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This Allocene rodent from Central Asia is a descendent of the modern day Russian hamsters. Their overall body shape hasn't changed much, but over time they developed horny outgrowths on their heads which differentiate the differents roles in their society. The ones with a flat dome are simple travellers, the ones that create new colonies, and the first morph of the sterile female workers, those that loose the dirt and chew through thick roots. The ones with the horn-like outgrowth are the morph that "lives" the shortest. These are the males that fight for the right to mate with the queen, once they become the mates they loose the horns over time and become the flat domes again. The ones with the shovel-like outgrowths are the workers that use these "shovels" to dig as well as shove the dirt out (hence their name).
The queen is nothing special morphology like, she basically looks like a fat version of the travellers.

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Submitted on
February 14
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:iconjylerforever19:
It's always the queen...XD they're cute!
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:iconasanbonsam:
Yeah they seem to have been generall liked.
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:iconaloodonguy67:
Mood: Love ~Aloodonguy67 Mar 9, 2013  Student Artist
This is great!!
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:iconelectreel:
Wow, very impressive! :omfg: I love both the concept and the illustration! I would prefer them to be descendants of some other species of rodents, and to inhabit central Asia if possible.
PD: I know you asked me about them some weeks ago, Iīm terribly sorry I didnīt answer, I was really busy by then.
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:iconasanbonsam:
And so was I, why do you think the hyena dog isn't already drawn?^^

As for the moles... Well the modern day mole rats were the most likely candidates in my mind, albeit considered the timeline they probably changed not enough. Do you know another candidate that could be their ancestor?
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:iconelectreel:
About their ancestors, maybe some kind of cricetid.
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:iconasanbonsam:
Man I am getting a crash course at taxonomy from this forum :D

Well if its going to be a cricetid I think the most likely candidate would be a hamster, they already have the burrowing behavior. Most are solitary however, so I guess the species who would have the shortest way to go would be one of the two Russian hamster species that already form monogamous bonds.
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:iconelectreel:
:D Yeah, some species of hamster or vole could evolve into these burrowing forms given 35 million years.
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:iconasanbonsam:
That makes sense. So I changed it.
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:iconelectreel:
I want to show a faunal contrast between the modern day and the Allocene period, and experiment with new groups of creatures, rather than keep already existing ones.
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