[COMPLETE] Life Before Man - Fabian's Journey

Chapter 1

Fabian licked the last dew off the crumbling horsetail-leaf. It had always been his favorite type of water. It was almost as if the plant's and the rain's taste merged to create their own touch. Most importantly, it was always available, even when all the adults gathered around the waterhole. No big Plateosaurus engelhardti would ever satisfy themselves with the water on a plant, no matter how large. Fabian did. At least, he usually did. Not even during this time of the year were they so dry. Fabian was a small Plateosaurus, but not that too small to know about the seasons. He had already experienced the onset of the dry period last time. However, he remembered the last wet period to be, well, „wetter". It was the period in which he was born, after all. This period, not even half of the hatchlings survived the first weeks. And those who survived would not grow up to be as big as him. This was bad, even by the harsh standards of nature.

A nature which was so similar, yet so different to what is known to us.

Alfred Wegener was not the first to observe that Africa and South America fit together like jigsaw puzzle pieces. What he saw, however, was that they were not the only ones. North America and Africa used to be just a stone's throw away. North America and Eurasia were even closer, forming a landmass known as Laurasia. South America, Africa, India, Australia and Antartica formed a landmass called Gondwana. Later, these two continents would break apart, but during the Triassic, they established a supercontinent called Pangaea. Pangaea persisted between 335 million and 175 million years ago, an era comparable in length to the dynasty of non-avian dinosaurs.
There are various ways we know this. Many species used to have cosmopolitan distributions. Geological features, like mountain ranges, start on one continent and end on another. We can even measure the current rate of continent movement and extrapolate it backwards in time. Moreover, we know the sea floor sediments formed at different times. Continents are pushed aside when new sea floor is formed between them. Due to the North Pole's dynamic nature, different sediments show different magnetic fields. If you woke up during a random day millions of years ago, your compass would be unlikely to help you.
If you think Pangaea was a simple geological structure, you are mistaken. In first approximation, imagine a circle spanning half of the globe. Then, imagine the surrounding ocean Panthalassa grabbing into the continent's heart with its arm Tethys. An arm which today only exists as a remnant called the Mediterranean Sea.
Based on that knowledge, we can reconstruct how the paleo-world looked like. No-one has a full picture of what happened prior to recorded history. The sounds, colors and behaviors of most extinct animals will always remain an enigma. Nevertheless, we can try our best.

Picture Germany 208 million years before you were born. Had borders been invented, it would have been considered a landlocked country. A few million years earlier, it used to border on the Tethys. By the time of the Late Triassic, the big ocean's arm had already withdrawn as if Pangaea's center was a hot oven it burned its fingers on. Only that the withdrawal caused the heat and not vice versa. Water regulates the climate and further inland, there is less of it. Fresh clouds run out of breath the further they turn from the sea. The result was a hostile wasteland. At least during the dry period. Disregarding humidity, Germany was closer to the equator where the only seasons were a wet period and a dry period.

During the wet period, lush, green rainforests dominated the landscape. The Gingko trees crowded in, steering the Plateosaurus engelhardti herd on their path downhill. The cycad fronds lashed against the smaller animal's faces like wet curtains. Under the twilight sky, the mist even obscured the occasional lake. In its sidewards-facing eyes, a Plateosaurus had scleral rings. These are rings of bone did not just guard its eyes, they also illuminated the night like owl-eyes. Plateosaurus was likely cathermal which means it neither preferred the daylight nor the moonlight, it just liked to avoid the midday heat.
Gathering on their favorite trail of trampled stems was not easy for the herd. The largest of them weighed as much as an Asian elephant whilst being longer than an African one. 10 m and 4 t were their record-holder's sizes. They were about twice as long as their earlier relative Plateosaurus gracilis and quite a bit less gracile. Not even their enormous size preventing them from walking on their tiptoes like a ballerina though.

In the valley, a river plain larger than New York Central Park waited for them. The herd roared joyfully at the sight of the nesting site they had used for generations. An isolated cycad attracted the attention of a female Plateosaurus named Aconia, Fabian's mother. The cycad would make a good parasol and umbrella simultaneously. Unfortunately, she could not come too close without hearing a roar. A larger female had had the same thought as her. Aconia almost looked like a juvenile next to her, even though the age gap was not too great. Despite their bones indicating endothermic metabolism, Plateosaurus adults had widely varying sizes, much like modern day reptiles. Environmental factors such as food availability played a big role. They could be considered a transitional state between endotherms and ectotherms.
Aconia, barely bigger than a Plateosaurus gracilis, had to give up this dispute.
Other females were more welcoming. If its relative Massospondylus was any indication, Plateosaurus might have been a friend of colonial nesting. Aconia and nine other mothers arranged themselves wide enough so that no-one's tail bumped into someone's head. Then, they began scratching the sand with their feet. Even at night, it was surprisingly firm and warm. Heated by the Sun, sand is a natural incubator. There were no guidelines on which direction to scratch in. Had someone continued the nest-lines with a big stick until they met, they would have formed a labyrinth. Aconia produced a clutch of 25 apple-sized eggs. At least her small size meant she did not have to crouch to protect her eggs from the fall. Some of the others had as little as 20 or as many as 30 eggs. Regardless of the number, everyone pushed their eggs to form tight rows half-buried by the sand. Fortunately, the shells were thin enough for the eggs to breathe nonetheless. Aconia put a fern frond over her clutch. Whether by instinct or by personal taste, she arranged her eggs in rows of four. Only the 25th egg did not fit in. Rather than being fully buried like the others, it hung in the threshold between the nest and the plain. That egg was Fabian's.

Unfortunately, the river plain did not have many big trees. Over the next weeks and months, many females left the nest. Some to eat in the surrounding forest, others to take a nap. Regardless of who left, someone would always watch the nest. A Plateosaurus' brain was simple. They did not hold elections on who had to do the nightshift. They just did whatever they felt like. Over the breeding season, it all went fine, however. The nest site was well located; in the vicinity of a lake, but far enough to be safe from flooding. It is not far enough from the lake's predators though.

An innocuous turtle-like creature crawled closer. Nothing that should alarm the sleepy guardian. Only when the sentry took a midday nap did the stem-turtle bear its teeth. A Proganochelys. With its beak-like jaws, this one meter long stem-turtle likely preferred to crush plants. It did not forget its carnivorous roots though. The one egg that refused to fit in the nest caught its attention. At this point, Fabian might have been ready to hatch, but he was was barely larger than a human hand. It would take just one snap to end his life before it even began. The Proganochelys scratched its teeth against its eggshell, but in its clumsiness, the egg slid out of its beak. Bad mistake. This tiny sound was enough to make the sentry stomp closer. From a turtle's perspective, the Plateosaurus was more of a movie monster than an animal. The turtle returned to its lake. Now, its hunger had to focus on plants or, should its bloodlust turn out untamable, fish.
It was not just the sentry's appearance that was lucky for Fabian. The very attack of the turtle weakened his shell. He would be the first to hatch. Through his dim inner light of awareness, the outside world was filtered into a blur. Yet his instincts told him to stay where he was. He had no teeth to eat, no hindlimbs to rear up on and no pronating forelimbs to rest on. All he could do was lie in his nest and call for his mother.

For now, this was all he needed to.   

©Title image shows Pangea, credited to Falconaumanni.