My degree is in Scientific Illustration :)
Now I'm currently high off my tits on allergy medicine and Star Wars has only a passing relationship with Scientific Rigor, but let's have a little fun with HIGHLY SPECULATIVE EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE!!
Anyway, for those of you that aren't neck deep into the world's most deranged Space Opera, these are Wookiees and Kaminoans:
Wookiees are about 6-7 ft tall on average, Kaminoans about 7-9 ft.
Wookiees are from the Planet Kashyyk, which, in the style of single-biome planets in Star Wars, a temperate rain forest, not unlike the north pacific coast of the US and Canada, (and are also the ancestors of Ewoks according to this article I just read). Kaminoans are from an entirely flooded ocean-world called Kamino, and have been genetically modifying themselves for ages. I genuinely cannot remember if it's one of SW's 20-odd canons or a really good fic I read, but IIRC:
1. Kamino used to have solid land before the Bougies flooded it for ethnic genocide reasons.
2. Wookiees are not native to Kashyyk either- their ancestors crash-landed or were abandoned on the planet over a million years ago.
So, perhaps neither species is Native to their respective homeworld, what would the theoretical ancestor look like? Let's start with some features of the descendant species! Some notable features I'm deriving from half-remembered canon and a GREAT exhibit on costuming I saw:
Wookiees have tons of hair, but no undercoat. I'm basing this off the fact that Chewbacca's original costume was made from wigs, not animal fur, but it makes a sort of sense- Long hair would act as an insulator by keeping air close to the skin, and is oily enough to keep them from getting soaked in the rain, or waterlogged when they need to take to occasional swim to get from one tree-city to another.
The designers took some significant inspiration from Baikil Seals when it came to the eyes, nose and texture of Kaminoans- they're officially bald, but the velvety texture suggests they might have fine fur like humans do. This makes a sort of sense if the Kaminoans modified themselves to fit their watery new world.
Kaminoan males have a crest on the tops of their heads- while they may have added something later, but bauplan genes, esp hair patterns are hard to fuck with, so the genetic potential for a crest was probably present in the Wookiee-Kaminoan Common Ancestor (or WKCA). Similarly, the Wookiee costumes I saw had notably longer fur along the neck and spine than the rest of the body. This suggests that the WKCA had a mane like a horse or zebra.
Dark Sclera and lighter-colored Irises, and Vision in the UV and infrared spectra. Apparently, the stark-white walls of Tipoca city on Kamino are covered in UV-spectrum murals!
A much broader ranger of hearing than humans. The uulating sound of a wookiee is well-known, and in one of the books, Kaminoan native language is described as high-pitched humming and trilling, which sounds like pitched-up Shryywook to me!
Both species walk at a very long, smooth lope, despite being from Arboreal and Aquatic worlds respectively. Both Species are very capable of sprinting at great speed and have quite the jump, when needed.
Both Species are Hypercarnivorous Apex predators that have a NASTY bite- Both species still retain prominent canine teeth.
A lightly furred body with no undercoat
A spinal mane, which is not a defensive feature, but a Heat-Dispersing one.
Dark-pigmented eyes with light-colored irises and a broad range of vision- features commonly seen in animals that deal with highly variable levels of light, like something that hunts at dawn and dusk between bright sunlight and extreme darkness.
Excellent hearing and a musical language that can be heard across great distances.
Legs meant to walk very long distances and put on the occasional turn of speed, but not stalk.
Was likely a social carnivore with BIG-ASS TEETH.
All these taken together suggest one thing: The Common Ancestor of Wookiees and Kaminoans evolved in a DESERT.
It's specifically a social sprinting predator- humans terminator-pursuit our prey down, leopards ambush, but the exceptionally long legs and short ankles (Those are short ankles on the Kaminoan compared to many terrestrial mammals) suggest a hybrid strategy more like that of African wild dogs- this is an animal that runs it's prey down with a lot of power, but it doesn't like to run for long, so it brought friends to corner the prey.
We are looking at a very tall Mad Max Extra with the galaxy's Most Magnificent Mowhawk here.
You may note some Bonus features on the above Sketch- the larger ears and heavier legs- Wookiee ears and necks would have shrunk fairly fast to conserve body heat in such a wet environment, and the overall size decreased in order to be light enough to actually manage their new arboreal lifestyle.
The Kaminoans were selecting for culturally desirable traits over all else, hence the lack of ears, dubious structural integrity in the neck and total absence of Ass.
The WKCA is have been caked the fuck up on account of walking across huge amounts of desert, needs those big ears for thermal regulation and hearing each other and prey, and being purely terrestrial, probably outweighs both descendant species by a good amount.
I also gave it a Nubbin tail, because it's cute, and there's no evidence that Wookiees and Kaminoans DON'T have them.
Now I know I've been discussing carnivory, but mammals wander all over that spectrum of Omnivory all the time. Pandas are bears that are Vegan, Rodents love chicken.
So please consider, because it makes me laugh:
The Common Ancestor is an Ungulate.
There have been Carnivorous ungulates before! Andrewsarchus comes to mind. I think they were social herbivores that developed a taste for meat as their planet dried out and these very large animals needed to get creative about calories and moisture in the encroaching desert
...Like if giraffes decided to start eating tourists.
Anyway, after doing some Lineart, giving her a BF (the Kaminoans made the crest a sex-indicative characteristic, which is HILARIOUS to the WKCA), omitting any gender-presenting nipples or sex organs to avoid the banhammer, Giving them toe-hooves like Eohippus and making them soft and velvety like a proper Desert Creachur:
Behold! The Common Ancestor of Wookiees and Kaminoans (and technically Ewoks too!). Truly, Speculative Evolutionary History is a fascinating subject...
...Except.
It's a Big Galaxy.
Much of it Unexplored.
The Common Ancestor might still be out there.
Lurking.
:)
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