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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mythusmage" data-source="post: 2779714" data-attributes="member: 571">Getting back on track (if only for this one post) ...The first question to ask yourself regarding any terrestrial location is, how wet is it? That is, how much precipitation does it get on an annual basis?Other than the eastern coastal plain and the far north Australia is dry. Not terribly dry, but dry enough that plant life is sparse and scattered. Means animal life lives on the thin edge most of the time. With few herbivores to predate it pretty much precludes large predators. Even at best Australia has only dingos and thylacines as predators, and they are small animals with a limited range. Get out to the really dry parts and you're limited to goannas and other small lizards.Once you've learned how wet a place is, you need to determine such things as physical geography, soil chemistry, plant cover, and animal life. The Amazon basin gets a lot of rain every year. But that same rain leeches away at the soil. Plant life has to grow fast to sequester minerals; without this fast growth Amazonia would erode away into the Atlantic.In contrast Central Asia around Mongolia gets nowhere near as much precipitation. But what it does get is sufficient to support some of the richest grasslands in the world. And it is these grasslands that in turn supports herds of wild and domestic grazers of such a size that it makes the fabled herds of the Serengeti look pitiful.Now consider the Olympic Penninsula in Washington State. A locale with a combination of conditions that can support an amazing mix of plant and animal life. Including (quite possibly) a few hundred (at least) 800 pound bipedal primates.Of course, most folks aint gonna be bothered by a little climatological inconsistency as long as the adventurin's good. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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