By The Hodderscape Team

Posted on November 3, 2014 in Books, Fun Stuff with tags Nanododo, Science Fiction, Time Travel, Writing Advice

Happy NaNoWrMo Day 3! To inspire all you NaNoers out there, Hodderscape is going to feature a little extra content every weekday this month. Welcome to NaNoDodo!

Writing a time-travel novel? I09 has a brilliant article about oxygen levels over the course of the planet’s history that you should definitely read before sending your hero back to the pre-Cambrian period without an oxygen tank (or swimming gear). There were giant scorpions, mega-volcanoes, and… either a lot of oxygen or not very much at all, depending on where you send your time-traveller. Choice quote: ‘no one is certain why giant millipedes died out as the Carboniferous came to a close.’

The article mentions a few of the freakier animals that have populated the Earth over the last 500 million years or so – here are a few of our favourites:

The helicoprion, a shark with a spiral jaw (naturally, that jaw is full of teeth).

The hallucigenia, a weird little creature with a lot of spines.

The gorgonops, a terrifying sabre-tooth wolf-like creature. (Here are seven more horrifying prehistoric beasts.)

And, of course, the still-living lion’s mane jellyfish, a jellyfish that can grow to be 6’7″ across.

Happy writing!