Prehistoric Park: Carnotaurus

Disclaimer: none of the characters here are mine, all of them belong to Impossible Pictures™ and co.

Note: this is a sequel to my earlier story, Prehistoric Park: Dino-Babies.

The day dawned brightly sunny and unexpectedly warm for an early autumn day. Nigel Marven woke up equally brightly and cheery and said to no one in particular:

"I think that I know as to what time period we shall go forth today!"

"And where is that?" asked Bob the caretaker of the park, seeing how Nigel has made this declaration at a breakfast time. "To a Miocene Africa?"

"That's a very interesting, though an oddly specific suggestion," Nigel ignored the odd specifications. "No, I shall go to the late Cretaceous South America instead!"

"And what is there?" Suzanne the vet said grudgingly. "Dinosaurs?"

"Yes!"

"More T-Rexes?"

"Oh no," Nigel replied, sounding fully serious. "You got your late Cretaceous continents confused; T-Rexes have lived only in the North America at that time, though their cousins lived in Asia instead. They never lived in South America at all; instead, other carnivorous dinosaurs ruled the roost there – but I'm going there for a different reason entirely, I'm going there for the sauropods!"

"We have some sauropods here already."

"Yes, and they seem to have reproduced, and I want to go to South America to compare and see how it worked out," Nigel replied in all seriousness. "South America and Africa were the last strongholds of those long-necked dinosaurs by the end of the Mesozoic, elsewhere, they've disappeared entirely from the face of the planet, but in South America and Africa they managed to hold on – and so to there I go to study them and to see as to what makes them tick!" And he was off.

"Now what?" Bob asked Suzanne.

"I've no idea," the latter admitted. "I need to give my regular check-up to Martha the mammoth, though-"

Bob nodded and left.

/ / /

The land on the other side of the portable time portal was rather different from the weather in the present: rather than cool and dry, it was hot and dry; there was nary a cloud in the sky, and the vegetation on the ground while still green was showing signs of wilting as well.

"Looks as if it is the beginning of the dry period here," Nigel thoughtfully told his team. "The plants are still green, so the weather is still wet, but clearly the rains have moved on, or are moving on by now. The soil, and the plants, are beginning to dry out. Interesting." He looked down and around some more. "You notice that there isn't really any grasses around? That is because they have not yet evolved; the flowering plants – angiosperms – are here already, but the grasses that we are used to in the modern time will appear later, in the Cenozoic-"

"Nigel!" one of his crew called out, as the aforementioned dry (and dusty) ground suddenly interrupted, revealing several large shapes, clearly bipedal – dinosaur carnivores…

/ / /

As Suzanne began to check up on Martha the mammoth's health, and also give her a shave, her spirits lifted up almost despite herself: she always felt good when dealing with this Ice Age relative of the modern elephants. Unlike many some other inhabitants of the Park, Martha was normally mild-mannered and friendly; she was not even bothered by the presence of the two younger Smilodon, now longer really cubs, but juveniles… though this did not stop the two Ice Age cats from playing with clumps of mammoth fur, not unlike how house cats played with balls of thread, for example.

Suzanne frowned. In the past, in the wild, those two Smilodon would be probably learning as to how to hunt their natural prey and to live on their own in the wild, but here, in the Prehistoric Park, clearly something different was in order, but what-?

Suzanne did not have time to figure out, as she noticed that they had company – the marsupials. The Thylacosmilus pointedly ignored its' placental counterparts, it approached one of the bigger piles of the shaved mammoth fur and plopped down in it, sideways. Immediately, a much smaller and saberless version of it climbed out of its' pouch and began to prance on it.

Both Smilodon immediately switched their attention to the marsupials and began to move towards them. Sadly, they forgot about the Thylacoleo, which promptly positioned itself between them and the marsupial sabretooth and began to look at them rather meanly. The Smilodon faltered, stopped, but did not back down either, but just sat down and began to stare back.

"Uh," Suzanne muttered, realizing that there was a potentially explosive situation on her hands and she should call for back up, when even more new faces arrived; well, the old-new faces, if you wanted to get technical: the Troodon and the terror bird. Ignoring the mammals, they began to trot through the shearing site, looking for something smaller for them to eat… and also to play with the fur, not unlike how some other animals played with such items as sticks and feathers for fun…

As Suzanne's thoughts grew even more tangled and confusing, a new sound caught her ear again – it was the Elasmotherium. The prehistoric rhinoceros was not as friendly or social as Martha was, but when it came to having its' own fur cut, it was sufficiently well behaved, so there was not any problems with it either, and Suzanne did not want to have it wait.

Martha gently reached-out with her trunk and patted Suzanne on the shoulder in order to bring the human's attention back to her. "Right," Suzanne muttered crossly. "I need to finish shaving you too. Maybe things will work out in the long run-?"

And actually, they did.

/ / /

"This is just whoa," Nigel muttered, as he and his people found themselves flanked by five or six Carnotaurus dinosaurs. Noticeably smaller than the Park's tyrannosaurs, these dinosaurs were built similarly to the bigger carnivores, except for two notable features: their forelimbs were even smaller, proportionally, than those of tyrannosaurs, and their heads were blunter and had a pair of trademark horns of these carnivorous reptiles.

…Nigel's own cool-under-pressure attitude was explained simply: the theropods were ignoring the humans, period. Having finished their dust baths, the abelisaurs' were grooming themselves, scratching each other with their broad and powerful hindlimbs as well as with their horns in those hard to reach places, and clearly enjoying themselves.

"I don't remember our dinosaurs doing this," one of Nigel's crew muttered.

"Yes, unlike birds, it seems that the dinosaurs aren't big on dirt baths," Nigel admitted, "but apparently those ones are. See how they are covered with a healthy covering of dust and dirt and soil, giving them this yellowish tint to their scales? It may be additional camouflage, but judging by their current behavior, they are bathing and rolling in it for health-related reasons instead – and they appear to be enjoying themselves too. I actually don't remember any of our park's theropod dinosaurs doing this-"

Nigel trailed away, as the abelisaurs stopped with their warm-up, fun and games, and instead grew business-like. Their blunt but wide muzzles sniffed their air, their posture notably stiffened, and as a single unit, the entire family went off towards a riverine copse, splitting into two groups and forming something of a pincer.

"While smaller than their carnosaur neighbours, abelisaurs still hunted sauropods and very successfully. Let's follow them and see what we'll come up with!" Nigel told his team brightly, and off they went.

/ / /

…Contrary to Suzanne's concern, everything was actually going down smoothly at the shearing site: she has finished giving Martha her haircut, and has now moved onto the Elasmotherium. The big, if not outright giant, prehistoric rhinoceros normally was nowhere as even-tempered and social as Martha was, but right now it was just as cooperative as Martha had been, standing still as Suzanne removed heavy clumps of its' own fur.

Suzanne's impromptu, (and unrequited) entourage were just as happy, for while on her own Martha had produced a lot of fur, with the shearing of the Elasmotherium, the amount of fur has doubled, as had the animals' fun. For once all of them were enjoying themselves and were actually making a successful effort to get along, as Bob pointed out to Suzanne, as the latter was finishing shearing the Elasmotherium and was about to take a break.

"Yes, I've noticed," Suzanne said a bit crossly – sometimes Bob could be something of a captain Obvious, which was not always pleasant. "What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be keeping an eye out on the T-Rexes, seeing how Matilda at least broke-out from their enclosure in the past?"

"Actually they are a part of the reason as to why I'm over here," the groundskeeper admitted. "They appear to be under the weather lately, so maybe you could come over and look at them later?"

"Maybe," Suzanne admitted. She was never too comfortable around the tyrannosaurs even when they were younger, but now they were grown-up, and there were three of them rather than two, which was another can of problems entirely, one that Suzanne did not want to tackle right now. "Can you be more specific?"

"No," Bob admitted. "They do appear to be losing weight, however, you know?"

"Very well, I will come over to them and see what is going on," Suzanne grumpily admitted. "Lead on, McDuff!"

Bob, who was Scottish enough to recognize the line from Shakespeare, just rolled his eyes.

/ / /

Back in the late Cretaceous South America Nigel and his team were surprised, when by following the local carnivores they'd arrived at a sauropod nesting ground… but they were at a wrong time, it seemed. The eggs have all hatched, the baby sauropodlets were all gone, and the ground was full of tracks that would eventually fossilize – both of the three-toed theropod variety and of the round sauropod one.

"Darn it," Nigel muttered. "We're too late. The sauropod eggs have hatched, the youngsters have left for different pastures, the herd has moved on… so why the carnivores are still here?"

"Nigel!" came the cry of one of his people, as they indicated the riverside copse – one of several – that were located between the river and the currently abandoned nesting grounds. The carnivores in question were very interested in it, as three of them moved into it – slowly, cautiously.

"Hm," Nigel grew even more thoughtful. "Carnotaurus was smaller than the T-Rex, but it was built similarly to the bigger carnivore; it was a creature of the open plains, so why are those dinosaurs going in there?"

…Actually, two of the Carnotaurus were not going into the copse, but rather were strutting down the river bank in open sight of both Nigel and his team – and a juvenile sauropod, one that was much bigger than a hatchling, but also much smaller than an adult dinosaur of its species.

"This must be a juvenile Saltasaurus," Nigel whispered in excitement, "it was actually one of the smaller species of sauropods that lived in South America during the Cretaceous, but it can still be a tough customer for the abelisaurs. Wonder if they are going to attack it together, like modern crocodiles and alligators do…"

However, it seemed that at least two of the abelisaurs had different ideas as they pranced on the river shore, eventually emitting a series of cries – and they were answered by a much deeper bellow, as the waters foamed and a monstrous reptile burst onto the shore. Surprisingly, it was not another dinosaur, but a member of a different branch of the archosaur family – a giant cousin of the modern crocodiles, Sarcosuchus. Snapping its' long jaws, flailing its long tail, it was a genuinely horrible sight – or at least that is what the juvenile Saltasaurus thought, as it whirled around and fled (by sauropod standards) into the trees – and into the jaws of the other abelisaurs.

The head and jaws of the Carnotaurus is wide and blunt, built almost like a vise, and its teeth too were very different from those of the carnosaurs – relatively short and thick, they were built for crushing rather than tearing flesh, and this was what those carnivores did: they bit down onto and into the sauropod and they pulled it downwards. The remainder of the pack join in, biting down onto the sauropod's hindquarters, just as the other members bit down on its neck and shoulders – and the juvenile sauropod fell. Only its' tail remained twitching.

This was when the Sarcosuchus came ashore. Though slower than the Carnotaurus pack was, this lumbering giant approached the dying sauropod quickly enough, and its powerful jaws snapped, shearing away the herbivore's tail, before the prehistoric crocodile cousin swallowed it whole. Feeling sated and satisfied, it turned and left back for the river, leaving the abelisaurs fighting over the remaining corpse.

"I think that we've seen enough for now," Nigel said thoughtfully, "let's go home to the Prehistoric Park for now.

And so they did.

/ / /

"Nigel," Suzanne exclaimed, trying to sound more surprised than relieved, (and succeeding in doing so). "No dinosaurs or other prehistoric animals this time?"

"No, not this time," Nigel replied thoughtfully. "Is anything wrong?"

"Maybe the T-Rexes," Suzanne admitted. "Why don't you take a look?"

They did. The T-Rex trio were lying around, or rather – rolling around, looking rather despondent, almost underweight and certainly under the weather. They were also scratching each other with their claws and biting each other – relatively gently – with their powerful jaws and teeth.

"Oh dear," Nigel muttered, who was clearly remembering the initial interaction of the Carnotaurus pack between each other, and was seeing a certain reflection of this behavior here. "Suzanne, I think that I have a generic idea of what is wrong here. Still, maybe a medical check-up of them might be in order?"

Suzanne just groaned and complied.

TBC