Here at the Moonlit Vault, the Umbreon father and son team explore the topic of "what if" and mysteries surrounding Pokemon lore. 
The Mismatched Pokemon of Prehistory
Pokemon Sword & Shield introduce us to a rather bizarre concept unlike any before it in the Pokemon canon. When you find the various fossils; Bird, Drake, Dino, & Fish, you bring them to an individual (appropriately named Cara Liss…) who will resurrect the long lost beasts.
However, unlike fossils of Poke years past, they don’t simply bring back a complete creature (think Omanyte, Kabuto, or Aerodactyl). Instead, Cara Liss slaps together random pieces to make what can only be described as chimeric abominations!
In what is clearly a nod to the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs of the Crystal Palace Park, these are inaccurate depictions of once was. In real life, the sculptures of dinosaurs and other creatures featured at said London park are completely inaccurate by modern standards and knowledge.
Looking back with the eyes of today, the models there are highlights of the errors of early paleontology. Fossils were often incorrectly combined giving an improper image of what many of these prehistoric creatures looked like.
So in the same manner, as a very meta commentary, the UK based Galar features improperly reconstructed fossils, skewing our view of what the original creatures really were. But is that really the case? Let’s look at the four possible combinations and notice an unusual trend in their descriptions…
The Sword Pokedex description is rather confusing. It says “In ancient times, it was unbeatable thanks to its powerful lower body, but it went extinct anyway after it depleted all its plant-based food sources.”
This makes little to no sense, depending on the context. When talking about ‘ancient times’ is it talking about one-half of the creature? Clearly Dracozolt looks like two different Pokemon slammed together, but the dex entry specifies that in ancient times it had a powerful lower body. Weird, right? Let’s look at who’s next.
For the next electric fossil Pokémon, the Sword Pokedex says “The shaking of its freezing upper half is what generates its electricity. It has a hard time walking around”. The Shield Pokedex says, “This Pokemon lived on prehistoric seashores and was able to preserve food with the ice on its body. It went extinct because it moved so slowly.”
Again, the wording is quite unusual. It almost sounds like it’s talking about two different creatures while at the same time implying its mismatched body is what was responsible for its extinction. If Arctozolts didn’t have such a hard time walking around, they wouldn’t have gone extinct. It also mentions that the freezing upper half of its body is what generates electricity. Is it talking about the creature now? Or implying that the original creature was also a hybrid?
In Dracovish’s Shield Pokedex entry, it says, “Its mighty legs are capable of running at speeds exceeding 40 mph, but this Pokemon can’t breathe unless it’s underwater.” Now while this does sound like it’s talking about the current, modern day creature, when tied into the Arctovish’s dex description, it raises some questions.
So the point here is that Dracovish and Arctovish both share the same misaligned fish head. In both cases, the fish head is sort of just glued on awkwardly to the respective body. In the case of Dracovish, it mentioned breathing issues in general, which makes sense for it since the fish head is just blatantly stuck onto the end of the drake’s tail, obviously it would have breathing issues, it has no respiratory system. But notice what the Shield Pokedex says for its fellow fish fossil Arctovish; “The skin on its face is impervious to attack, but breathing difficulties made this Pokémon go extinct anyway.”
Much like its water-dragon cousin Dracovish, Arctovish’s head was plopped on wrong, in its case, downside up. So again, breathing issues, obviously. But why does its description in the dex say that breathing issues were what caused the creature to face extinction in the first place?
The bottom line is that I believe the conspiracy runs a lot deeper than just an allegory for the early woes of real-world paleontology. Perhaps Cara Liss knows something we don’t and it’s all a giant red herring. Just maybe these ancient creatures were misshapen freaks of nature? Who knows? But either way it makes me wonder what will happen next.
Could we possibly ever see complete versions of these mismatched creatures that should never have existed? I wonder with the forthcoming expansions that will further delve into unexplored corners of Galar, will we see? If the dexes were in fact intentionally or unintentionally just as confusing and inaccurate at the creatures themselves, then perhaps there were full versions of the dino, the fish, the drake, and the bird. And maybe we can see what their complete forms looked like.
The one other option, if they wanted to get things even wilder, is what if we were able to blend together the other combinations? Perhaps get to see the fish’s body or the drake’s top half on the bird’s bottom half? The possiblities aren’t necessarily endless, but they could be interesting.
Regardless of what the truth is, I would like to know more. What say you?
