I was terminated from that job, I did not want the old me to return home. So, I changed. I became something of an atheist. Though I did not totally mock the existence of GOD. You could say I was “on the fence” about HIM. I figured if GOD did exist, why put me in with those people, who would ruin my life in the long run? I had lost my taste for having children of my own, I lost interest in some of the rockstars I had been into heavily before I moved there. For some unknown reason I lost some interest in Dian Fossey, and I never thought I’d lose interest in her! She was always my idol. I even lost my interest in GOD. So, why do this to me and ruin my life?
Well, I later was able to answer myself, I figured this could be a change for the better. I thought I could sit in a corner and slowly die off, never socialize with people again. But then that would mean Patti and Chris would win. And they sure as hell were not suffering by me not being there. So why punish myself like that? Instead, I began to take up studies of other things. One of the things that sparked my interest at that time was an interest I had gained in Batman, thanks to the 1989 movie directed by Tim Burton. I became so enthralled in this new subject, I had gotten together with a friend of mine who is also a writer, and we collaborated on our own collection of Batman stories. Only instead of using the real-life Batman characters, we would use villainous animals instead.
I tried several creatures that I thought would fit. At that time, I was not really satisfied with using very many modern creatures. Only a few really fit the character profiles. So, instead of going forward with what we had at that time, around Christmas, I began something new that I had not tried since my childhood. I figured I could create some creatures of my own. My main interest was lemurs at that time. Lemurs are more flexible and many display human-like qualities and abilities. This would be perfect for the creation of Batman characters animal-style. I did not really care how my lemurs all looked, as long as they could climb trees and jump, and grasp branches, and do all those lemur-like things they are so famous for in my mind, that was all that mattered at the time.
The next year, 1993, would change everything once again. Jurassic Park came out in theaters. I must have literally seen that movie about 1000 times. Every time I had as little as $10 in my hand, I would go to the local theater, which I could easily ride to on the bus, and see that movie. I can recall several times when I had nothing else planned, and no money, I would call up my grandma and ask her if she had a job for me. I would go to her place, and clean out her refrigerator, or her freezer, I gave her some drawing lessons, I would help her with a story she was writing, anything I could do to get some money, I would do it and use the money to go to the theater. I’d often have enough to get snacks too. I could not help it, I loved that movie! And it made me totally look at evolution in a different light. The way the dinosaurs were designed in that movie made me respect them in awe. It also made me look at how modern animals are designed and how they possibly evolved from these wonderful animals. I kept imagining what the world would have been like had dinosaurs not died off.
The lemurs I created back when I helped do the Batman stories were not meant to be scientifically accurate. They were just meant to represent Batman characters in my stories. But after seeing Jurassic Park, I decided to take some steps to make these animals a little more scientifically precise. I sort of re-created them, giving each genus and species their own personalities and differences. I also obtained a copy of Dougal Dixon’s After Man, which is one of the first creations about the world after humans have become extinct. This was also what inspired me to make these changes with the lemurs I had spent so much time trying to perfect that year. Instead of making them just story book creatures, why not create separate species and genera of lemurs for the world after humans? It was a great idea to me at the time.
It took me the whole summer of 1993 to corroborate these lemurs. They were no longer just lemurs that looked different and had funny names. These were amazingly streamlined creatures that could live well in a future world. One night I happened to be thinking of when I was a child, after reading some of the printed reviews on After Man’s cover. One of the people who endorsed that project said he used to also imagine animals that did not exist when he was a kid too, and he had fun doing that. I remembered back to when I was a child, creating new animals of a different dimension that nobody had ever seen before. I began to think of the strange creatures I thought up back then, and took out some drawing paper and began to recreate them in a more scientifically conceivable way. They became what I refer to today as the Therapeds and Deinognathids. This somewhat nudged me into creating whole new families of animals. I took some ideas from Dixon’s book. I liked the idea of the carnivorous rats, but they would not become the king of the Metazoic. They would more become like what terror birds were in the early Cenozoic. They would rule for a short time during the early Metazoic, and then later be outcompeted by my own group, the Deinognathids, which all Metazoic creatures would hold in mortal fear.
By spring of 1994, I had gained an interest to continue on with creating more families and species. I kept some modern families, and just added some highly-adapted, advanced futuristic species to them. By the end of spring, I had created whole books full of species, and that was also when I had coined the term “Metazoica”, meaning “After-era”. This is referring to the fact this era comes after we are gone. I even gave the era it’s own epochs, which is like little time-periods inside the one era. We even see that in the timeline of the Mesozoic and the Cenozoic. So, I have 2 major epochs for the Metazoic; The Posthomic epoch, and the Thermocepian epoch. It was also during the summer of 1994 that I created the very first Metazoic mammal checklist, which I have built up over the years. It started off simply enough, with just a few hundred species that I was able to fit in an average-sized sketchbook that you used to could get from any arts and crafts store. But my goal was to create 10,000 species by the year 2000. Which unfortunately would not really happen, as several things sidetracked me.
Besides the lack of ideas, in 1997, I lost 3 very good friends that year. One was a former boyfriend who died in a car accident. We were still very good friends at that time and I was devastated. A few months later, my childhood dog got very sick and had to be euthanized. His name was Andy, and I’d had him since I was 9 years old. The last person I lost that year was not really a “friend”, per se. But he was someone I had admired a lot some years before and I had been gaining interest in him once again at the time he died. It was Michael Hutchence. And he sort of became a victim of my clean-up after being terminated by Patti and Chris. But not really, as I was not as into INXS as I was into other bands that I did eliminate that year. But by the end of 1997, I was beginning to look at Michael adoringly again. That is until I got the news that he’d died. Losing Hutchence was bad enough, but his death meant more than that to me. His dying was like the straw that broke the camel’s back that year. I had dealt with more deaths that year than in all my 20-something years before combined! Needless to say, by 1998, I was a wreck!
The night I found out he died in fact, I was at the computer working on the transfer of my Metazoic mammal checklist from a document that was only compatible with a Mac computer, to a Word document that was compatible with a PC. After I heard the news, I became very sad and was not really thinking clearly. To this day, I still believe there are some species missing that I just never wrote down that night. But the same list today that I have added to all these years is the exact one I was working on the night I found out Michael died. The only difference is the original document was made in Word 95 and there were only between 1500-2000 species listed in 1997. As of today, there is more than 3000.
In 1998, I learned about a new concept; websites. Everyone I knew of was creating a website at this time, it was a huge thing that year. I thought it would have been a great idea to do a website of my own, showcasing my Metazoic mammals. I thought I could make it to be like an online zoo. But back in those days, we did not have all the technology we do now, we had some lines of javascript and that was it. Besides that, I could not figure out how to really present this site in a way that would make it like an online zoo. That would actually take a couple years to figure out.
In 2004, I made the first draft of the Metazoic site. I opened up a Yahoo account and turned it into my host for the website. I was glad I did, because through that, I was able to meet many other people who took an interest in future evolution. For many years I thought I was unique in that department. Some of those people helped me a lot. Some ridiculed me. Most were indifferent. I even “met” the father of speculative evolution himself, Dougal Dixon. I emailed him one day and asked some questions that I was interested in knowing, and I figured other people in the hobby would be interested in. Of course he didn’t respond to my email right away. It was actually a year before I heard from him. But he answered every question, and through associating with him, I even “met” David Attenborough.
My checklist of Metazoic mammals, as I called it, was also growing. Many species I got inspiration from modern mammals and birds. I really wanted mammals to take over all niches in the Metazoic world. A lot of mammals on my list, I would name after people I knew and liked. Many of them I knew personally. But quite a few were also named after people I had on my Facebook friends list. Some of which, I am not even speaking to anymore. But since the real scientific world does not usually change names of species, neither do I. I cannot change those names as a consequence. I try to keep the same rules of scientific nomenclature for my Metazoic animals as applies to animals of today. Generic names often get changed, but almost never do species names get changed. So, I abide by that rule myself. Even if the name is that of someone I do not like anymore. Besides, I would lose so many species if I just eliminated every name of every person I befriended and lost. So, I don’t let it bother me.
Over the years, Metazoica has gone through many changes. In 2013, I realized the site was not making anything, even though I offered to allow people to make donations. So, I gave up the Yahoo account in 2015. The only reason I clinged on for a couple more years was because I had some ideas I thought I could make work. But Yahoo sites were so limited in abilities, I just gave it all up. I now parked the Metazoic website on Blogger.com and gave it the domain metazoica.net. It’s the best change I ever made. As for the online zoo portion, I am currently still working on that. But I hope to have it finished soon. Lately out of boredom, I’ve been working intensely on the pages for each mammal family of the Metazoic. This book will talk a little more in depth about each genus presented on the site. But as I am always creating new species for Metazoica, this book too will be an ongoing process. I had hoped to reach more than 10,000 Metazoic mammal species by the year 2000. But since that didn’t happen, I still want to reach that goal. Just now take it whenever it happens.
Even as late as 1991, I was still laughing at the idea of evolution. But the following year, 1992, I was thinking differently. The kickstarter was actually when I took a live-in nanny job with a couple named Patti and Chris Shultze. That job totally changed my life, mostly for the better. They were not inspirational people, so it was nothing they said to me that made me change, it was more based on how I was treated while I was on that job, and when I was terminated from that job, I did not want the old me to return home. So, I changed. I became something of an atheist. Though I did not totally mock the existence of GOD. You could say I was “on the fence” about HIM. I figured if GOD did exist, why put me in with those people, who would ruin my life in the long run? I had lost my taste for having children of my own, I lost interest in some of the rockstars I had been into heavily before I moved there. For some unknown reason I lost some interest in Dian Fossey, and I never thought I’d lose interest in her! She was always my idol. I even lost my interest in GOD. So, why do this to me and ruin my life?
Well, I later was able to answer myself, I figured this could be a change for the better. I thought I could sit in a corner and slowly die off, never socialize with people again. But then that would mean Patti and Chris would win. And they sure as hell were not suffering by me not being there. So why punish myself like that? Instead, I began to take up studies of other things. One of the things that sparked my interest at that time was an interest I had gained in Batman, thanks to the 1989 movie directed by Tim Burton. I became so enthralled in this new subject, I had gotten together with a friend of mine who is also a writer, and we collaborated on our own collection of Batman stories. Only instead of using the real-life Batman characters, we would use villainous animals instead.
I tried several creatures that I thought would fit. At that time, I was not really satisfied with using very many modern creatures. Only a few really fit the character profiles. So, instead of going forward with what we had at that time, around Christmas, I began something new that I had not tried since my childhood. I figured I could create some creatures of my own. My main interest was lemurs at that time. Lemurs are more flexible and many display human-like qualities and abilities. This would be perfect for the creation of Batman characters animal-style. I did not really care how my lemurs all looked, as long as they could climb trees and jump, and grasp branches, and do all those lemur-like things they are so famous for in my mind, that was all that mattered at the time.
The next year, 1993, would change everything once again. Jurassic Park came out in theaters. I must have literally seen that movie about 1000 times. Every time I had as little as $10 in my hand, I would go to the local theater, which I could easily ride to on the bus, and see that movie. I can recall several times when I had nothing else planned, and no money, I would call up my grandma and ask her if she had a job for me. I would go to her place, and clean out her refrigerator, or her freezer, I gave her some drawing lessons, I would help her with a story she was writing, anything I could do to get some money, I would do it and use the money to go to the theater. I’d often have enough to get snacks too. I could not help it, I loved that movie! And it made me totally look at evolution in a different light. The way the dinosaurs were designed in that movie made me respect them in awe. It also made me look at how modern animals are designed and how they possibly evolved from these wonderful animals. I kept imagining what the world would have been like had dinosaurs not died off.
The lemurs I created back when I helped do the Batman stories were not meant to be scientifically accurate. They were just meant to represent Batman characters in my stories. But after seeing Jurassic Park, I decided to take some steps to make these animals a little more scientifically precise. I sort of re-created them, giving each genus and species their own personalities and differences. I also obtained a copy of Dougal Dixon’s After Man, which is one of the first creations about the world after humans have become extinct. This was also what inspired me to make these changes with the lemurs I had spent so much time trying to perfect that year. Instead of making them just story book creatures, why not create separate species and genera of lemurs for the world after humans? It was a great idea to me at the time.
It took me the whole summer of 1993 to corroborate these lemurs. They were no longer just lemurs that looked different and had funny names. These were amazingly streamlined creatures that could live well in a future world. One night I happened to be thinking of when I was a child, after reading some of the printed reviews on After Man’s cover. One of the people who endorsed that project said he used to also imagine animals that did not exist when he was a kid too, and he had fun doing that. I remembered back to when I was a child, creating new animals of a different dimension that nobody had ever seen before. I began to think of the strange creatures I thought up back then, and took out some drawing paper and began to recreate them in a more scientifically conceivable way. They became what I refer to today as the Therapeds and Deinognathids. This somewhat nudged me into creating whole new families of animals. I took some ideas from Dixon’s book. I liked the idea of the carnivorous rats, but they would not become the king of the Metazoic. They would more become like what terror birds were in the early Cenozoic. They would rule for a short time during the early Metazoic, and then later be outcompeted by my own group, the Deinognathids, which all Metazoic creatures would hold in mortal fear.
By spring of 1994, I had gained an interest to continue on with creating more families and species. I kept some modern families, and just added some highly-adapted, advanced futuristic species to them. By the end of spring, I had created whole books full of species, and that was also when I had coined the term “Metazoica”, meaning “After-era”. This is referring to the fact this era comes after we are gone. I even gave the era it’s own epochs, which is like little time-periods inside the one era. We even see that in the timeline of the Mesozoic and the Cenozoic. So, I have 2 major epochs for the Metazoic; The Posthomic epoch, and the Thermocepian epoch. It was also during the summer of 1994 that I created the very first Metazoic mammal checklist, which I have built up over the years. It started off simply enough, with just a few hundred species that I was able to fit in an average-sized sketchbook that you used to could get from any arts and crafts store. But my goal was to create 10,000 species by the year 2000. Which unfortunately would not really happen, as several things sidetracked me.
Besides the lack of ideas, in 1997, I lost 3 very good friends that year. One was a former boyfriend who died in a car accident. We were still very good friends at that time and I was devastated. A few months later, my childhood dog got very sick and had to be euthanized. His name was Andy, and I’d had him since I was 9 years old. The last person I lost that year was not really a “friend”, per se. But he was someone I had admired a lot some years before and I had been gaining interest in him once again at the time he died. It was Michael Hutchence. And he sort of became a victim of my clean-up after being terminated by Patti and Chris. But not really, as I was not as into INXS as I was into other bands that I did eliminate that year. But by the end of 1997, I was beginning to look at Michael adoringly again. That is until I got the news that he’d died. Losing Hutchence was bad enough, but his death meant more than that to me. His dying was like the straw that broke the camel’s back that year. I had dealt with more deaths that year than in all my 20-something years before combined! Needless to say, by 1998, I was a wreck!
The night I found out he died in fact, I was at the computer working on the transfer of my Metazoic mammal checklist from a document that was only compatible with a Mac computer, to a Word document that was compatible with a PC. After I heard the news, I became very sad and was not really thinking clearly. To this day, I still believe there are some species missing that I just never wrote down that night. But the same list today that I have added to all these years is the exact one I was working on the night I found out Michael died. The only difference is the original document was made in Word 95 and there were only between 1500-2000 species listed in 1997. As of today, there is more than 3000.
In 1998, I learned about a new concept; websites. Everyone I knew of was creating a website at this time, it was a huge thing that year. I thought it would have been a great idea to do a website of my own, showcasing my Metazoic mammals. I thought I could make it to be like an online zoo. But back in those days, we did not have all the technology we do now, we had some lines of javascript and that was it. Besides that, I could not figure out how to really present this site in a way that would make it like an online zoo. That would actually take a couple years to figure out.
In 2004, I made the first draft of the Metazoic site. I opened up a Yahoo account and turned it into my host for the website. I was glad I did, because through that, I was able to meet many other people who took an interest in future evolution. For many years I thought I was unique in that department. Some of those people helped me a lot. Some ridiculed me. Most were indifferent. I even “met” the father of speculative evolution himself, Dougal Dixon. I emailed him one day and asked some questions that I was interested in knowing, and I figured other people in the hobby would be interested in. Of course he didn’t respond to my email right away. It was actually a year before I heard from him. But he answered every question, and through associating with him, I even “met” David Attenborough.
My checklist of Metazoic mammals, as I called it, was also growing. Many species I got inspiration from modern mammals and birds. I really wanted mammals to take over all niches in the Metazoic world. A lot of mammals on my list, I would name after people I knew and liked. Many of them I knew personally. But quite a few were also named after people I had on my Facebook friends list. Some of which, I am not even speaking to anymore. But since the real scientific world does not usually change names of species, neither do I. I cannot change those names as a consequence. I try to keep the same rules of scientific nomenclature for my Metazoic animals as applies to animals of today. Generic names often get changed, but almost never do species names get changed. So, I abide by that rule myself. Even if the name is that of someone I do not like anymore. Besides, I would lose so many species if I just eliminated every name of every person I befriended and lost. So, I don’t let it bother me.
Over the years, Metazoica has gone through many changes. In 2013, I realized the site was not making anything, even though I offered to allow people to make donations. So, I gave up the Yahoo account in 2015. The only reason I clinged on for a couple more years was because I had some ideas I thought I could make work. But Yahoo sites were so limited in abilities, I just gave it all up. I now parked the Metazoic website on Blogger.com and gave it the domain metazoica.net. It’s the best change I ever made. As for the online zoo portion, I am currently still working on that. But I hope to have it finished soon. Lately out of boredom, I’ve been working intensely on the pages for each mammal family of the Metazoic. This book will talk a little more in depth about each genus presented on the site. But as I am always creating new species for Metazoica, this book too will be an ongoing process. I had hoped to reach more than 10,000 Metazoic mammal species by the year 2000. But since that didn’t happen, I still want to reach that goal. Just now take it whenever it happens.
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