There was no mistake. The caterpillar-humping grape-brains of the lowland swamps were one and the same species as the upright-striding melon-minds on their edge-of-space islands. Chances were good that the T-alphas, as metamorphic body donors, were also members of the apex genome club and possibly the T-betas, T-gammas and T-deltas as well. A single strand of mezan DNA might tie together all the spar-dwelling apex creatures of the planet. But who came first? And how did the DNA come to express itself in such radically different forms?

The first question was easy to answer. The awkwardly named omegamezans, having existed prior to the core shattering, were the clear forerunners of their kind. Their DNA contained a flexible body-making template that enabled them to colonize the spars clear up to the stratosphere.

As to the matter of how, some kind of epigenetic overdrive appeared to be responsible. Environmental conditions activated certain gene chains while suppressing others. Combine that with a reset switch to trigger full-on regenerative metamorphosis and you had a biological miracle: a mid-life shapeshifter.

How did all of that extra body plan information fit into the DNA? That part was trivial. Bodies were constructed from nested building blocks. Circulation, brain-size, lung capacity and many other features could be scaled using simple rules. All that was left was to arrange the parts. Here too there were pre-cobbled solutions. Hands always went on the end of arms. Eyes went on the head which sat on the shoulders. Only the DNA bootstrapping routines had to change.

Such genomic fungibility was not unheard of on Earth. Humans, after all, shared ninety nine percent of their genome with chimpanzees while carrying along the remnants of Neanderthals and ancient viruses. In that sense, the omegamezans were not so remarkable. They were prototypical salamanders adapted to high gravity and atmospheric pressure. They had merely stumbled upon a way to speciate without branching their DNA.

Now that the link with the omegamezans was established, the CU set to work piecing together the evolutionary whodunit.