Uses my own headcanon for species, and borrows from some other media, we can discuss other ideas. I made this to perhaps provide my own insight into the whole "Intelligent MLP Dinosaurs" idea. posting because this seems like a good place to post this stuff... if this violates a posting rule, notify me and i'll delete the thread.

65 million years ago, an asteroid crashed into the world in what was known as the K-T event. this had mixed effects, but three main things arrived from it.

1.) mammals were able to establish dominance.

2.) the first 30 Draconequi were born from the resulting chaos

3.) the majority of dinosaurs died out

Now, it was established some time ago that birds are dinosaurs, but non-avian dinosaurs have clung to existence in parts of the world, competing with newer predators. some have feathers, others don't, but they all are still alive.

Now, given 65 million years, some magic radiation, certain conditions, and brain size, it's natural some became Really, REALLY smart.

***

CERETOPSIANS

Bix

native to Concordia, the Bix are clever, linguistically capable, and renowned as diplomats and sages. their myriad libraries dot the landscape

Zulep

Also native to Concordia, these ravaging barbarians are a relentless culture of warriors. Zuleps have natural barbarian rage, are resistant to fire damage, engage in ritual scarification, drink the blood of their enemies in spite of being herbivores, are stated to be weak to regimented forces that their chaotic combat style isn't meant to face, and have a coming of age ritual where they must take the scalps of a number of large creatures equal to how many years they have lived. They caused the extinction of at least two other sapient ceratopsian species and have made plenty of attempts to wipe the scholarly Bix out as well

OVIRAPTORIDS

Ovi

Natives of Lemuria's interior "Canyon Mazes", these sapient saurians are nomads, travelling with the seasons. though technologically primitive, the Ovi have an advanced understanding of astronomy.

ALLOSAURS

Stone Cutter

Native to Concordia's Storm Valley, Dracotherizinos is a long-armed predatory dinosaur. Its arms are not so long as those of other long-armed giant saurians, but they are far more muscular and robust, and the claws are harder and thicker. In fact, allied with the great strength of this dinosaur, they can literally cut rock, and Stone Cutters make full use of this in the construction of buildings and a defensive wall in and around its city state. The Stone Cutter itself is a uniform dull black in color, and takes advantage of this to hide in the depths of forest and jungle, waiting to ambush its victims. It has an average length of 40 feet.

They have little in the way of tools, but they need little; their huge claws provide all the cutting, digging and building implements they require. Each creature dwells in its own private building, built of rough-hewn blocks of stone. All the buildings are arranged in blocks, with wide avenues or streets separating them. There is a massive circular arena in the exact center of the city, and the entire mess is surrounded by a wall 25 feet tall. Entry and exit are by a single opening, marked by a massive wooden gate composed of the trunks of the largest trees that could be found, with more massive trunks set at an angle inside to provide bracing and keep the thing shut when everyone's inside.

The arena building contains far more space than is necessary to hold the entire city's population. The lower levels, which must have been laboriously dug out of the ground, contain dungeons large enough to hold a wide variety of dinosaur captives. stone cutters eats flesh, but they do not keep animals for food later on, much less properly domesticate them. The inhabitants of the city go hunting every few days, not only to kill other dinosaurs for food, but to gang up on lone individuals and physically drag them into the city and its waiting dungeons. Once there, they are kept alive for a special purpose. Every several months, the population of the city turns out to enjoy a serious of vicious gladiatorial games, in which young and adults alike pit themselves in mortal combat against captive creatures of varying sizes and degrees of danger. Note that although Dracotherizinos itself is a pure carnivore, it does grow extensive gardens nearby to feed the captive population (its claws make adequate plows), and it shares portions of its kills with those carnivores it manages to capture. The games are presided over by the alpha male and female (though this term seems inadequate for such intelligent creatures), whom Bertrand Gautier, the griffin who discovered them, immediately christened "Caesar" and "Caesonia."

The social life of these creatures is a combination of the cultured and the brutal. When individual dinosaurs of this species have spare time on their hands, they are frequently seen chiseling pictures on the walls of their homes, the arena, or the defensive wall. These pictures are of various terrain features, in which their kind are shown, invariably in battle, killing or capturing other dinosaurs for the arena. The lone exception, reported by an adventurer who was captured and sentenced to the arena, but who later escaped, shows a crowd of the creatures surrounding what appears to be a swirling mass of fire or energy of some sort. This has led some scientists to speculate that this particular dinosaur race is somehow connected with a greater, now dead, civilization, which may have been responsible for the bizarre weather conditions of Storm Valley. Despite living a civilized lifestyle of sorts, Dracotherizinos still has a regular mating season. The males compete for the rights to individual females in the arena, dueling each other with great swipes of their heavily-clawed forearms - it appears biting is not allowed - until one male can no longer catch and parry the strokes of his opponent with his own claws. As soon as a combatant takes a serious wound, the contest comes to an end and the next one begins.

NOASAURS

Antarctican

Native to the Unnamed Southern Continent, the Antarcticans build their cities around volcanoes and geothermal vents.

Antarcticans are unusual. they have five digits on each hand and foot, and walk with a plantigrade locomotion (on the flat of the foot), completely erect. furthermore, they resemble snakes more than anything, and actually have six limbs, though a pair is always vestigial, like a true snake's legs. their teeth are small, and their bit force is equivalent to a small foal's, pinching without hurting. a few also have a third eye.

Antarcticans live in a caste system. at the top is the Queen and a population of breeding females. below them are the Warriors and Civilians

Warriors have four arms and no legs, slithering around like snakes. they form the main defense of the cities.

Civilians, such as this young female, make up the rest of the population.

Antarcticans have a fear of deep water, stemming from their home environment's cold, hypothermia-inducing waters.

Antarcticans compete with Lemurians for the title of "Oldest Civilization", but sadly, little is actually known of their technology or their cities.

While Antarcticans shouldn't have a concept of love due to their caste system, there is a tendency for certain individuals to prefer the company of certain other individuals, but this isn't "love" or "friendship" in the familiar sense of the words.

additionally, they do not believe in the supernatural... or rather, they don't think about it, since their society is based on logic and reason.

TYRRANOSAURS

Quintaglio

Covered in a soft layer of fuzz, these sapient tyrannosaurs live on a peninsula in southern Lemuria. the males have a dewlap which inflates into a bright red globe under "certain conditions" (mating) or when angry. Blue is considered a "bad" color among them, as when most (besides priests) lie, their lips turn a bright blue. they are expert navigators, sailors, and astronomers

roughly 150 years ago, the Quintaglios underwent a major renaissance. First, an astronomer named Sal-Afsan discovered the thing known as the "Face of God" was simply a planet, realizing that the world was not flat and making the quintaglio's first sail around the world (never drifting far enough north to encounter other lands. though blinded for his "heresy", he still managed to effectively take down the Larskian priesthood.

Second, Afsan's son, an archaeologist named Kee-Toroca, led the first expedition to the Unnamed Southern Continent, where he discovered several species of flightless "Wingfingers" (pterosaurs), and developed a theory of evolution, independent from Dartwing's.

Finally, the first Quintaglio psychoanalyst, Nav-Mokelb, determined the cause of quintaglio territoriality.

Quintaglios are exclusively carnivorous, like their Tyrannosaur ancestors. They bring down larger prey by hunting in packs. While they are advanced enough to use weapons to kill prey, their culture forbids it; Quintaglios hunt the old fashioned way, running prey down and dispatching it via tooth and claw. Quintaglio hunts are led by special female Quintaglios who perpetually emit the pheromones characteristic of being in heat, though they are typically also sterile.

While Quintaglios consider themselves to be civilized beings, deep down their thoughts and actions are ruled by their primal, territorial instincts. Quintaglios hate physical contact with one another, value their privacy and have a wide circumference of personal space. Spending too much time in the company of others, or extended time in close quarters with other Quintaglios can cause them to enter an animalistic frenzy known as Dagamant.

When a Quintaglio is in dagamant, he or she will bob their torsos up and down (a common threat gesture in non-sapient tyrannosaur species), and males will inflate their dewlap sacks. A Quintaglio under dagamant loses all conscious control over their actions, and will attack with unrelenting viciousness and bloodlust until it wears off or one or both are killed; for this reason, to kill another while in dagamant is not considered murder by Quintaglios.

Seeing a Quintaglio in dagamant can trigger it in others- in overpopulated areas, or on crowded ships, "Mass Dagamant" has been known to occur, and tales are told of the Galadoreter, a ship where entire crew went into a territorial frenzy and everybody on board was killed.

a map of the quintaglio peninsula, before they discovered the rest of Lemuria

Quintaglios are a very religious race. Their original creation myth tells of a god who laid the "Eight Eggs of Creation". From the first egg came all the water, and from the second came the land. From the third came all the air, and from the fourth came the sun. From the fifth came the stars, planets and moons, and from the sixth came all the plants. Finally, from the seventh came all the herbivores, and from the eighth and final egg came the carnivores which preyed upon them. God created the five original female hunters by biting off her left arm. They wished to create as God did, so she bit off her right arm and created the first males, the mates of the original hunters.

Quintaglio tradition states that a Quintaglio must go on at least one proper hunt in their life in order to go through the rites of passage. After a successful hunt, the Quintaglio gets a hunting tattoo which symbolizes their passage into adulthood. Adults with no hunting tattoo are accorded no status at all.

The Quintaglio mythos was further expanded when roughly 2000 years ago, the Quintaglio prophet "Larsk" discovered what he believed to be the face of God (actually Jupiter when seen through a massive magnifying glass built into a hollow island by ancient Mahars), and a religion was built around the worship of The Face of God. Larsk's descendants became the Royal Family, and rule all of land. Dy-Dybo, former Prince and current Emperor, is a part of the Royal Family and a direct descendant of Larsk. This religion adds a new tradition to Quintaglio society; that of sailing across the ocean to retrace Larsk's voyage and gaze upon The Face of God.

There also exists a cult known as the Lubalites. This cult is based around the worship of the original five hunters, particularly Lubal, and rejects the notion that The Face of God is actually God, adhering more closely to the original creation myths set forth in the sacred scrolls. Worship of the original five was banned by Larsk, but the Larskian faith has been discredited and the Lubalites are now free to engage in worship of the original five without persecution.

A special order in the Quintaglio Priesthood are known as the "Halpataars", or "Bloodpriests". In order to prevent overpopulation, a Bloodpriest is assigned to devour seven out of every eight Quintaglio hatchlings a day after they hatch. The Bloodpriest first goes into a trance, then dons a purple robe and enters the nest; there, he chases the hatchlings and eats all but the fastest, strongest one. The order of the Bloodpriests is exclusively male; the original Bloodpriest was Mekt, one of the original five hunters, but she passed on the tradition to males because she felt it was inappropriate for one who lays eggs to dispatch hatchlings.

When it was found the bloodpriests were the CAUSE of Quintaglio territoriality about 100 years ago, it was decided that, rather than hatchlings, seven of every eight eggs would be eaten. the "New Quintaglios" and their descendants are distinctly less territorial.

Island Quintaglio

living on one of Lemuria's peripheral islands, these island dwellers are smaller and less aggressive than their mainland cousins, completely without the territoriality normal Quintaglios have. males and females both have dewlaps, they wear copper jewelry, cook their food, and have no qualms about using weapons, having developed gunpowder and actual guns. females lay four eggs, as opposed to the eight their cousins lay, and are capable of lying.

When Quintaglios first met their island cousins, things did not go well. the sight of the islanders drove the mainlanders into Dagamant, the Quintaglio battle/territorial rage, even though no territory had been breached. the only exceptions were the "new" Quintaglios who had not experienced the culling of a bloodpriest as hatchlings. relations, while strained, are better now.

PACHYCEPHALOSAURS

Grekk

Native to Concordia's Storm Valley, the Grekk are a highly advanced civilization. discovered fairly recently, the Grekk are at a technological level parallel to modern ponies.

However, other Grekk prefer more tribal communities, tending to be really obsessive about the concept of home, with herds staking out a big rock, cave, or stand of trees in the middle of open plains as “home base”. They are adamant about defending this home base and will fight pretty much anything that gets too close to their home.

Except for the Skryke, Quintaglio, Stone Cutter, and Zulep ecology, which I HAVE modified slightly, all the ideas are mine, but the obviously hand-drawn pictures are the only artwork I own

3139807 wow, these are genius

can I uses some of these ideas (in a modified form, changing things such as their locations, and having it so that they are undiscovered by ponies or anyone else) for a story that I am currently in the middle of writing?
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/178350/bionicle-equestria-saga-book-1-rise-of-the-wolfpack

I'm planning to have the main characters of the story travel into the unexplored southern lands of the world, finding islands populated with some of these 'modern dinosaurs' amongst other civilisations.

if you would let me use and modify some of these ideas I would be very grateful, I will credit you for the ideas

3454740 Actually, I have a more updated version here:

http://www.fimfiction.net/group/199698/the-known-world/thread/104837/races-sapient-dinosaurs-updated

3454805

I'm not part of that group, I can still read it, I just can't comment on it.

would I be allowed to include some of your ideas in my story?

just things like the different species and their cultures, actual locations will be changed to better suit my story, I would be very grateful as the moment I read this thread I started to imagine loads of ideas for my story.

also, in the story, the lands that they are located in are totally unexplored by Ponies, griffins, Minotaur's, Zebras, etc. so they would be totally new civilisations

3454837 sure

3454887 thank you