Age of Evolution

A new world... teeming with life that knows not what it has lost but only what it has been given.

After the War of the Primes brought the Age of Primes to a bitter end, a new era began with the emergence of new life on Cybertron: The Age of Evolution. This was a period of growth and chaotic change as the first generation of Cybertronians emerged from the Well of All Sparks. It would conclude with the Great Cataclysm, which would lead to the Age of Origins.

Fiction

The Covenant of Primus

A dying Onyx Prime, Thirteen, and Micronus Prime entered the Well of All Sparks with Onyx's Triptych Mask. After a period of no activity, the planet began to rumble and ripple energy. Hot gas escaped the Well, knocking down Alchemist Prime and Alpha Trion. Saved from falling into the Well by Prima and Vector Prime, the four Primes watched as a beam of energy shot out into space. Using his Lenses, Alchemist watched the beam reach the edges of the universe, discerning that the Triptych Mask was scanning the cosmos for living beings to use as information to create a new race of Cybertronians. The beam would eventually turn off, and the Well widened, allowing a new wave of creatures to emerge from it. These first tiny creatures pranced, wriggled, ran, slithered, and fluttered about... more animalistic than humanoid. While Alpha Trion would try to catalog all of them in the Covenant of Primus, the sheer number of new lifeforms made it virtually impossible to record all of them.

Later, Prima would point out to Alpha Trion the appearance of more bipedal Cybertronians, including a reincarnated Thirteen, who would later be known as Orion Pax. As the first humanoid Cybertronians walked out of the Well, the Primes discussed whether to show these new beings their ability to transform with their transformation cog or not. Prima decided that the T-cog should remain secret for now, believing that the Primes could reveal its' existence if necessary -- or better yet, the new Cybertronians might discover it on their own.

On the last day of the Cybertronian Genesis taking place, beasts larger than any creature that had emerged from the well prior appeared. Prima named them the Predacons, with the first three of their kind being Predaking, Lazerback, and Twinstrike. Predaking's first act was to kill another slow-moving creature, consuming its Energon. Their presence over a millennia would establish a new ecosystem of predator and prey.

Predaking, despite being labeled a savage by Prima, was a clever ruler of beasts. Roaming the Plains of Iacon, they enjoyed the sunlight as they looked over their prey, lesser beings in Predaking's mind. Predaking had a few encounters with Prima, one of the few bipedal beings on the planet who could stand against him. Although Predaking despised Prima, he eventually admitted that there was a dominant being like him and that it had the power to kill him. Fortunately, Prima was only looking to keep Predaking away from the "miner-bots", not to kill the Predacon.

Alpha Trion would begin observing events across "Deep Time", as stellar cycles became moments and millennia became "hours". Early primitive culture developed among the bipedal Cybertronians, surviving life amid the threats of Predacons and the temporary crises of meteor strikes. But just as the Age of Primes had a dark ending, the Age of Evolution would end with death and transformation with the Great Cataclysm. While the disaster did not wipe out all life, it did mark the end for the Predacons. The Covenant of Primus

Prime cartoon

Primus became one with the core of Cybertron, creating life through the Well of All Sparks. One Shall Rise, Part 1 The Predacons once ruled Cybertron but became extinct at the beginning of Cybertronian history, in an apocalyptic wipe-out known as the Great Cataclysm. Evolution

Notes

• The Age of Evolution, quite frankly, was not part of the Binder of Revelation's plans for the Aligned continuity family's timeline. Rather, it would seem that the Age of Evolution's creation is owed to the toy design director at Hasbro who pushed for Prime season 3 to become Beast Hunters rather than a pirates based storyline. With the introduction of Predacons who roamed ancient Cybertron, it fell to the Covenant of Primus to bridge the gap between the Age of Primes / "Fall of the Primes" era and the Age of Wrath / "Age of Wraith" [sic] with the Age of Evolution.
• The Age of Evolution acts as a Cybertronian analogue to the Mesozoic era of dinosaurs, with the Great Cataclysm acting as an analogue to the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs. Does that make Beast Hunters the Transformers version of Jurassic Park?

References

	Timeline of the Aligned continuity family
Theomachy (Expulsion of Unicron) Age of Primes (War of the Primes) Age of Evolution (Great Cataclysm) Age of Origins Age of Wrath Golden Age Age of Rust Great War (Great Exodus)