[COMPLETE] Life Before Man - Fabian's Journey

Prologue

The scorching Sun burned at its zenith, mocking the foolish Plateosaurus gracilis for not having eaten yet this day. Just like the days before. Pale stripes drew across the plant eater's green back in the same places where proud golden ones used to rest.

The Plateosaurus rose on its tail and hindlimbs. As if a hook pulled up its scalp, the sauropod stretched its arm-long neck to reach for the Ginkgo tree's last leaves. Its leaf-shaped teeth touched the paper-dry foliage, but before the herbivore could enjoy its favorite food one last time, the fan-shaped leaves crumbled. The dinosaur licked the shreds off its lips. Never would it allow so much expended breath to go to waste.

The Plateosaurus slumped again, halting just before its forelimbs hit the ground. Had evolution permitted it to press its palms into the sand, it would have taken the opportunity to relieve its body. But right now, food was more important than joint pain.

The dinosaur could not ignore the putrid smell of a Peteinosaurus' corpse. The corpse's bat-like chestnut wings had already been perforated by maggots. The herbivore had never tried meat before. However, in dire times, even the Devil eats flies, as an old saying goes. The Peteinosaurus was so rotten, so decayed, not even the sauropod's blunt teeth faced any resistance.

Little did the Plateosaurus know that someone else had picked up the meat's smell, too. Someone whose stealthy, dirt-colored armor lulled the resident desert animals into safety until it was too late.

Meet Teratosaurus suevicus. Spanning six meters from the snout to the tail tip, this apex predator resembled a four-legged T. rex. Only that it was no dinosaur. As it's bone-plate armor implied, it was closer related to crocodiles. Like its cousins, it lurked in a river bed. The only difference was that this river had been dried out. With its legs below the body rather than at the sides, Teratosaurus was forced to walk crouching if it wished to avoid detection. Despite its insufficient depth, the dried-out river was closest thing to cover this planar, featureless landscape had to offer. Fortunately, it was where the Gingko trees remained. And those who had come for them.

For all its efforts to hide from sight, the Teratosaurus could not conceal those pesky seismic waves its feet produced. Much like modern day elephants, Plateosaurus could hear the footsteps of all those stalkers and tell their location.

There was no time to lose. It dashed off into the wasteland. It had no goal in mind, no fortress to hide; only two bird-like lungs and a vague hope that this monster had been even more exhausted.

The predator's wheezing breath became louder and louder. A breeze from its mouth had already tasted the Plateosaurus' back.

A matter of heartbeats later, its flight came to an end. The predator had seized the prey's ankle with its theropod-like jaws. The dinosaur's neck buckled in response to the pain. It howled like a cow slaughtered without a bolt shot. Once the rauisuchian started shaking its jaws, it only became worse. Its maw clenched around the leaf-eater's tibia like a fist. A fist with the mass of a car whose palm housed rows of serrated stake-knifes.

The unholy triad of exhaustion, hunger and injury allied to knock the dying animal off its feet. In a touch of cruel pity, the Teratosaurus went for a quick neck bite.

The hungry hypercarnivore tore out a chunk of meat out of its victim's stomach. There was no need to perform a death roll like its long-snouted relatives. Much like the flesh-grazers among dinosaurs, it was sufficient to just bite and shake a bit. In fact, the similarities between Teratosaurus' skull and that of the theropods were so striking, the former used to be categorized as one of the latter.

An Efraasia minor witnessed the scenery from afar. The maiming of a creature so similar to its own brethren was not worthy of its attention.

This was a daily sight in Germany 214 million years ago.

A world, where the lush and temperate Central Europe used to rest at the heart of a vast supercontinent called Pangaea, far removed form life-bringing humid air. A world unrecognizable to any modern time traveler.

Should they arrive here, they would pointlessly search for big mammals or their fellow humans. Instead, they would encounter creatures categorized as „reptile" under their archaic Linnaean classification system. Contrary to their prejudice, not all of them would be crawling on the ground. Some would swim, others fly and others walk the Earth proudly elevated.

On land, the most prominent in their ranks were the archosaurs or leader reptiles. They had always been divided into two lineages: One represented by crocodiles and Teratorsaurus, the other represented by birds, Peteinosaurus and Plateosaurus. The former was known under the name Pseudosuchia. Pseudosuchians brought forth herbivores and carnivores, semi-aquatic and terrestrial animals.

Modern crocodiles are cold-blooded, but their ancient relatives might not have been. Crocodiles have a four-chambered heart which is more useful in warm-blooded animals. If the cold blood was an adaptation to the aquatic lifestyle, animals like Teratosaurus might have been warm-blooded. Regardless of their metabolism, the pseudosuchians were successful group of animals.

However, in the Late Triassic, the dawn of their era was approaching. A new player in the game was emerging: the dinosaurs. They entered the stage in the Middle Triassic, about 235 million years ago. It was not until the surge in temperature known as the Carnian Pluvial Event that they really bloomed though.

As unbelievable as that might be, dinosaurs had not always been the dominant taxon on Earth. For much of their early history, they shared niches with the pseudosuchians. With their higher morphospace, it could even be argued that the pseudosuchians dominated. Nobody knows what tilted the war between the avian and crocodilian branches of the archosaurian tree in the former's favor. Perhaps it was the virtue of an erect posture granting early dinosaurs greater speed and maneuverability. Perhaps their greater endothermy proved to be a competitive advantage. Perhaps it was mere historical contingency.

Whatever happened, we know for a fact that it were the dinosaurs, not the pseudosuchians who were destined to dominate much of the Mesozoic. It was them who were destined to become the largest land animals known to mankind.

The Teratosaurus knew nothing of that. With its lavish meal, it would end its life as a fat and happy winner. Its lineage, however, would not be so lucky.

©The title picture is credited to FunkMonk and depicts a Plateosaurus gracilis, though with different coloration than the one described here.