Yes, hiding and being stealthy is what most troodonts excelled at. It had been their main survival strategy for eons.

Currie had found shelter within a small crevice located in the cliffs that encompassed the northern border of the park. Lining the cliffs was both a stream but also a strange sort of pathway that seemed to be made out of flat rock. Covering it were very bizarre tracks that didn't resemble the footprints of any kind of animal.

From his hiding spot, the Talos had a very good view of the park.

Below the cliffs stretched a vast grassy plain with a very clear pathway cutting through the middle. Crossing such an exposed landscape was something he wouldn't usually do, but based on his observations Currie was certain that no predators would be found there. As far as he could see all the strange animals that were present there were herbivores. All the big meat-eaters were apparently kept captive.

A large and seemingly dense forest located just beyond the southern border of the grassland was his intended destination.

Just this morning Currie had taken refuge in a small patch of forest near the vet's surgery, as forests had been the preferred home of troodonts in North America for 20 million years, a habitat that provided plenty of cover and small game. It was the kind of environment he was instinctively drawn to.

What also drew him to this location was the presence of other dinosaurs. Familiar dinosaurs at that.

At the western edge of the small forest was a creek that was home to a lone herbivore.

Currie had never seen this species before but it was very clearly a type of chasmosaur, the beak, the horns, the frill, the stocky body and short tail were all unmistakable. Currie likened it to a Titanoceratops, except this one's frill was shorter in height but noticeably wider and not as erect. This one also appeared to be a juvenile, probably only half the size of his parents. Why this youngster was all alone was unclear, as horned dinosaurs were typically herd animals.

Not too far away was a large paddock surrounding a small pond that housed a flock of 20 or so feathered dinosaurs that Currie was even more familiar with, Ornithomimus, dinosaurs that were eerily similar in size, shape and coloration to modern ratites.

They seemed to be a different species from the ones Currie was familiar with, these ones had black heads with blue markings, which appeared to be exposed skin, running from the back of their head down their neck while the rest of their body, minus their legs and thighs, was covered in golden-brown shaggy plumage, though those were mainly the males, the females had more muted brown plumage with dark grey heads.

Most were adults, but Currie quickly noticed a brood of fluffy chicks following their mother who was resting by a patch of bushes. The chicks sported a striking pattern of horizontal stripes, which in the wild would have provided camouflage.

A 150 kg Ornithomimus was hardly fitting prey for a gracile 20 kg Talos but newborn chicks like these were ideal targets for this small predator. Currie stuck his head through the wooden bars, watching keenly to see if one chick would wander away from its mother.

But Ornithomimus were very vigilant dinosaurs and it didn't take long for the mother to spot him. She might have never seen a Talos before but she was still intimately familiar with troodonts and immediately reacted with aggression, jumping to her feet and screeching at the top of her lungs, alerting the rest of the flock.

Currie fleed from her charge and hid in some nearby bushes as the enraged mother's long neck came looming over the fence, looking everywhere for the small predator.

Ironically, troodonts and ornithomimosaurs were very similar, they were both opportunistic omnivores who would dine on both plants and small animals.

Currie knew that if the mother had managed to strike him down, he wouldn't have just suffered a broken back or shattered ribs but may as well have been eaten by the flock.

Nonetheless, the prospect of a potential food source kept him around, until he found out who was residing in-between the other two enclosures, a large predator. Two large predators in fact, which were kept separated in different pens by a tall, dividing wall.

Like with the horned dinosaur, they looked incredibly familiar even if Currie hadn't seen this exact species before.

They were tyrannosaurs, very similar to the Bistahieversor he had coexisted with, but these ones appeared to be adolescents based on their long legs and lankier builds, yet in terms of size they were closer to an adult Bistahieversor. Just how big could these tyrannosaurs get?

Currie was hardwired to fear these predators, as were most animals in Laramidia. These aptly named killers struck fear whenever they went across the continent.

Worse yet, the female quickly established herself as very irritable and aggressive. Currie didn't even notice her until he was jolted by her mighty roar and found her growling and glaring at him from the other side of the timber bars, her yellow eyes piercing into the small maniraptor who instantly reminded her of the nest raiders who had threatened her as a hatchling.

To say that Currie was mortified would be an understatement, made worse by the fact that he recalled the female tyrannosaur roaming free through the park the day he had arrived. And he didn't fail to see the large, ghastly scar her male neighbor was sporting on his face.

Currie didn't need any more incentive to hightail it out of there.

Which led him to his current position. He didn't stick around the park as it would be teeming right now with the bipedal mammals, and he was waiting until dusk to make his journey to the forest. He had inferred that the hairless mammals were likely diurnal and probably had poor night vision given how easy it was to steal from their kill at nighttime back at the banks of the estuary. They didn't seem very fast or agile either.

His kin were quite the opposite, their trademark large eyes gave them excellent night vision and they also had an acute sense of hearing, which has helped them carve out their niche as primarily nocturnal hunters in order to avoid the tyrannosaurs and certain species of raptor, which primarily went hunting during the daytime.

And they were quite nimble and fleet-footed, much faster and better runners than raptors, which allowed them to both hunt small and swift prey while also avoiding being eaten themselves. An omnivorous diet in contrast to their hypercarnivorous raptor relatives was another advantage during times of scarcity.

Their small, unimpressive teeth and relatively small sickle claw weren't good for much beyond catching lizards, mammals and the occasional bird, and weren't of much use for killing larger game or to ward off an attacking raptor like Saurornitholestes, hence why troodonts preferred avoiding confrontation.

They had never been on the top of the food chain, but their enigmatic and opportunistic way of life had worked well for them for tens of millions of years. During Currie's day, 74 million years ago, troodonts, as well as most types of dinosaurs, were at the peak of their diversity in Laramidia.

Different forms of these feathered generalists roamed the land, varying in shape and size, including a man-sized giant in Alberta and one species had even conquered the high Arctic of Alaska, where their sharp eyesight proved to be very useful during the long polar nights and they morphed into bulky carnivores more akin to raptors than traditional troodonts.

Most were usually solitary unless they found a mate and it would usually be the male who would be stuck brooding the nest while the female went hunting.

Although Talos and its kin were notorious nest raiders, as eggs were a nutritious source of food, they too were often susceptible to attacks from nest raiders and were usually ill-equipped to drive off more powerful theropods like Saurornitholestes or Hagryphus, or the large monitor lizard Palaeosaniwa, which is why a breeding pair usually built their nests in a well-hidden den within rock crevices or hollowed out trees.

Their usual home were dense, inland forests but young Talos without a mate or an established territory like Currie roamed farther and often exploited places seldom visited by dinosaurs. The estuaries that stretched across the eastern coast of the continent were such a place, as they generally weren't a suitable home for most dinosaurs besides freshwater hesperornithids. The constant threat from Deinosuchus was another important reason.

But that didn't stop intrepid travels from sporadically visiting the area. Currie and other rogue Talos were among them, as they quickly learned to exploit the sandy banks for various exotic carrion washed up from the great inland sea, which could range from tiny fish to a massive beached mosasaur if they were lucky.

While there, he had tried to raid a Hagryphus nest deep inside the coastal forest only to find himself fleeing from the angry mother when he ran across the bipedal mammals and quickly learned how they left meat all over their camp unguarded, which quickly drew the attention of the wily opportunists. Although the mammals kept chasing them away, the Talos kept on coming.

Alas, Currie was the one was too daring, which somehow led to him wounding up being trapped in this strange new world overrun by giant mammals.

From his vantage point in the cliff, he continued to observe the plain below him. A series of trumpeting noises diverted his attention to a small herd of distinctly large mammals, rivaling many of the plant-eating dinosaurs he was familiar with in terms of size.

Their facial features were quite confusing and alien, as they sported long trunks which they used to feed themselves, small tusks and massive floppy ears, and they were covered in wrinkly grey skin.

Except for one who stood out from the rest, sporting small ears but making up for it with huge curvy tusks, and it was covered from head to toe in shaggy brown fur. Was this some sort of extreme sexual dimorphism? If so it would make the flamboyant colorations of many male dinosaurs seem insignificant by comparison.

Another, nearly as massive mammal grazed away from the heard. With its bulky body, short legs and massive nasal horn it very much looked like a mammalian version of a horned dinosaur, more of a centrosaur than a chasmosaur though.

A loud, wailing honk made Currie look further ahead to see two of those gargantuan long-necked dinosaurs slowly lumbering about in the distance until their small heads reached the forest canopy.

Currie had never seen such dinosaurs before. Beyond their stupendous size which made the ground shake wherever they went, their anatomy was all kinds of confusing. They looked like if someone took the body of a typical plant-eating dinosaur and grafted the long neck and small head of an ornithomimosaur onto it.

At least by now, Currie had come to realize that they were docile vegetarians, and despite their terrifying size they were harmless. Ironically, being from the late Campanian, Currie and his species had only narrowly missed out on seeing the grand return of these long-necked behemoths to Laramidia after tens of millions of years of absence. Even more ironically, the dinosaurs he had met prior were in fact there to witness their comeback.

As the hours went by, waiting for the sun to set turned increasingly more boring, so Currie chose to take a nap, tucking his head under his wings and curling his tail around his body.

This was a strange new world, but troodonts had always been versitile creatures and Currie would simply have to adapt, just as his ancestors did for millions of years to survive in this ever changing world.

...

That covers the park's Campanian residents, though Currie still evades capture. Sneaky little bastard XD

Note that the animals I didn't bother describing in detail are the ones I don't see the need to update in any significant way.

And as I've mentioned in the previous chapter, a lot of the animals from this episode were recast to fit in accordance with the fossil record of southern Laramidia, as Troodon/Stenonychosaurus and Albertosaurus are only known from the north, plus Albertosaurus hadn't evolved yet by the time the episode takes place. The crested duckbill would also be the southern Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus rather than the more familiar northern Parasaurolophus walkeri.

Also, I interpret the park's titanosaurs as Daxiatitan binglingi. I hear a lot of people claiming they're Borealosaurus, which is ridiculous as Borealosaurus is both too small and lived 30 million years after the episode's setting.