litphoria

A terrestrial animal that does not seem to have a recognisable species.

How would this be used in a meaningfully different way from chimera (litphoria.com)?

Chimera are two distinct creatures jammed together. Fantasy creatures are often just something unique and distinct in their own right.

If it helps, this is something like a non-alien "other" for creatures we just don't have anything like a species for. Creatures I could show a zoologist and ask them the species and they would say "uh... maybe some kind of.... wait, um...." - and conclude there isn't a species or it just kinda sorta fits one or two species.

Is this majestic thing a chimera? Or this mean looking dude? Fantasy creatures don't become chimera because the artist decided to use features that already exist on natural animals, like tusks and horns and hooves and so on.

The Chimera was a lion that literally just had a goat head sticking out of its body for no reason and a snake for a tail for no reason like some mad scientist had some halves of animals lying around and a hankering for doing some stitching.

Chimeras aren't just two animals smushed together

They are, and that's pretty much exactly how you'll find them in various dictionaries.

they're also those "legs of a deer, ears of a rabbit, body of a crocodile, tail of a lion, horns of a cow, head of a man" things.

.... And it does mean this, but when the animal has a smooshed together, disparate parts appearance.

This isn't about aliens, who can be of something totally extraterrestrial and with no resemblance to Earthen evolution at all. Like xenomorphs.

This is about creatures that could have evolved within the Fauna classification of our genetics, but don't match any species we have because it's fantasy art.

That "not an alien" thing is why I have the terrestrial adjective there. I previously had "and isn't an extraterrestrial" but that's kind of a double negative when terrestrial is available as a word.

So instead of Beast and Alien for misc creatures, we just take one category for creatures who don't really have a clear earthen species?

And who aren't humanoid and etc

Per dictionary.com

noun, plural chimeras.
1.(often initial capital letter) a mythological, fire-breathing monster, commonly represented with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail.
2.any similarly grotesque monster having disparate parts, especially as depicted in decorative art.
3. a horrible or unreal creature of the imagination; a vain or idle fancy: He is far different from the chimera your fears have made of him.
4.Genetics. an organism composed of two or more genetically distinct tissues, as an organism that is partly male and partly female, or an artificially produced individual having tissues of several species.

This really shouldn't be about dictionary definition, but about site definition. However we define should be how it's supposed to be used. It doesn't matter whether chimeras already have similar meaning or not, it matters whether we need to separate those meanings from each other or not.

As long as site defined meanings differ from each other so there is no confusion as to which one to use, I think it's a good idea to implement both.

It's important to keep in mind that if the site uses something totally intuitive or opposite what people are expecting, it will likely get used incorrectly to some degree.

This has been accepted by the community managers and opened to endorsement. I will note that some deleted comments discussed that this fits a similar functional bin to "alien", but this is functionally and flavourably different enough to warrant its own profile feature.