Science Fiction and Evolutionary Biology

[becarpenter]

Biology Online promises to me that I can find the 'answers to all of my questions'. Whew. Glad I came across this site, because I really need some. This is going to be out of the ballpark for some of you, though (well, hopefully not so much).

I am a College Freshman in Creative Writing, hoping to become a science fiction novelist or screen writer. So, recently, I have been throwing around a few ideas for a new piece and have developed this neat idea about a Dyson Sphere. In the very near future a portal appears in international waters outside of Bermuda (trite, yet fitting) connecting Earth to the surface of this Dyson Sphere. Its a mysterious Earth-like environment riddled with alien ruins and enough secrets to drive the plot of the novel, but that's besides the point.

The point is that, in this tale, the creators of this Dyson Sphere have been 'seeding' the construct with copies of Earth fauna, flora, even bacteria and other life forms... for the last 250 million years. This is, so far, a good idea for a setting in my book, one that I have become pretty passionate about. For the last few weeks, though, I've struggled with creating the evolutionary history of this piece of crap. I've come to a dead-end, because try as I might I cannot single-handedly duplicate the efforts of others who have set to similiar tasks vast in their requirements.

I guess I'm just looking for some assistance where it might not be, but you guys came up first in my google search. Can anyone point me in the right direction for designing a new timeline of evolution? If those evolutionary biologists here were forced with the job of rewriting the last 250 million years of natural selection, how would you do it? I'm not trying to map the entire ecology of this Dyson Sphere out (with it having the surface area of millions... billions of Earths) but just some hints on how life from the Triassic might have evolved to present day if there were no extinction events and had to constantly compete with select new transplants from our planet. I could give a few more specifics if anyone is interested in this project, but I'm not searching for someone to do all the work for me, just to give me a point in the right direction.

Well, I hope this thread works,
Thanks,
Brendon Carpenter