Prehistoria: the Raptor's Tail · 12:27am Jan 24th, 2023
As I work to polish the finale to the Winter War arc to wrap things up and pair well with Faith-Wolff's artistic talent, I got a few questions about my first original novel. This is the first of what I hope to make an anthology series which is supposed to be both entertaining and educational.
Paleontology themed media portraying ancient animals tends to fall into a series of tropes. If a Triceratops shows up, it is always the cantankerous herbivore, if a sauropod appears it is always a gentle giant, if there are raptors they are always in a pack and are always apex predators, and large predatory dinosaurs like tyrannosaurs are always alone and highly aggressive.
In real life however, animals are complicated. Large herbivores might attack and kill other animals for no benefit to themselves, various carnivores might cohabitate together completely peacefully, a rhinoceros probably spent a lot more time loafing about and relaxing than it does charging at things, and animals that are not necessarily built for one kind of habitat might venture into it like a crocodile climbing up a tree.
This sort of added complexity to prehistoric animals has been touched on in other media like the excellent Prehistoric Planet documentary. I started work on this story before the documentary came out but I hope in the end there is a lot of shared DNA. The fossil record can only tell you so much and there is always going to be situations where the answer is ambiguous. What I set out to do is work with grounded speculation within that ambiguity, and then telling entertaining story showcasing facets of nature the audience might not have seen before.
All through the lens of following an animal, a dinosaur in this case, through their bizarre world. Both as a story and then in the appendices explaining some of the science behind it all. In this respect I was taking some inspiration from certain documentary series like Dinosaur Planet from 2003 and the Walking With Trilogy of Life.
The story is more or less completed and just going through some final revisions, with an additional illustration to go alongside. It will be uploaded onto Amazon with two reading options. Buying the book digitally for a low price (< 3 USD), or being free on Kindle reading for Prime. I hope to release it soon along with the chapter and hope you all enjoy. As a teaser, here is the first chapter.
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Prologue
She'd been jarred awake by the smell. Eyes snapping open into the warm night’s dark veil as her clawed hands and feet gripped the tree limb.
Hot, rancid breath billowed past her face, the metallic scent of blood clogging her nose when she'd sucked in air on reflex. Vision, still blurry from being jarred awake, caught a glimpse of feathers stuck between the ivories forming a serrated row of fangs. A maw belonging to a predator who’d crept up so silently during her sleep had closed down upon her arm. A matching set of quilled plumes frantically flapped into the air on her free arm. It was only by centimeters did the parting jaws not slap shut on her arm after having bitten down on her wing feathers.
They'd never seen their attackers coming. The enemy had crept up upon their typical refuge in the treetops in their sleep. Reaching into the canopy to pluck them from the branch as a cat might a bird.
Her clawed feet pounded on the tree branch in a backpedal, foot over foot until she ran out of branch to stand on.
The vertigo from the fall several meters out of a tree left her mind in a daze and flashing stars in her eyes that matched the number in the night sky's tapestry. Memory caught still images more than it did full recollections as the milliseconds ticked by.
Three sets of yellow eyeshine standing two meters off the ground. A trio of giants with horned brows and spiny snouts. A sharp clawed, winged corpse very much like herself limply hung from a set of long jaws with blood dribbling down the dead face. Another of the predators was advancing. Taloned feet striding forward. A parting span of jaws, her own wing plumes still stuck in its fangs.
Blood on the ground. Drool ran off dividing jaws like those that had taken the life of her wing and mate. Rumbling falls of scaly feet closing in across the forest floor.
Her mind comprehended only one word. Now was not the time for sentiments.
Run.
Foliage and understory smashed and raked over her tiring body, scrapping hide and fleecing feathers free. The footfalls kept coming and a glance backwards offered sight of those twin amber orbs hovering over the ground, borne behind a set of long jaws topped in with a spiny snout.
Time blurred with moments feeling like hours. Frantic dodges through a blurry viridian and weaves around fallen trees. Foot over foot, trying not to collide with a tree trunk nor be caught up by the hunter.
Step by step, pant by pant, through the scattered silvery moonbeams and undergrowth. The scenery changed. From leafy and branched claws of foliage raking against her form shifting as the forest opened up. Through the illuminated curtain of star light, stalks and trees had given way to sun bleached bone and tarry old sinew. A pungent odor of death was about, her footfalls patterning scraped vertebrae and exposed ribs of a carcass from some giant beast which lay dead in the clearing.
Dry thuds of footfalls pounded the ground behind her still in the breakneck chase. Hot breath was still billowing over her neck. They were taller, larger, and swifter on open ground. Her only escape was to get where they couldn't follow, and the treeline was too far away.
She jumped from the opened chest of the carcass and made a break across the glade. They were gaining, and she'd never reach the treeline. Instead as her frantic eye looked about for safety, they keened upon a thatch and wood heap several meters away. A pile of branches and torn-off tree limbs, forming a sort of fortification from a like-form she recognized from her youth, the opening to a hollow within beckoning her.
Sprinting for salvation, foot over foot, with her remaining wings flapping to try and afford any minor boost. Somehow through the panic, a low rumbling was loosed from her throat; a resonating boom that carried through the night air.
The horned nightmare was upon her, curtains parting with the span of long jaws with serrated knives that still bore ragged and torn feathers between them. The glade had come alive with their movement and everything was in motion now. Above the fortress of broken branches, flashes of twin green spots and eyeshine emerged.
There was a deep sound like rolling thunder, a living storm seemingly ascending to the skyline as the source of the roar stood up higher and higher still.
Chapter 1 - Morning
Four months later, the slow breezes of the coming dawn ebbed and flowed with the changing landscape. The heat of the sun and the cooling brought about by the flowing rivers caused an oscillation of temperatures, crisp cool and wrapping heats, feeding the rich viridian Eden of forests and marshes with the cusps of the gentlest winds.
70 million years ago, in what will one day be the deserts and plains of Mongolia, life existed in a verdant brilliance.
Amongst the leaf litter and low-lying ferns of the forest understory, a small brown form scampered through the foliage; kicking up loose leaves as it did. Dawn had come for this small beast, and with the light casting aside darkness and its protective cloak, so too came the dawn’s dangers. Colored a mottled brown hue across the body with a pale strap crossing the back, in shape it might vaguely recall the appearance of a shrew or marmot; but the peculiar beast had no modern counterpart.
As the critter scampered across the forest floor, leaving a trailing cloud of loose leaf litter in its wake, something else beat the ground behind it. A shadow loomed over the small mammal and spurred it to pause its retreat. The critter’s lack of relation to any living form an onlooker of the modern age might know was quickly betrayed as it turned to face the shadow with jaws agape. The front teeth were pointed and tusk-like, but in place of the molars there was a singular, buzzsaw like whirl of a blade.
The furry creature which so resembled a rodent, but wasn’t lunged and snapped, threatening to nip and bite at the object of its fear. All whilst chittering constantly. The shadow backed away briefly, and that was deemed enough of the brief respite as to be acceptable for the diminutive mammal.
The Buginbaatar, a peculiar name meaning “Hero from Bungin Cav” for the region its fossils would one day be found in, turned tail and scampered for the trees. Clutching the bark with all four feet, the small beast scampered and shimmied its way up to get clear of the forest floor. Night or day, but especially the former, being on the ground typically could mean death for it and those furry beings like itself. Being in the trees or within burrows often meant safety. It was little wonder why most mammals of this bygone age were optimized to partake in both the treetops and underground with their generalized forms.
However, security was not so assured in conditions like these with this company. Having recovered from the momentary backpedal so as not to get nipped, the predator shifted focus and instead sprinted for the tree itself. Scaly feet bearing long claws beat the ground back and forth to propel them forward, kicking up loose litter in each stride across the understory draped in sunbeams. Muscular legs coiled back and sprang off the ground on impact, launching their bearer airborne.
The arms and tail took the reins in movement, gliding thanks to expanses of broad feathery plumes upon both arms catching the air in a controlled fall. The hunter was a rusty hue overall on the body, coated in feathers on a majority of its body save the feet and muzzle. The long tail swayed through the air, acting as a rudder to assist in steering during the short glide. Down the length of the extremity, the plumage’s coloration continued to be red across the midline but there was a shift towards the end. On each side, about two-thirds down the length, the long and broad feathers bore a wide, green circle with a black dot in the middle. In shape these could be taken to be the image of a pair of large eyes.
The hunter’s arms were held spread. Shorter than the legs, much of their span was widened by long plumes composing a wing that extended from the upper arm, down the underside of the limb, and to the middle finger of each tri-digited hand. The plumes of the wings, wide and long, were a similar color to the rusty body, but shown brightly as the sun glowed through them in the brightness of the morning. Amidst the energetic flapping of the wings, which were too small for true flight but enough to boost the jump, the three blackened talons tipping each finger were flashed.
The body was paler on the belly than the back, with gray, scaly skin visible on the feet. Gliding closer to the tree, the legs were turned about and brought to bear. A hooked, sickle-shaped talon was prominent on the foot’s innermost toe that swiveled forward; far larger than the two other primary digits. It was these talons that made first contact with the tree as they stabbed into the tree bark, biting and holding fast with a stride. The hooks anchored in, the muscular legs bulging with intensity of effort. Beating its short wings for extra lift and balance, the predator promptly resumed the chase by virtually running up the tree trunk, foot over foot. Sprinting up the trunk amongst its flapping, they quickly began outpacing their quarry.
Lips parted and recurved and serrated ivories were exposed when the head snapped down. Within the flash of a moment, they promptly carried the quarry’s life to its conclusion. Tooth snagged on flesh to the bone and a snap of the snout elicited a sharper one in the prey’s cracked neck. The mammalian form went slack with death, before being thrown back and engulfed down the parted gullet whole.
A short time later, cast in the glow of the morning sun that showed through her feathers, the feathered huntress hopped back down from a tree branch she’d perched upon after scarfing down the morsel. Blood trickled across the seam of scaly lips, present on the latter half of the muzzle where one would otherwise expect the avian looking beast to have a beak instead of its toothy snout. Resembling something of a hawk with elongated legs and a tail, the hunter, or rather huntress, descended back to the ground in a slowed jump with her wings parachuting her fall.
Even for a small dinosaur not much larger than a typical wolf, the few pounds of flesh would hardly suffice the churning in her gut. She hadn’t eaten otherwise in the last day or so. But alas, the Adasaurus couldn’t afford to continue her prowl any longer. To the crimson avian saurian, Ruby, she’d been gone for an hour and that was quite possibly an hour too long.
Stepping across the forest floor, Ruby followed the game trail cut into the dirt to set about the journey home through the forest understory. Low to the ground, she easily slipped into the reddish undergrowth of fallen leaves and shrubs to mask her sprinting flight through the woods.
A close relative of Velociraptor and double the size, Adasaurus was so named after an evil spirit of Mongolian myth. But, contrary to the demonic title and blood still on her maw, Ruby was no vile monster or needless butcher. In fact, to the lives within her destination, to the family she’d been hunting to sustain herself for, she was life itself.
The journey was short to return home, which was a small clearing within the trees that formed a glade. The nest she sought was huge in size, almost like a small hill made of foliage. A pile of sticks, branches, and leaves two meters high and double that span across. Its small opening on the side, covered atop and shaded by a swath of thick branches that likely constituted several whole saplings forming a roof. It and the hollow chamber within beckoned her towards the interior.
But, the huntress paused, staying in the shadows with only a few beams of light dappling from the canopy across her feathers. The air was still, the wind having died off. That meant no breezes to carry scents, just what had been present. A pungent stench of rot, of strength so thick it could only have come from something enormous and predatory, hung in the air. Her little nostrils dilated and constricted slightly with every puff of air taken in.
Memories of a particular night from months ago returned, as did the phantom sensations of pain in her arm. The stems and pins of her regrown feathers ached from where their predecessors in her old wing had been violently torn out. The Adasaurus swung her head too and fro to check her surroundings and didn’t step into the revealing light. Chest panting with breaths as if pumping herself up like a balloon, she straightened up and kicked several clumps of dirt and leaf litter behind her before closing her mouth tightly.
The feathers across her neck and chest shuddered and vibrated slightly, the skin beneath rattling with reverberating air. The very low rumble Ruby let out wouldn’t be audible to most animals and was surprisingly deep for a beast of her size, but it carried a long distance. And given she was alone whilst wanting to check where her company she’d called out to had gone, the raptor wanted to see if anyone was about as carefully as she could. The Adasaurus paused and waited for a response, tilting her head and looking about whilst keeping an open ear.
The silent forest only rustled under returning rivers of wind slithering between the trees, offering no signal of anyone friendly. Fear wanted to keep her feet planted in the shelter of the canopy, but instinct beckoned her forward. High above the raptor’s head, numerous branches were broken and snapped, like something big had pushed through the canopy and shattered whole tree limbs in its movements.
Deciding not to wait any longer, Ruby hopped forward and scampered into the glade to reach the nest in a dash. As she moved, her feet momentarily crossed a dip of an impression in the hard-packed dirt. Climbing a full meter to reach the mouth of the sheltered nest, she only paused to turn around and recheck her surroundings before walking backwards into the cover; feeling a sense of security in the shadowed darkness that hid her. The shield from past nightmares was enhanced by the scent markings left upon some of the branches, a half dried, black tarry gel that stained several timbers ringing the entrance. The pungent odor from the scent markings was comforting, despite the strength. By sight, smell, and cover; she was no longer where she was several months ago.
Home and safe, Ruby turned about and lowered herself down, extra careful where she stepped and how she nestled in. The soft feathers across her belly extended out, exposing the heated skin of her stomach and chest to the four oblong eggs soon nestled up to her. Each was nearly half as long as the width of her hips to torso, speckled with black against the dull blue span. The raptor was keen to wrap her feathery wings around the quartet of eggs to distribute the heat and embrace her family with a mother’s love.
Ruby felt her body relax and muscles unwind. She spent at least half an hour prodding and turning over her eggs with the gentleness of a lamb, making sure each and every one was tended to. Sometimes, low cooing would emanate from her chest at the touch of her snout to them. Whispers of a lullaby to her growing family. It worked to calm her own pulse as well, slowly ebbing her eyelids to rest. With how much energy she had been splitting between heating the nest and fasting from all but the briefest of hunts, sleep soon took her.
Life had changed much in these past few months, from that ambush in the night that took her mate. Content in safety for now, she could rest.
Across the glade, one could see where the dutiful feathered guardian’s trackway intersected the impression from before. A set of leaves, blown by the breeze, fell within and rolled around across the weight-impacted earth. When viewed from above, the impression would reveal itself as an enormous, three-toed print tipped in broad claws. The track carried the pungent odor that often meant death to so many beasts.
Ooh. Looks fascinating, and quite promising, so far!
Very interesting
Prologue still holds up well, and I liked the first chapter presented. The ending was especially ominous.
Your real name is Jack Blackburn?
That’s both funny and also kind of cool for kinda obvious reasons.
(Take a guess)
Never heard of adasaurus before. Is this a more recently discovered species or has it been known for some time? Can't wait to see the completed chapter.
This is very good. I'm guessing her mate was killed by Carnotaurus...es? What's the plural for that? Anyway, I am wondering how she brought the eggs from her old nest to her new one, but I'm sure I'll find out once it hits stores. Tell us when it does, as I'm always eager to read your writing. Speaking of which, WHEN'S THAT NEXT CHAPTER COMING OUT?!!!!!
I'm... sorry. I'm fine. I'm waiting patiently. Yep. Totally patient. No pressure or anything.
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Unfortunately, Carnotaurs and Abelisaurs in general weren't around in the Nemegt Formation.