During our planet's development it has had very different atmospheres to the one we breathe today, thicker, and containing elements we would find toxic. And there were all sorts of exotic creatures and plants that don't exist today that we could use as models for alien worlds.
How about twelve metre high fungi forests? Earth had these around 350 million years ago. When they were ready to reproduce other creatures would have to keep well out of the way of these huge fruiting bodies as they exploded into the air.
Or how about trees that have retained the earliest mechanism for photosynthesising, scales all up their stems? A forest with scale-laden trees would look very different from the dense canopy of photosynthesising green leaves that we know today.
Or perhaps your world is dominated by giant ferns that suck up all the carbon dioxide in its atmosphere. You'd better plan for the onset of the next ice age then. Or maybe the inhabitants of a world threatened with a runaway greenhouse effect would grow giant ferns to stop that disaster.
At many periods during its development our Earth has looked radically different from the way it does today. Maybe the dinosaurs didn't die out on another world. I wonder what kind of civilisation they would have produced.
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