Linnaean Binomial Names for Magical Creatures!

[jillybean711]

I quite like this idea! The only thing I'd disagree with is the idea of the different colored Borean Wolves being separate subspecies, as they seem more like color morphs than actual closely-related but evolving differently sub-species. But that's more of my own opinion. But the idea of making up an entirely new Phylum brings up a bit of a problem, as some creatures seriously resemble irl creatures, but are different enough to be their own sub-species, so should we make an entirely new Phylum or stick them where they appear to resemble? Like the Alvean Thornweb, especially. They seriously resemble spiders of the genus Micrathena, and Gasteracantha, and especially Hasselt's spiny spider, for their thorny abdomens, but are different enough to be classified as subspecies. They also resemble jumping spiders with their big eyes.

[Auriene]

Really like the idea! Naming mythical and heraldic creatures may be a bit problematic, though. With well-known creatures it's a bit easier, for example, knowing that "wyrm" in old Latin texts appears usually as "vermis", we can make:

Grey Pearl Wyrm - Vermis margaritarius griseus
Black Pearl Wyrm - Vermis margaritarius niger
Golden Pearl Wyrm - Vermis margaritarius aureus
Copper Pearl Wyrm - Vermis margaritarius cupreus

Alphyn's latin name was harder to find, but according to some sources, it should be "alphinus". We could derive the second part from Alphyn's characteristic behaviour (chasing and hunting) and then we'd have:

Savannah Alphyn - Alphinus venaticus savannensis
Silvian Alphyn - Alphinus venaticus silvanensis
Etainian Alphyn - Alphinus venaticus etainensis
Voltarian Alphyn - Alphinus venaticus voltarensis

...or we could stick to "alphinus" in form Alphinus alphinus (savannensis etc.). I don't know which one would be more appropriate

Some creatures, like Serpaens, don't seem to have their mythical, heraldic or real-life equivalents. In those cases, I'd keep their original names. Again, we could add to it something that would accent Serpaens' similarity to snakes:

Savannah Serpaen - Serpaen serpentis savannensis
Silvian Serpaen - Serpaen serpentis silvanensis
Etainian Serpaen - Serpaen serpentis etainensis
Arcanum Serpaen - Serpaen serpentis arcanissimus
Voltarian Serpaen - Serpaen serpentis voltarensis

...or again, leave the form Serpaen serpaen.

All in all, the idea is really interesting!

[GoblinShark]

PS: Concerning the Cipetirs, because they can both breed together I'd be hesitant to put them in separate genera but rather make them subspecies that evolved due to different habitats

I'd be hesitant to take breeding into account, otherwise we'll end up in a situation where the koi, ibex, direwolf, and manticore are all considered the same species.
While that may be amusing, it'd strike me as sorta silly.

As for the Leliyn, because it says specifically that they're loosely related to dragons I'd like to put some thought into how things like dragons relate to normal reptiles before pseudo-finalizing their taxonomy. I did have some thoughts about that (which the names of my tabs can give you a sneak peek of) which I'll post over the weekend probably because I'm super tired

I'd love to compare ideas, I've been sorta trying to figure out how the site's dragons/dragonlike critters and its normal reptiles fit together for a while.
I've basically ended up dividing them by limb number and type, with one lineage being the standard six-limbed species, one leading to a couple species that appear to have six limbs but a wing settup unlike the previous group(suggesting to me some degree of convergent evolution), and one lineage that lead to the drakes and wyverns.
The crystalwings branch off of the first six-limbed type, while serpents and the oriental-styled dragons being an offshoot of the drake lineage.
I'll try to find one of my cladograms I've made, I've made like forty of the damn things over the past decade.

Edit: Realized I didn't actually go into what I've sorta figured about their relations to the other reptiles. I originally figured that they were descended from normal lizards (Anaugi had firebreath, and I figured some group of fire-breathing lizards could've magically attained six limbs), but something's description (Plus the feathers in some species) suggested to me that they're archosaurs, sharing an ancestor with crocs and dinosaurs. If this is true, even lizards are still loosely related, but in the say that elephants are related to walruses or something.

[vipor]

First off, the post might seem a bit rambeling. Sorry for that.
Second, I am listing creatures with ( what I believe to be) their real life counterpart.

Why not start with a common ancestor of sorts to tie groups together.
Take a a look at the dragons and reptiles.

You start with ancestor X

It seperated in three main groups.
reptile
Draconian
crystalwing.

Reptile later spilts into
Large reptiles (ixu)
Small reptiles (anaugi)
Snakes ( raza cobra)
ectr

Draconian splits into
Dragon (western dragon style) ((void dragon))
serpents (eastern dragon style) ((valcerian dragon))
Wyvren (emerald wyvren)
Drakes (rewin dragon)

Crystalwing splits into
giant Crystalwing (elder)
Pygmy crystalwing

The pygmy crystalwing would seperate into the pygmy crystalwing and the pygmy gemdragon.
The drakes would seperate into scaled (rewin) and feathered (feather drake)

With the unicorns I think we should start with two main groups.
One group has the horse hooves. (original two, frost/earth and minicorns.)
((My idea is have the originals as the ancestor with the minicorn following their line (both the size of ponies). The frost and earth would have seperated from the line to form the taller unicorns.

The second group would have the cloven hooves with an unknown ancestor that formed the saebra and Silendarus unicorns.


Sorry, this will get long.
These are critters I found.

794 moray eel
Chordata
Actinopterygii (ray finned fish)
Elopomorpha
Anguilliformes
Muraenidae
G. funebris (Gymnothorax funebris) ((Green Moray Eel ))

753-754-755 Dunkleosteus
Chordata
Placodermi
Arthrodira
Dunkleosteidae
Dunkleosteus (extinct fish)

649 Karcharos Shark
Chordata
Chondrichthyes
Lamniformes
Lamnidae
Carcharodon
C. carcharias (Carcharodon carcharias) ((Great white shark))

316 Charaen
Chordata
Sarcopterygii
Dipnoi
Ceratodontiformes
Neoceratodontidae
Neoceratodus
N. forsteri (Neoceratodus forsteri) ((Queensland lungfish))

269-270-271-272 vevex rays
Chordata
Chondrichthyes
Myliobatiformes
Myliobatidae
Mobula
M. japanica (Mobula japanica) ((spinetail devil ray))

97 Ebbene Shark
Chordata
Chondrichthyes
Hexanchiformes
Chlamydoselachidae
Chlamydoselachus
C. anguineus (Chlamydoselachus anguineus) ((frilled shark))

249 Donec fish
Chordata
Actinopterygii
Perciformes
Pomacentridae
Amphiprioninae
Amphiprion
A. ocellaris (Amphiprion ocellaris) ((ocellaris clownfish))

210 Goldfish
Chordata
Actinopterygii
Cypriniformes
Cyprinidae
Cyprininae
Carassius
C. auratus (Carassius auratus) ((Goldfish))

333 Kaetus
Chordata
Actinopterygii
Siluriformes
Pimelodidae
Pimelodus
P. pictus (Pimelodus pictus) ((pictus catfish))

370 Fabari
Chordata
Actinopterygii
Characiformes
Characidae
Paracheirodon
P. axelrodi (Paracheirodon axelrodi) ((Cardinal tetra))

376 Carithas fish
Chordata
Osteichthyes
Perciformes
Anabantoidei
Helostomatidae
Helostoma
H. temminckii (Helostoma temminckii) ((Kissing gourami))


I my keep I have been seperating the creatures based on their real life counterparts.
A lot still have to be devided.

[vipor]

Sorry sorry. I know double posts are not welcome, but this is a compleetly different type of post than my other.


I have a few suggestions to streamline things.

1.
Lets first seperate the creatures in groups.
Example:
canus
*wolf (borean wolf, direwolf)
*dog (tenera dog, temple dog)
* winged wolf (smiurfs)

Yes yes. The parent breeding thing. I will come back to it.

When all creatures are devided into the large groups and their subgroups, we work on one group at a time.
If we all work on creatures on compleetly different parts of the list it will be chaos.

When we finish a group we move on to the next.
If one group only causes problems we can always decide to skip it for a while and move to the next.

2.
We all know about the birds and the bees.
I suggest that in Magistream we forget about that.

Lets be honest, if we follow the birds and the bees and I want to breed a koi and ibex into a capricorn I either end up with a dead koi or a drowned ibex.

We are magi. If the creatures would breed as real life animals we would be eternally egglocked. Or atleast find a large group of extra ibex we don't remember getting or no ibex and a lot of happy and full direwolfs.

So I think this.
We don't put two creatures together to breed and prey they don't kill eachother.
Instead when we want to create a new life we visit the parent creatures. Ask them to borrow their essence.
They they allow it we can take some fur or such off them and use magic to fuse the essences together.
Sometimes we fail and no egg is created.

This use of their essence is the reason the creatures can't be bred for 3 more days. They need to recover their strength.

3.
Apart of the artifier creatures, all creatures have evolved in the world.
We just don't always find the eggs or we can't always tame the wild ones.
Sometimes we can't find the wild groups at all.

I know I have been using them a lot, but lets look at the capricorns.
There is a large gap between their appearance and that of the ibex and koi.
This can be explained by that we never met a wild capricorn to show us something like this can be possible. Or we wern't drunk enough to try putting the essence of koi and ibex together before then.

Which is why we keep finding new creatures and new hybrids.
We can even say that the parentless hybrids are the proof these creatures have evolved on their own.

Though sometimes evolved naturally and get struck by random ancient magic is the same thing.

[TheNewBlack]

With the unicorns I think we should start with two main groups.
One group has the horse hooves. (original two, frost/earth and minicorns.)
((My idea is have the originals as the ancestor with the minicorn following their line (both the size of ponies). The frost and earth would have seperated from the line to form the taller unicorns.

The second group would have the cloven hooves with an unknown ancestor that formed the saebra and Silendarus unicorns.

We have some very goat-like unicorns, this is a feature found even in early Medieval depictions, where unicorns often have cloven hooves and beards like that of a billygoat.

We have the Hvitamarr and Vedhrmarr, that look very much like a sort of goat-horse hybrid:


Then there's the Kirins. Where do they fit in?


The Seleu and Haulos Kirins look very much like a type of goat.

There's also the Lunar and Solar Eclipse Kirins, who are also grouped as Kirins, but are nevertheless more like horses in appearance.



Of course, the Kirin are usually more deer or elk-like, with antlers, like the original Chestnut Kirin.



The unique thing about Kirins, though, is that they have scales along their backs, like that of a reptile.

Is it possible that Kirins are a "missing link" between reptiles and mammals, and a common ancestor of horses, goats, unicorns, and deer, now extinct and unknown to man? The description hints that this animal is exceedingly rare and more common in the past:

Spoiler

In darker age, tales used to be told around the fire, and a common one was about the kirin. It was said that a long time ago, a great lord went out on a hunt, with many followers. His hunting party was hard on the heels of a boar when they came to a clearing, far in the depths of the forest. No one living had ever ventured that far, and the way was unknown. A few turned back in fear, but the lord was so curious that he continued on. He stopped at the edge of the trees, looking at the meadow. The clearing was beautiful, bathed in sunlight, and full of flowers, but what the group glimpsed at the far edge was far more stunning. An unknown animal, much like a deer, stood at the edge watching the company. It stood unmoving only for a fleeting moment, before turning and disappearing into the forest. The hunting party pursued it, but the creature was gone as if it had never been. There are many accounts of this tale, and the animal always seems to be different; some stories say the deer was dark of fur, with markings the color of lightning. Other variations say it was tawny brown and amber, emanating gentleness. Other than the peace that came with the presence of this creature, there were delicate scales along its back, marking it apart from normal creatures. No commoner knows how to find these animals, and their magic makes them impossible to discover against their will. Magi know the true origin of this creature, and even have tamed it. Still, the kirin is not commonly known, for it does not often venture out of the woods of Silva.

Maybe the cloven hooved and horse-hooved unicorns both share a common ancestor of the Kirin, which split into many species.

Or perhaps instead of the cloven hooved unicorns and the horse-hooved unicorns descending from different unknown ancestors, maybe-just maybe-the Unicorn is the missing link between horses and goats, the transitionary species that for a moment in time retained traits from both animals, but has since gone extinct and been forgotten. Goats have 2 horns, horses have none, but Unicorns are right in between with 1 horn. Unicorns have the body of a horse, but some have many of the features of a goat, like the horn, beard and cloven hooves.

I'm thinking that maybe it could have gone like this:

Kirin
↓

Haulos & Seleu Kirins
Which split into two groups: one becomes more goat-like and becomes the Yales and other goats, while the other becomes more equine.
↓↳ <Alpine Yale

Horned Horses (Hvitamarr & Vedrhmarr, Silvan Narasad)
At this point, the horned horses split off into two groups: one develops wings and splits off into the Pegasus group, while the other becomes the Unicorns.
↓↳ <Niveus Enox, ancestor of the Enox family that later evolved into the Hipponoxes, the Hestens, and finally the Pegasi.

Cloven-hooved, single-horned Unicorns
↓

Horse-hooved Unicorns (with Minicorns a dwarf version splitting off from this group)
↓

Hornless Horses

EDIT: Of course, if we want to go the more scientifically authentic route, we could say Unicorns are descended from the Anta Tapirucorn, which are a lot like the Siberian Unicorns that actually existed thousands of years ago.
I feel like it's going to be really hard to hold to real-world genetic schemas, though.

[PKGriffin]

Concerning hybrids, we might consider that the lineman and cladistic systems aren’t especially good at handling inbreeding among highly disparate groups, so we might need to come up with something entirely new to account for scenarios that don’t occur [much] in real life. For instance, give hybrids a completely different type of name or code even.

Also, keep in mind that if we’re treating the site name as a common name, not all of them will reflect relationships (lobster dragons, I’m looking at you).

[jillybean711]

I quite like TheNewBlack's idea. But I've come up with a small theory to compliment theirs. The Kirin is very dragonlike in apperance. Perhaps Kirins are descendants of a Wyrm species that branched off to create the dragons and snakes, and seperately created the Kirins as well? Or instead of it being a Wyrm, perhaps it was a Serpaen that decides to become terrestrial, and not dwell below ground as much? Another idea I have, is that Kirin had an extra descendant, the Peryton, which then branched off to become the terrestrial deer. But the idea of an animal choosing to have wings and going back is a bit farfetched, but it has happened with the Whale in real life, and it could very well happen here. The Yale could also havee an extra descendant as well, the Bongos.

[TheNewBlack]

I quite like TheNewBlack's idea. But I've come up with a small theory to compliment theirs. The Kirin is very dragonlike in apperance. Perhaps Kirins are descendants of a Wyrm species that branched off to create the dragons and snakes, and seperately created the Kirins as well? Or instead of it being a Wyrm, perhaps it was a Serpaen that decides to become terrestrial, and not dwell below ground as much? Another idea I have, is that Kirin had an extra descendant, the Peryton, which then branched off to become the terrestrial deer. But the idea of an animal choosing to have wings and going back is a bit farfetched, but it has happened with the Whale in real life, and it could very well happen here. The Yale could also havee an extra descendant as well, the Bongos.

Yeah, I thought about the Kirins being related to dragons somehow. And the Bongos and Yales being related makes sense, along with all the other goat-like creatures...

[vipor]

Another idea I have, is that Kirin had an extra descendant, the Peryton, which then branched off to become the terrestrial deer. But the idea of an animal choosing to have wings and going back is a bit farfetched.

Yeah, I thought about the Kirins being related to dragons somehow. And the Bongos and Yales being related makes sense, along with all the other goat-like creatures...

The peryton has a few similarities to the drakelings.



Which we could use as a link.
After all, feathered reptiles have been around at several times during this planets life.
In that case we can say that the drakelings remained more dragon and the peryton ancestor sprouted off them.
Which splits into peryton and kirin.

I would put the enoxes in the peryton line then though. Clawed front feet, hoved hind.

Sometimes creatures who are geneticly worlds apart eveolve to look similar to other creatures.


How about we link the kirins to the drakeling dragon line.
Then link the others closer to the 'mammels'.
As horselike
single horned horse hoove
Double horned
no horns

Then have a goat line with
single horned cloven
goats

The enox would have a offshoot that would become the pegasus.