Dragonthunders

Importing only its own affairs, this great Helicoprion is patrolling the surroundings of its territory...


I wanted to deviate a bit from the common image that is shown of this since it is always like what happens to the Goblin Shark, having its mouth always open in most if not all the pictures.

Not much to say about it, this Gerrothorax just jumped from the edge of a pool facing a waterfall, towards its fall of hundreds of meters. It was own choice or just accident? we just don't known.

I do not know if these were able to recognize that they screw it up, but this one totally screw it up.

In the TND timeline sauropods still stand out as the magnificent herbivorous giants that were held in their niches for another 65 million years, however, due to the cooling of the planet they became limited in range, being forced to live only in the tropical areas of South America, Africa, parts of South Asia and several surrounding islands with Titanosaurs being the last existing sauropods clade. Before the changes these have evolved in varied ways, from the most generic ones that did not change much to the strange and stubby short legged forms with armor or trunks.
In this redesign I had to update them according to the anatomy of the current sauropods, from minor changes such as the shape and morphology of the leg as  big changes like the whole body, but preserving some appearance and features of the originals with a more plausible approach.

a) Titanosaur: the original design could be said to be one of the few that has aged more or less well from the book, with an aspect not as derivative as the rest, however this still presents certain anatomical errors for a sauropod that required changes as updates of its design, among them was the modification of the shape of the body, with a less vertical neck and more inclined in conjunction with its back, front legs without claws, limb size adjustment, a lower but straight tail and more lifted off the ground.

b) Dwarf Titanosaur: this animal descendant of the continental giants is an example of the result of living on islands where the lack of sufficient resources to maintain large bodies are scarce, suffering from island dwarfism. The morphology of this is quite different from that of the continental titanosaur, with a more vintage-lookin body, being stubby with short legs and a neck that stand up like the one of a swan from the low base of the body, although it has a slightly raised head.
The new design that I did completely modified this aspect, giving it the conventional look of the titanosaurs, although with its own characteristics: medium length body, short legs, and a small and rounded head, and keeping the dwarfism due to their limited resources.

Note: although the silhouette of this one appears over Madagascar this inhabits one of the islands in the region.

c) Lumber: this sauropod is the largest terrestrial animal on the planet, with a length of 25 meters, its original design is of a rather plump, barrel-shaped creature, quite short legs, and with tail and neck almost near the ground, and in his face he has developed a short trunk that helps him take the grass. The redesign is complete removing the chubby and short, with a shape more consistent with the current reconstructions, however, maintaining its horizontal position as this is a grazing and its huge size, keeping it even as the largest land animal. Because the musculature of sauropods as far I know was incapable of form a trunk, I changed it for an ornamental structure of folds around the nose that can expand like a bladder.

d) Turtosaur: an high armored sauropod, this species evolved an heavily covered body to deal with the recent wave of new predators that migrated from the north, its head is remarkably covered by a shell, with a soft texture and boxlike shape and with two long triangular paddles in each side of the head; then it follows its neck that is covered to a series of ring plates, being followed by the one piece body armour similar to a Glyptodon and finishing with more ring plates in all the tail. In the redesign of this I retired the more mammalian look of armor and changed it to a more plausible type of defense in design and that already had several sauropodos, just it more, evolving almost convergently to those of the Ankylosaurs: rows of osteoderms and plates that they cover the entire upper part of the body to the tail, the head being less smooth and angled, and showing varied marks of the scales and plates. Due to the very heavy armour thishas more robust and short legs.

e) Graceful Sauropod (extinct): this species appears briefly on the left side of the page of the South American sauropods, with a small image of its skeleton and a description of its clade explaining that they resulted from several small forms that emerged during the Cretaceous and that were in this tendency until lightweight forms emerged, able to run gracefully through the pampas. I did nothing but modify it according to the current sauropod reconstructions, giving it a shorter neck compared to the skeleton in the image due to balance issues, and longer legs.

f) Rajaphant: this sauropod that evolved from the populations of Indian sauropods that had been isolated for millions of years until the sub-continent collided with Asia, it is characterized by being a very social sauropod, living in herds where they take care of the young, is also a more generalist herbivore unlike other species from other continents, as it is able to feed on both the foliage of the trees and the grass of the ground, being able to digest it thanks to its huge gizzard that allows it to grind the hard plant material and convert it into a digestible pulp by gastroliths.
In the redesign I wanted to balance the shape of a sauropod adapted to the lifestyle of an browser with a grazer, so I decided to give it an intermediate look with a straight body but even with an upright neck, and with an equally broad head, this has adapted teeth both to eat the leaves of the treetops and to grab the hard grass of the ground, counting on the gizzard to digest it. Their social habits are still maintained, being able to take care of their young and move in packs, keep the little ones at the center of this.

Visualize in flesh and alive terrestrial mammals such as elephants, horses or rodents and how they used their heads is a surreal image, however among the marine substrates were found much more aberrant creatures, in particular the whales, which have no morphological precedent similar in its lineage or some other of the vertebrate group of the earth. Although on the one side there were dolphins, killer whales, sperm whales with skulls that resembled several terrestrial mammals in morphology, there was this other group, the long jawed whales with wide and extremely thin lower jaws that were once wrongly considered as ribs, and the upper part depending on the species they formed a rare type of almost flat cover or arch shaped.

It has been a long time to try to figure out how such jaws worked, specifically how they were structured since none of the actual remains preserved with the whole original animal shape. The most accepted theory over why they obtained such shape in some species was the use of grappling structures, a kind of mouthparts such as those of an insect that give them the nickname of "Bug Jawed", with the upper arch covered with hard filaments like nails that together could cause substantial damage in large preys, this based on some well preserved upper jaw. Unfortunately, and despite the large number of remnants found, none has been found intact as how the animal died, so the idea that such structures functioned as mouthparts seems to be the most plausible...

a) Bison, this great bovid had inhabited much of the northern hemisphere, characterized by its huge dorsal sail believed to have had a thermoregulatory function.

b) Deer, these make up some of the smallest and common herbivores of the northern hemisphere, being mostly graceful, some remains with soft tissue preserved have several structures similar to thorns around the top of the head.

c) Wild boar, were an omnivorous lineage although this is more pointing to a lifestyle as dining plant, distantly related to the hippos and whales, are smaller, and it is known that their lineage survived after the Holocene and Cenozoic , giving rise to a new wave of predators in the Therozoic era.

d) Cow, the relative of the bison but without the big sail, these would be the most common megafauna herbivores on the planet with several remnants around the world after the Holocene, even in regions where there are no precedents for migrations or exchanges between regions.

e) Giraffe, these huge relative of the gazelles and deer had an extremely long neck formed by huge heavy 7 vertebrates, which could have evolved due to the pressure of reach taller trees. One has the idea that the horns could have supported enormous membranes of skin that extended until the base of the neck.

f) Rhinoceros, one of the largest terrestrial herbivores, unlike the others has a extensive uniform row of teeth, with the front part lacking them, which implies the development of a large beak covering. Its nostrils and extensive upper front that connect to the ear suggest that he had a good sense of smell and hearing. At the tip it has a huge protuberance which suggests that it may have been reinforced with an armored roof.

g) Camel, these form a lineage of graceful bodies and long necks, emulating almost the giraffes, previously believed to be omnivores with predatory tendencies, and with a long skull with tusks similar to that of the boars, they had been nicknamed as " graceful boar of terror ", however recent discoveries including a good specimen preserved with gastric remnants refuted such idea.

h) Elephant, one of the biggest land mammal in the cenozoic, are perhaps one of the most bizarre herbivores found for its strange cranial disposition, with a fairly short and small jaw, huge frontal horns and a flat face with a huge nasal opening, is a mystery of how such an animal could have fed, the strongest theory being the use of large tongue. Some remnants with preserved soft tissue in the face suggest that the large nasal opening possessed a covering of flesh and cartilage around it.

Note: names of creatures and places translated and changed for better reader understanding.

Spinosaurus maybe are effective predators capable of  hunt down fish the size of cars as adults, however like any animal, they start small and need to grow and learn over time before becoming the top hunters, but until then, these can be subjugated by their future preys if they are not careful, like this individual of just 3 meters in length which came too close to a large Onchopristis and with a good kick from its huge saw, this fish rises the young theropod over the water and will probably throw it several meters in the air to fall violently into the river, leaving remarkable damage on its body, however, he will live...