Sauceback
| Sauceback | |
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Saucebacks are a major group of fauna on Sagan 4 Alpha. Originally conceptualized by Oviraptor during Week 3, they were named for the fact that the first sauceback, the Golden Sauceback, looked like it had sauce on its back.
Controversy
Saucebacks are, as a group, generally uncontroversial; quite the opposite, in fact, to the point that Sagan 4's contributors diversified them so much early on that there were simply too many apex predators in one place. In order to resolve this, the sauceback plague was created to thin out their populations and restrict there to being only one sauceback per biome. This lasted until Week 18, when it was replaced by the less-deadly snottazzle.
There have been some controversies related to individual sauceback species. The Glacial Sauceback, for instance, is noted to have aquatic larvae--which was actually a misinterpretation stemming from the related metadromeodont saucebacks, where this was a novel adaptation. However, as the glacial sauceback is the ancestor of nearly all modern sauceback species which all evolved with the assumption that the aquatic larva ancestry was correct, this misinterpretation had to be canonized as an independent development.
Common Misinterpretations
It was very common, for most of Sagan 4's history, for the ring of nostrils around a sauceback's face to be misinterpreted as eyes. In reality, the vast majority of saucebacks don't have eyes. The "eyestrils" of some modern groups such as the ornitheres were directly inspired by this misinterpretation.
The jaws of saucebacks have been misinterpreted as immobile tusks several times independently. There are also several cases of artists straight-up forgetting that saucebacks have teeth.
It's somewhat common for new artists to miss the spiracles on the tail.
References in Other Projects
Sagan 4 Beta's so-called "notbacks" were inspired by saucebacks, and even originally bore the name "neosaucebacks".
Sauceback knockoffs were, for a time, a common sight in Spore-based worldbuilding projects. They frequently had a ring of eyes instead of nostrils, though whether this was due to misinterpretation or an intentional attempt to set them apart is unclear.