After Man: A Zoology from the Future

After Man: A Zoology of the Future is the first speculative biology project made by Dougla Dixon. In it, Dixon talks about life and the geography of the planet 50 million years into the future, in a world in which humans are now extinct.

Geography of the future
Dixon assumes that Europe and Africa would eventually fuse, closing up the Mediterranean Sea. Asia and North America would collide and close up the Bering Strait. South America would split off from Central America. Australia would collide with southern Asia, uplifting a mountain range. Finally, parts of eastern Africa would split off to form a new island which he called Lemuria. Other volcanic islands have been added, such as the Pacaus Archipelago and Batavia.

Major Groups of "After Man: A Zoology of the Future"
Main Article: List of animals in After Man: A Zoology of the Future

While there are a wide variety of creatures in After Man, many of these can fall into easily recognizable groups, e.g. rabbucks, gigantelopes, predator rats, etc. Some of the larger groups in the future include...

Rabbucks - Rabbucks are the future equivalent of deer and antelope but descended, as the name suggests, from rabbits. They live in almost any environment, and they mostly feed on grass. Their anatomy resembles that of a hooved mammals, though there are a few primitive hopping forms lurking around.

Gigantelope - The gigantelope take the niche in the future that was formerly held by elephants, giraffes, moose, and other large herbivores. Resembling the ancient sauropods, they are descended from antelopes, and range in a wide variety of forms. One subbranch have evolved into the large, moose-like herbivores of the north, the hornheads.

Predator Rats - The major group of predators in the future. Like our modern carnivorans, they exist on almost every continent and fill almost every carnivorous niche. They evovled, as the name suggests,from rats, and range in forms resembling polar bears, wolves, wolverines, cats, and even aquatic walrus-like forms.

Carnivorans - For the most part, Dixon assumes that carnivorans have either gone extinct, or have been forced into peripheral niches like the creodonts were in the Oligocene. A few still exist, such as the shurrack, and only one, the striger, is descended from cats.