Assorted Spec Bio Projects

[WyvereWings]

If you've been keeping up with my Field Guide To Dragons, you'd probably guess that I really enjoy the genre of speculative biology. And you'd be correct! I love zoology, and it's so fun to see that applied to fictional creatures. I really enjoy applying speculative biology to my favorite pieces of media, I've made a big ramble about the biology of inklings and octolings once hehe.
There's a lot of fantastic spec bio projects I've dug through on the internet, and I want to highlight those!
Serina: The World of Birds is probably one of the best known spec bio projects, and that's for a good reason! The idea of a world with a limited amount of species at its beginning is such a great concept for a spec bio project, and what it does with the concept is simply amazing! There's so much creativity with how the creatures evolve, and the eventual story of the sophonts is really well done!
All Tomorrows (link is to a Youtube video, which is basically like an audiobook version of the book, which is free) is a smaller project, but it's still a very well done one. It focuses on the future of humanity, and how they evolve into new forms. The same author has made a lot of other great projects, like All Yesterdays, a look at what dinosaurs might have been like while they were still around.
Dracones Mundi is a spec bio project with dragons! There isn't too much of it yet, but what we do have is pretty great. The dragons look absolutely lovely, and there's some interesting pseudoscience with magic being a thing allowing dragons to fly. Actually, fantastical spec bio like this is a a very interesting subgenre of spec bio (Dragonology and Flight of Dragons are some good examples), and one I'd like to see a lot more of. Speaking of...
The Midgaheim Bestiary is another case of fantastical spec bio, focusing on creatures of medieval Europe like dragons and faeries. Unlike Dracones Mundi, the magical elements is a lot more equal with the biology, and like Dracones Mundi, there isn't a lot of released content yet. Which is a shame, since what we do have is an amazing weave of biology and magic! There is a Google Doc with all the planned creatures, and the creator's art blog has some creature designs and small tidbits of creature info. I've gotta admit, this is one of my biggest inspirations for Misadventures in Monstrology!
For more stuff about spec bio I haven't really dug into much, this video and its two(?) follow ups, and the channel Curious Archive are great resources to find more projects. The video by Ben G Thomas was what introduced me to spec bio in the first place!