[EricD]

This is a model I've wanted to build since reading the book, and before the movie comes out. This is a zalif (member of the mulefa species) as described in Philip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass, the last book of His Dark Materials trilogy (better known as The Golden Compass, since the movie came out).

"What she saw made her head spin. At first it looked like a motorcycle gang. Then she thought it was a herd of wheeled animals. But that was impossible. No animal could have wheels. She wasn't seeing it. But she was. There were a dozen or so. They were roughly the same size as the grazing creatures [the size of deer or antelope], but leaner and gray-colored, with horned heads and short trunks like elephants'. They had the same diamond-shaped structure as the grazers, but somehow they had evolved, on their front and rear single legs, a wheel. Then, as they came to a halt not fifty yards away, and the dust settled, she suddenly made the connection, and she couldn't help laughing out loud with a little cough of delight. The wheels were seedpods. Perfectly round, immensely hard and light-- they couldn't have been designed better. The creatures hooked a claw through the center of the pods with their front and rear legs, and used their two lateral legs to push against the ground and move along. While she marveled at this, she was also a little anxious, for their horns looked formidably sharp, and even at this distance she could see intelligence and curiosity in their gaze."

A number of people have tried this (Google mulefa and you'll see), and I feel most of them look too much like elephants, while Pullman describes them as lean, and a cross between antelopes and motorcycles. I'll try to be as faithfull to the written description as possible, although many details are not described. So here's my attempt...