[COMPLETE] Life Before Man - Fabian's Journey

Chapter 2

Fabian saw how an adult Plateosaurus came to his clutch with strange green matter in its mouth which was not part of a Plateosaurus' body. Every clutch had an adult that came with such a delivery. The adult Plateosaurus shook its jaws to let the fern's leaflets descend like snowflakes. As if he was in an bird's nest nest, all of Fabian's siblings raised their mouths into the air and begged for a bite. Fabian did the same. He did not question it, no-one did. It had been programmed in his brain. Fabian caught a leaflet almost as long as himself. He had no teeth to make it smaller, he could only cramp it together in his mouth and gulp. He fell on his back. Fabian would not beg for more spinach today, but there was no need to. He just got his first taste of food. Little did he know that he would later have to fight for it rather than have it be spoon-fed, but it was best not to dwell on this with a full stomach. For the next time, a twig would do it.

Whether by instinct or by observations, Fabian recognized this Plateosaurus as his mother. The sentinel did not dedicate so much energy into one particular clutch.
His mother roared. It was not just her, every single one of the adults joined the choir. Some of them even roared up, even though there were no trees in front of them. None of the kids understood why. The answer lurked in the threshold between the forests and the river plain. It was an animal which looked like the darker twin of a Plateosaurus with a crest on its snout. Its body was not lime green like a Plateosaurus', but more colored like a leaf in the twilight sky. The stripes went around its whole body, rather than just the back and were as dark as the night. If not for the scarlet crest, this animal would have been indistinguishable from the vegetation and its gaps in the forest night. But during the day, it could not escape the herd's attention. It stepped out of its cover, the wind blowing through its hair-like plumage. Its teeth were more like those of a Proganochelys than of a Plateosaurus. Although, it would be an insult to compare these serrated blades to a turtle's teeth. This animal was no Plateosaurus, not even a sauropod. It was a Liliensternus liliensterni.
Aconia came closer to it. She was no giant by Plateosaurus standards, but even she could look this beast in the eyes. If this was a fight one-on-one, the predator might have stood a chance, but against Aconia's sisters, it wisely withdrew.

The Liliensternus strolled through the shrubs. Normally, he ducked to avoid the gnarly branches, but he was not in the mood to exert that much effort today. One of the branches carried a Peteinosaurus that flapped away just before his snout! The Liliensternus was not doing this for fun. There was nothing fun to have all this tasty meat swirl around his head like brainless flies all day. He had a wife and children to feed. In a clearing, a Liliensternus with a purple crest crouched with her hip, the end of her tail and the backs of her hands touching the mud. Her forelimbs might not even have touched the ground if this was not a slope. Such a bird-like resting posture has been recorded in ichnofossils left by Liliensternus' Jurassic cousin Dilophosaurus. The mother uttered a roar that sounded like a high-pitched bird screech. In a gesture of submission, the father lowered his crest. It was the third time he came back home with no food this week.
Her twenty foot-sized hatchlings danced around the end of the slope. If Liliensternus was anything like its relative Coelophysis, it produced large numbers of relatively small eggs and invested about as much care in them as large reptiles do. Much like little crocodiles, these things were fairly independent. Despite this, mortality rates were high. One reason were high predation pressures. The other was that predators struggle more with acquiring food than prey do.
One of the hatchlings was especially hurt by the hunger. Her crest was mauve rather than the healthy lavender of her sisters. Much like eagles, little theropods competed for food when it was limited, so there were always those who were smaller and weaker than everyone else. Today, she would face one of her sisters who was among the most developed. Her crest was almost as dark purple as that of her mother. This unusually fast maturation earned her the name Lila.
Whether through mercy or through sheer hunger, Lila decided to end her sister's suffering with a bite in the neck. Before the poor victim even knew what was going on, the other siblings took a bite, too. The forelimbs, the tail, nothing was safe. She could not even scream properly with her constricted windpipe.
The parents watched the tug-o-war over their daughter's body parts. For them, it was just what kids do. At least they would have one less mouth to feed. They knew there was a deadline to gather as much food as possible before the day came where such acts of cannibalism would turn into a daily sight.
That day was the onset of the dry season.

During the dry season, the plains would grow and the forest shrink. The pterosaurs would migrate southwards, closer to the Tethys. With the shrinking lakes and the loss in thermoregulation, the days would become hotter and the nights cooler.
For Fabian, this was the first time in his life to spend a day without food. As a Plateosaurus' bone microstructure indicates, these animals started life with enormous spurts of growth. It was their best line of defense against the predators of this world. His size had already doubled compared to the last time we visited him. He had learned to walk and used his ability to go to a bald tree around a waterhole. He dug the sand near the root for twigs. The twigs came to him once Aconia shook a branch to get some plant matter herself. She might not have reached the tree if this was still the day when Fabian hatched, even though she was already an adult. Like with modern reptiles, the growth of a Plateosaurus never quite stopped. It only slowed down.
The twig supply stopped. Fabian wondered if his mother was not hungry anymore. She went between her 15 remaining children and a hillside near the waterhole. Fabian was too young to understand that such landmarks were warning signs. Predators loved waterholes for the prey they lured closer and hillsides for the protection they offered. Any prey item worth survival should be immediately alert. Fabian did vaguely recall his first encounter with a Liliensternus. It was the day when he learned that getting enough food was not his sole concern and that not all breathing creatures were satisfied with the unmoving greens. Whatever his mother was worrying about, it was likely a predator, he could figure out that much.
Aconia focused to pick up seismic waves. However, she was experienced enough to know that predators strived to minimize sounds and that the hillside was out of hearing range. She reared up on her hindlimbs, but the rock was too tall to see what was behind it. The hillside was about 30 meters away. This might sound like much, but Aconia knew that a Liliensternus could close this distance in seconds and force her into an uncomfortable fight-or-flight situation. She could not flight with her offspring, yet she was too small to fight more than one Liliensternus on her own. Luckily, the herd was close. Liliensternuses preferred to isolate animals from the herd, perhaps this was the reason why they were not attacked yet. She called the sentry. As they went together to the hillside, their instincts proved correct.
Shielded by the granite, the crouching Liliensternus couple thought they could give their offspring a little hunting lesson. One juvenile with a purple and two with red crests remained. This time, the Liliensternus parents were both a foot or two longer than the 5 m long Aconia, not at length parity like last time they met. They were not afraid of her. However, the 8 m long sentry filled their hearts with terror. It looked as if it could take down 10 Liliensternuses. The predators ran away.
Lila got her first hunting lesson: Don't let the food outsmart you! That, and the fact that she should not make noise during an ambush, though she hoped she was too small for the prey to hear.
The reason her parents had grown was different from why Aconia still grew: Her parents were not adults. While they were sexually mature, they still had unfused bones indicative of a subadult. Indeed, it is very well possible that most Triassic theropods known to us were subadults.

Once again, the family was without meat. At the waterhole's shore lay a two meter long skeleton which used to belong to a hybodont shark. They had already ripped all meat from it.
Lila went to the pond. Perhaps the water could wash down her hunger. For all her thirst, Lila was not stupid. She did notice the murky figure lurking underwater that loomed towards the surface. It was a fugitive from the days when this world had still faced rain. An olive lungfish snapped out of the water. A Ceratodus. Thanks to her alert observation, she escaped with nothing worse than a bald spot in her plumage from the fish's kiss. The Ceratodus ended up with little more than a mouth full of feathers. It was as long as a human leg. Lila was marginally shorter, but much more gracile. It could have easily drowned and then swallowed parts of her. For now, the fish pushed itself back into the water to escape from Lila's parents. However, they did not go away. They wished to play a deadly game of cat and mouse. Unlike an African lungfish, Ceratodontiformes could not survive total water depletion.
Unless the rain came soon, the fish would die.

As harsh as this dry season was, at least the lakes persisted. At least the tougher ferns provided food even in the harsher times. At least the rain would come back and let the forests bloom again. Or so everyone thought. The storms this wet season were not what they used to be. They had no weather forecasts back then, they did not understand how our planet works. Little did they know about aerosols, albedo, water vapor, greenhouse gases or atmospheric and oceanic currents. However, besides these mundane reasons, there are more exotic reasons for temperature variability. Occasionally, oceanic currents just wreak havoc. The concept of an El Niño is well-known to mankind. The El Niño is an irregular occurrence which, when it happens, disrupts the cool Humboldt Currents at the coasts of Peru. As a results, temperatures creep up, plankton dies and food webs collapse from the bottom. The precipitation at the West coast of the Andes increases whilst the Amazonian rainforest suffers from droughts.
It is conceivable that prehistoric seas had similar events which dramatically disrupted global temperatures and precipitation levels.
This year, the warm current that should feed the Tethys failed to appear. With falling temperatures, less water evaporated and the so-called wet season was not much better than the dry season.

Fabian was done with his horsetail-leaf. By now, he was one year and four months old and almost two meters long. The adults had finally drunk up the waterhole. While Fabian had no idea what to do, he saw how everyone else was moving. The herd was not ready to sit this season through. They had to do it like the pterosaurs.

They had to migrate closer to the Tethys.

©Liliensternus by Nobu Tamura. Note that the coloration is somewhat different from what's described in the text.