A dinosaur illustration from the board game. By Dr Anthony Romilio.
Octopus tree, rainbow serpent and demon duck of doom - they're all on the cards for future scientists, thanks to a new game from a University of Queensland PhD student. School of Biological Sciences student Ariel Marcy has created a free, design-it-yourself version of her award-winning Go Extinct! board game. The original game centres around the evolutionary tree of land vertebrates (animals with a backbone that live on land), but a new online platform allows participants to create the same game around the evolutionary trees of different Australian animal and plant groups. "It could be animals of the Great Barrier Reef, marsupials (pouched mammals such as kangaroos and Tasmanian devils), Australia's ancient dinosaurs, our gorgeous flowering plants, or even venomous snakes," Ms Marcy said. "Children design the board by arranging the animals the way they'd like, while the platform ensures it stays scientifically accurate. "Next, they pick which animals should represent the major groups on the tree. For example, in the megafauna tree you get to pick between the Thunder Bird or the Demon Duck of Doom to represent the dinosaur bird group.
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