My Little Pony - Giants of Patagonia

by StrangeBehavior

The Argentinosaurus

Equestria - XX/XX/the 1,001st year of Celestial peace
Princess Luna was flying alongside a few, puzzling pterosaurs that now glide Equus' skies, they were medium sized reptiles with beaks that curved upwards, with the lower beak bristled with teeth-like rods similar to a whale's.

Luna said to herself, "I remember seeing these things in Tia's copy of that book with the bat-like lizards, what were they called again? Oh yes, something like, Terror-dastier-oh…"

The proud Princess of the Night really meant, Pterodaustro, a bizarre, filter-feeding species of pterosaur. Their wingspans can reach at their peaks, three to five meters in length. They land alongside flowing rivers and feed on an assortment of microscopic organisms or tiny animals, it didn't really matter to these Pterodaustro, though. All that really concerns them, is getting food and water, reproduce, and staying alive as long as they can.

Luna thought these creatures were very amusing to look at, but then, something enormous caught her attention to the ground. She left the Pterodaustro, to gaze upon a migrating herd of Argentinosaurus, one of the largest animals to ever walk on land. Moving on to greener passages and warmer temperatures, these giant sauropods are constantly on the move.

When Luna landed on the ground, the dark blue alicorn felt the bone-rattling quakes caused by the stomping of the herd, well over 1,400 tons of dinosaur flesh and bone searching for food. Many other ponies were following the gentle, but still dangerous, dinosaurs, taking all kinds of photographs, souvenirs, and seeing what their motives are.

Luna sighed with disappointment as she thought, Do these peasants know anything about making an animal feel most uncomfortable. They are asking or even begging an audience with thy just Spirit of Death…

The Argentinosaurus didn't mind, their massive bulk made them virtually impregnable to attack from predators that eye them hungrily. They found the unicorns and earth ponies at their feet, not worth a glance, and the pegasi flying around their faces, as annoying as over-sized bees, buzzing annoyingly to where they instinctively snorted and shook their bodies.

What about Strong One? You might ask, so, let's see…

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Earth - Around 90,000,000 B.C.E.
Strong One and many of his siblings followed the adult Argentinosaurus, eating the plants the giants drop. He is genetically programmed to rapidly grow into a giant, like his mother who laid fifty to sixty eggs in a clutch.

At birth, Strong One, and all sauropod hatchlings, were no bigger than a small breed of dog, like a terrier or chihuahua, and weighed around six pounds, more or less a few...
But it has been about two months since he had hatched, so Strong One had already grown at an astonishing rate, he is now three feet long and weighs about nine pounds, almost the size of a newborn human baby. This is thanks to his diet, most sauropod hatchlings have to each around one ton of food a year to fuel their growth, that usually equates to around six pounds a day.

It is because of their shared traits with birds today, that a large percentage of dinosaur species, usually reach their adult size within or around the first ten years of their lives, some even sooner...

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...Like another dinosaur that lived alongside one of the largest terrestrial animals to ever live...

Sitting in the shade of a small grove of around five trees, was a nest of another dinosaur, with almost twenty eggs in a clutch. For this species, twenty eggs would be comparable to a human mother giving birth to sextuplets, a blessed (or cursed) number of baby dinosaurs to be born...

But the same Unenlagia that raided the Argentinosaurus nests, tried to do the same again, only this time, fate will not permit him an easy meal, as footsteps thundered towards him, and the Unenlagia panics and drops an egg he grabbed, when a large, predatory dinosaur's jaws lunged at him. The jaws belonged to the mother of the nest, and she will not let the thief take a single egg, and she snapped her massive jaws shut, nearly taking the Unenlagia's head clean off. The raptor fled, screeching like a panicking mule (even sounding like one), as the mother's jaws missed his tail by a single centimeter, way too close for the raptor's comfort...

So, the Unenlagia gives up, thinking that it was not worth it to try and steal these eggs, as the mother growled ferociously, warning any other egg-stealer, that if they come near her nest, they will be torn into bloody pieces. She inspects the egg the raptor dropped, a miracle that her egg landed on a very soft patch of sand, and then, she tenderly scoots the egg back into the nest, and lies down next to her nest.

The dinosaur was a carnivorous predator that not only, predates the Tyrannosaurus by over twenty million years of evolution, but also was bigger than the predator of the North American continent. She is a species of a recently discovered family of vicious predators, known as the giganotosaurids, flesh-eating dinosaurs that preyed on the sauropods. Three members of this family already found to be larger than Tyrannosaurus.

The giganotosaurid hears one of the eggs cracking, along with a familiar sound of a creature, (to our ears), that sounded like a baby alligator. The first of her hatchlings has started to come out of its eggshell, a tiny female we will name, Long Tooth, despite how small, cute, and fluffy she appears now, Long Tooth is programmed to rapidly grow into a forty-five foot long, eight ton, monster like her mother. She clumsily stammers to her mother, who looked up and hisses aggressively at a wandering male, (who happens to be the mother's mate, and Long Tooth's father). The male hisses back and then goes off hunting, knowing his mate would sooner or later, try to rip his throat out if he stays any longer around her newborns. Long Tooth squeaks to her mother, and then climbed into her mother's jaws, something alligator and crocodile mothers still do today.

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Equestria - XX/XX/the 1,001st year of Celestial peace
The Argentinosaurus herd moves further down south, at an expansive beach in the southern most tip of the continent Equestria lies upon.

The ponies that were brave enough to follow the giant herbivores were quite perplexed at why these sauropods walked all the way here of all places. They looked out and noticed that another landmass was quite a distance away, and when they looked at it, they saw grasslands and savanna-like trees on the landmass, (which is a chunk of Equestria that was sealed off by the ocean). Many of them were wondering why these titans walked such a great distance, to a location they couldn't reach...

But then, the ocean slowly receded, revealing a hidden land-bridge that was easily thirty-six yards wide and ten miles long. It was formed long ago, by the shifting tectonic movements that created, what the ponies first believed, by an island chain that were really, undersea mountains that were pushed closely together, to create a land bridge that was only crossable during a low tide.

The Argentinosaurus knew by instinct, that something will enable them to move to their targeted location, with more herds of other dinosaurs following the titans to the landmass in the distance (It was as big as Greenland by comparison). But, like all instances, where there are herbivores, carnivores are not far behind, and it could not be any truer that the giganotosaurs tailing all the prey, a sizable number of them following all the plant-eaters to their new home.

The predators were patient, they knew better, all the easy prey are moving closely with the Argentinosaurus, including the ponies. The size of the sauropods, and the sheer number of herbivorous dinosaurs, act as a deterrent to the hungry predators, they can wait for weeks without food...

They got a lucky break, when an elderly Argentinosaurus collapsed from a combination of heart failure, a brain tumor, and heat exhaustion, brought the plus one hundred thirty-eight foot long giant to its knees. The carnivores gathered around the dead sauropod, like vultures, and began to feast on the corpse, much to the natives of Equestria's disgust and horror. Scientists in our world, and the few scholars that followed the sauropods, estimated that out of the seventy-five tonne weight of a fully-grown Argentinosaurus;
One tonne is blood...
Twelve tonnes is the organs...
Seven tonnes is tissue…
Eleven tonnes is muscle…
Thirty tonnes is fat...
And, Twenty tonnes is bone…

One lone Argentinosaurus looked behind at the fallen elder as its corpse is greedily devoured by the giganotosaurs, this individual looking on, is in fact, a fully-grown Strong One, he continues on, driven by instinct to follow the herd for food…

A giganotosaurid in the pack, a grown-up Long Tooth, gazed at the Argentinosaurus herd as she swallowed a chunk of meat. Instinct, and the aggression of the older, fitter pack members, is following the Argentinosaurus caravan, making the ponies that tailed the sauropods quite nervous.

They had no clue how right they are, as an Earth Pony mare said, "Those things give me the chills, but it seems that they won't come too close to these Argentinosaurus, so a mental note for me is to stick close to herds of large dinosaurs for safety…"

She sidesteps as one of the Argentinosaurus' massive feet thundered down, as the pony continued, "…Safety…at great risk…for some…"

The mare was absolutely terrified of the sheer size of the sauropods.

To be continued…

Author's Note:

The Author doesn't seem to have anything to say at the moment…

Come back later for a update on the Author's notes…

Comments

[Fa-18]

Well now you got my attention i hope to see the next chapter appear to see wbat happens next.