Why no animal life ?

There was only plant life on earth for a couple million decades, before the first bigger organisms (than micro-) evolved to living outside the water. According only to science, not thirdparty colourful comic books ofcourse, so idk if thats legit.

Ha ha! You're a funny guy, Fifield! I wonder if Fire and stone is canon?

My thoughts on the subject is that the black goo has mutated the wildlife into somethin that is lurking in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to confront the crew of the Covenant and scare the s**t out of the audience...

         " Bees have hives, man " 

I believe Fire & Stone is canon

Indeed it is Rick,Fire and Stone is just a frame of reference.I'm aware of plant life before any kind of life on earth,but the thing here is Paradise has had some kind of life.Whether it's engineer's or not remains to be seen.

canon for fans maybe not the (film) makers ^^

Once again,a frame of reference.

I'm not convinced F&S is canon. Anything Fox and RS says is canon, and that obeys the "rules" laid down in writing by said entities, is all that can be truly considered "canon", like it or not.

That is indeed a good point Starlogger,Ridley has said he is not beholden to the expanded universe.I wonder what this rule book means for the franchise in general.Back on topic,I do believe their was animal life on Paradise.Some time ago some one did a thread on some weird animal skeletons in Davids workshop.I'm having difficulties finding it though 

This is a interesting subject and one worth a good debate... we have to hope they have done research and have actual answers to why there is no signs of Life they dont have to tell us what this reason is... just as long as those behind the Story and Movie know a reason for it..

Much like the 10 Page Alien Rulebook we wont know every detail this contains but the Studio do and its a guideline for every person who works on future movies to reference towards.

Back to the subject....

I think we need to consider the reasons for it... here are potentially what could be at play... just my TWO Cents mind.

1) The Black Caused this.... but they would need to be following some guidelines that Prometheus set out, as that movie showed us the effects of the Black Goo and from infected Life new Life would arise... (Fire and Stone kind of stuck to this). We have  to consider unless they are adding a new effect of the Black Goo, that its unlikely this would have left no Life on the World, and also left the Engineers/Paradise Natives the way they appeared.

Also David would have needed life to experiment with so i cant see how he kills all life but keeps some back....  WELL I HAVE ONE THEORY... 

2) Paradise simply never had much Life Anyway, it had Trees, Water and everything for Life but no Actual Advanced Life apart from microscopic or even small life (insects/worms etc).  But i think this could be unlikely too, especially if this was in effect a loosely connected Garden of Eden in the context of the Franchise.

3) Some Energy Weapon or Virus (not Black Goo) that was released and killed off nearly all life on this World apart from Plant Life that can procreate without Pollination by the help of Animals or Insects or other Organisms.

============================

Some of the concept work from the Set Reports seemed to indicate mutations happening on the Trees and Spores growing from them....   If the Black Goo reacted how it was shown in the movie and could infect all life which includes Plant-life then surely Paradise would look like LV-223 did in Fire and Stone to some degree.

THE ONLY LOGICAL

Explanation i have is that some event made those above the Engineers or who created Paradise for a Purpose decided to pull the Plug like God did with the Great Flood and the Temple/Cathedral Complex was turned into some Noahs Ark

Where Specimens of Life was collected for Safe Keeping..

Before the Plug was pulled with some Virus or Energy Weapon or both that killed off all this Life, apart from those kept within the Safety of that Cathedral Complex... (And Plant Life)

When the beings on Paradise realized what the plan was they was attempting to get to this Place for Safety.

So when David and Shaw arrive there are Lifeforms and maybe Engineers or beings left but few in number and these was to repopulate the World after the Planned Extermination had happened.

The only other option is indeed as above but the Energy Weapon affected a area and the wildlife simply fled and migrated from the site of this Disaster (so wildlife may be on other parts of this World).

But then maybe they are not thinking things through and David Drops Black Goo that Burns and Mummified Engineers and made all other life simply vanish..

WHICH WOULD BE VERY POOR WRITING...

As far as Fire and Stone being Canon... i think this is a Grey Area...  and would imply Predators are also part of the Franchise...

The Source i had claimed that while Fire and Stone should not be considered direct Canon... the events and things that are shown in the series as far as ideas could very well be explored in the future of the Franchise.

What if the planet is not paradise in the way we perceive it to be?, what if the planet is a testing ground for creating humanoid life only, until david showed up and tookover(only speculation), sure it would need plant life to keep recycling and cleansing atmosphere and water to drink and who planted the wheat? david or was it the primitive humanoids or the engineers? remember Adam and Eve were plant eaters before the flood.

I tend to think you're on the right track airshaft_surprise.  This might not be Paradise yet, although I'm not entirely sure.

This planet could actually be more like Hell than Paradise and acts as a stop along the way to Paradise, which we'd see later.

Fox has been working pretty closely with the comic book guys this time around, so I think it's safe to say that the canon will line up a little better than, say, the whole Alien 3 nightmare.

That's not to say we should consider the comics to be taking place in the same reality as the films.  Film canon always trumps anything that happens in the comics/books, and they could change everything on us again in the next Big Deletion.  

If the AVP movies would have actually followed the comics, then AVP might not have resulted in such a mess for the company.  Let's try and erase those films from our memory.

This lack of life on the planet has been bugging me too.  If the black goo can act as an accelerant of evolution (like in the comics), then we would likely see various forms of life.  The fact we don't see anything other than hybridized plant life could potentially indicate this fertile planet wasn't seeded with the DNA by the Engineers in the same way Earth was...

I think the outbreak happened relatively recently in the grand scheme of things; weaponized goo with the broken down Alien DNA in it was released on the planet, which gives us ALIENS evolving at an accelerated rate (and dead Engineers). The goo acts as a chemical accelerant that helps Fire spread faster.

To add:  my guess is the infection spread through the trees like wildfire during the early stages of the initial outbreak, which drove most of the animals in the region away.

The Fire died down after wiping out the Engineers, leaving the infected spores & charred Engineer bodies behind.  Many animal species in the region died off during "the fire," yet the tree/plant species grew back even greener afterwards: the trees themselves are able to survive & reproduce, and there are some plants/seeds that have adapted to the fire.

It wasn't an extinction level event, but "the fire" drove most of the animal and insect species away from the bioregion.  The open grassland (where the crew lands and wheat is separated from the chaff) is left relatively unscathed by the fire because it's a fair distance away from the flames.

With all the Engineers dead, and without the birds and the bees to cross-pollinate spores, the seeds remain dormant until a viable host wanders along & falls prey to them.  Plants have both male & female parts to them, but if they don't cross-pollinate they're only producing a clone of the parent plant.

There are some species who migrated to different parts of the biosphere simply because they could.  Worker bees can leave.  Even drones can fly away.  The Queen is their slave. So the infected bee and bird species started building their "nests" in different locations.  They simply decided to start their new lives in a better spot.  As the seasons changed, the "birds and the bees" migrated between ecosystems, becoming part of new life cycles elsewhere in the biosphere.

So yeah, any birds left on the planet have learned to avoid this region by now.  Most wouldn't be caught dead building their nests here.  A few bird and bee species carried spores to other parts of the planet when they left and built hives there.  All the Engineers everywhere on the planet are dead, and David wants to get the hell off of it as soon as the company arrives. 

^are you a science-fictive biologist? hehe

I've been thinking about this way too much lol.  I'm trying to get inside Daniels' head a little bit with all the gardening ideas.

Whoever planted the seeds was working with domesticated wheat, causing Daniels to consider many of the possible implications.  Daniels' knowledge about gardening allows her to perceive things in a way that allows the filmmakers to approach the Garden of Eden ideas from different perspectives than Dr. Shaw, or W-Y private security.

I think Daniels almost immediately begins to understand how parts of the life cycle work, because she's constantly thinking about the life cycles of plants, animals, and insects in general.

Dr. Shaw might have a different view on the farming practices of the Engineers.  Some archaeologists think that farming is a necessary precursor to the emergence of full-scale civilization. The cultural evolutionist camp believes that all human cultures develop (or "evolve") along somewhat similar lines, and that farming happens after we leave hunter-gather and nomadic modes of subsistence.  If Dr. Shaw didn't plant the wheat herself, then she likely has her own set of questions about it.  

As always,very intriguing theory CarynDelacroix.I am uncertain about it because Paradise as well,starting with "The past to Paradise begins in hell."Comparable to the Divine Comedy.The way I figure it is this I indeed hell,hence no life only death.

As for the wheat,I believe i read somewhere that it can be self growing,though i wouldn't quote me on that.Also could corpses of engineers be used as fertilizer?

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm thinking with that line from the trailer.  If they follow Dante's Inferno and Milton's Paradise Lost, then we may need to pass through "Hell" to eventually make it to Paradise -- or possibly to get back to paradise. 

This could almost be like a pit stop along the path to Paradise that the trailer mentions. Depending on the way they arrange the films, I think they could go a few different ways with it.  

It's tough to say anything for certain at this point.  Having the two lines of the ALIEN in the film complicates things further... In some of the very early ideas Daniels was a security officer, but most of those ideas seem to have moved to the books.

If there are any worms in the soil on the planet, they can help the planet become more fertile.  With the Engineer bodies, they'd need to decompose and have their nutrients absorbed into soil.  The husks on the wheat might be a little too tough for them to be spread by the wind, but it's possible for those seeds to spread.  If it's wild wheat that hasn't been domesticated over several generations, it can be spread by the wind alone.  But what draws Daniels' attention is that someone has been modifying the seeds over time, replanting.  

I  believe that the burnt bodies are from a flashback, where we get to see what David's been up to the last ten years. When he set things in motion.

The field of wheat is ten years later, when things has started to grow back, mutated by the black goo, hence the spores. And this is when the crew of the Covenant arrives.

What buggers me is the size of the wheat! Is'nt it very large?

           " Bees have hives, man "