In the sweltering heat of South Africa, a fearsome beast sought refuge from the blistering midday sun in the shade of a large candelabra tree surrounded by tall bushes, not too far away from the lake that has become her new home. Her massive jaws were gaping wide open in order to provide cooling by evaporation from the mouth lining.
Not too long ago, she, like any large carnivore, would have lived day by day on alert, constantly looking for her next meal while having to ward off enemies, most of which were her own species, from biting a chunk out of her. But those days were now behind her.
Food was no longer a concern, as her captors would regularly drop large slabs of meat into her enclosure for her to devour. It tasted mammalian, not reptilian, but it made little difference to her. Now her biggest worry was to avoid overheating after her routine basking period in the early morning sun rays.
For she was the first of her species to be granted the chance to live out the rest of her days in peace within the confines of captivity, a voracious predator that once challenged the mighty tyrannosaurs for the title of Laramidia's apex predator.
She was a Deinosuchus riograndensis, named Dallas by the park's staff, a massive alligator brought back from the late Cretaceous of Texas, 74 million years ago.
Weighing 3 tonnes and stretching 8 m in length, she was a behemoth by today's crocodilian standards, dwarfing the Nile crocodiles who resided in the neighboring lake. A male of her species could reach an additional 2.5 m and a few more tonnes. Her size betrayed the fact that she was entering her late 30s.
A chain link fence separated the two enclosures to make sure Dallas didn't get the idea to go snacking on her smaller cousins. Throughout their 200 million year long evolutionary history crocodiles have never been fussy eaters.
That was one of the reasons why they were such hardy survivors, apex predators that clung on to their niche as riparian predators for over 100 million years. That, however, was hardly the only niche these archosaurs had exploited through the eons. Throughout the Mesozoic, many different types of crocodiles came and went, from shark-like marine hunters to fully terrestrial sheep-like browsers.
By Dallas' time, many of these more outlandish forms were long gone but the riparian crocodiles were more successful than ever, being the dominant freshwater predators throughout the globe.
The Deinosuchus was nothing if not a major success story, a versatile hunter that emerged during the height of the Western Interior Seaway's glory and both conquered and became the undisputed king of the vast estuaries that stretched all along the coasts of Laramidia to the west and Appalachia to the east. It hunted in both fresh and saltwater, and it dinned on pretty much anything it could lock its deadly jaws around, from land-dwelling dinosaurs like Parasaurolophus and Kritosaurus looking for a drink to the various animals that swam the coastal waters; giant turtles, elasmosaurs and even sharks like the dreaded Squalicorax were on the menu for a full-grown Deinosuchus.
But that hardly meant that these gargantuan gators had it easy, far from it. They had to endure a very tough, cruel way of life. For any crocodile, growing up and living to reproduce was a very slim chance in the wild, no matter from which chapter in Earth's history they came from. Dallas was a big female but the fact that she had managed to reach this size meant that all of her siblings had to pay the price for it.
This monstrous predator started life as a tiny, big-eyed hatchling who was merely one amongst a clutch of 50 eggs which her mother had laid in a nest near the brackish waters they called home and covered it with vegetation which upon decomposition would provide the heat needed to incubate the eggs.
Like with most expecting mothers, she lost over half of her offspring before they even hatched. She had guarded the nest as best as she could, even negating to feed herself for long periods of time but that wasn't enough to protect it from nest raiders that never stopped coming.
When Dallas broke through her shell with her egg tooth and chirped for her mother, the reptile that was summoned by her and dug through the nest, exposing her to sunlight for the first time, wasn't her mother but a Palaeosaniwa, a 3 m goanna that was one of the biggest threats to Deinosuchus nests. Dallas and her remaining 20 or so siblings were nearly eaten if not for the timely arrival of their mother.
Their mother greeted them with a low, rumbling growl and carried the tiny killers to the water in her massive jaws, where she would protect and take care of them for the following year. Dallas started out with a series of yellow bands around her body which served as camouflage, which she eventually traded for a simple uniform blackish-gray, counter-shade coloration as she grew older, and spent her first year homing in her hunting skills by preying on small fish, frogs, crayfish, and insects.
She quickly learned about the harsh cruelty of nature as she witnessed most of her siblings getting eaten. Some were caught by smaller crocodiles like Brachychampsa, others were swallowed by fish like Melvius and gars, while some got snatched up by hungry Navajodactylus. A few were even cannibalized. By the time their mother ceased to protect them, only 3 of them were left and each struck out on their own.
Once she had reached 2 m, Dallas was relatively safe from most of her past foes and even started preying on some of them. But she was still an easy target for larger Deinosuchus, so she spent most of her younger years steering clear of her elders, with some close calls. From then on it was a waiting game as she steadily grew larger, and the laws of power gradually shifted in her favor, and step by step she graduated to bigger and bigger game. Once she had reached 6 m she caught her first large kill, an adolescent Kosmoceratops swimming through one of the rivers flowing into the sea.
From then on she was firmly on her way to becoming an apex predator with only other mature Deinosuchus posing a serious threat to her. Dallas bore several scars on her face and the rest of her body from past scuffles over food and territory.
But her own kin weren't the only competition she had to deal with. Their greatest terrestrial adversary was the Bistahieversor, large tyrannosaurs that sporadically invaded their estuary home following the migrating herds of duckbills and horned dinosaurs. During her final few days in Texas, Dallas recalled how a trio of them was lurking in the nearby forest, hounding the herd of Parasaurolophus which was passing through.
The three Bistahieversor slew an adult Parasaurolophus but made the mistake of eating their kill near the water's edge, which soon attracted the largest gators in the area, Dallas included.
Like with lions and Nile crocodiles, such encounters were rarely violent and for good reason. Both predators were equally matched in size, and both yielded powerful jaws, but neither party wanted to risk injury. Deinosuchus might have possessed large osteoderms for protection but Bistahieversor was adapted for attacking armored prey, but if Deinosuchus caught one of your limbs it would never let go.
Instead, such showdowns would boil down to a Mexican standoff, a show of intimidation which would often last for hours. Dallas didn't wait to see who was victorious and left with a chunk of meat in her jaws.
But the Western Interior Seaway was hardly any less hazardous. Dallas didn't venture into it until she was close to her current size. Large protostegidae turtles with their minimal shells were very appealing prey, as were the long-necked plesiosaurs like Albertonectes which were easy to kill, not to mention the bounty of large fish.
But going into the ocean would put them in direct competition with mosasaurs, giant sea lizards which could accurately be described as hybrids between crocodiles and sharks, ironically related to the goannas that threatened Dallas' kin as hatchlings. The largest like Prognathodon rivaled Deinosuchus in size and packed a nasty bite of their own. The predators usually avoided each other but every once in a while some would be more confrontational than others.
The tip of Dallas' tail was missing and this was a rather recent injury which she had sustained when she came across a dead Magnapaulia floating off the coast. The massive duckbill attracted various predators such as sharks and polycotylids, and Dallas quickly joined the feeding frenzy. A bold Prognathodon arrived on the scene and tried to drive her off, bitting her tail and cutting its tip off. He quickly retreated however after losing one of his front flippers to Dallas' death roll.
It was a rough life, but Bistahieversor and Prognathodon were now just an unpleasant memory, as were her own kin who would undoubtedly have challenged the seasoned female for this lake which she now had to herself, where food was literally tossed to her on a daily basis. Being a cold-blooded gator also meant that she wasn't itching for any exercise or exploring unless it involved finding prey. All and all, life has been pretty good for her ever since she followed that strange bipedal, hairless mammal through the bright light.
Dallas hadn't seen that adolescent-looking, yet strangely nearly adult-sized Bistahieversor since the day she had first arrived, and should that theropod invade her territory again she might not be so lucky the next time she tries dodging Dallas' jaws.
Dallas was supposed to be the park's most recent addition, but she wound up not being the only animal to jump into the present from the Campanian. A much smaller predator revealed himself as a stowaway from the past and his arrival had caused a bigger crisis for the park than any of the resident megafauna had ever managed to accomplish. He was eventually caught and placed into his own enclosure, but the crafty coyote-sized maniraptor had managed to escape it.
Dubbed Currie by the humans, the little dinosaur appeared on the jeep track cutting through the lake. He resembled a bird in almost every way except for his long, bony tail, clawed wings and scaly muzzle packed with tiny teeth, and he obviously couldn't fly.
He sported a coat of primarily black feathers, except on his haunches which were white along with a striking white stripe on each side of his face, both of which ran from below his eye down his back, similar to a chipmunk. His smooth head feathers were a dashing crimson color, which identified him as a male of his species.
Currie was a Talos sampsoni, a species of troodont native to southern Laramidia.
The sharp-eyed opportunist quickly spotted Dallas' motionless form in the bushes and immediately grew wary. This place was teeming with crocodiles and he knew that he was standing in a precarious position. Dallas noticed him but paid him no mind, such small dinosaurs were hardly a snack to a Deinosuchus, hardly worth the effort. Currie, however, didn't take any chances and bolted away from the crocodile-infested area.
This new world with its weird mishmash of animals, both familiar and completely alien, was confusing to the young Talos. He had considered running away from the park but was hesitant to do so.
Last time he did that after escaping from the stampeding long-necked dinosaur, he had spent a brief stint in the nearby shrubland savannah trying to find his way back home while also looking for food, where he quickly found himself being pursued by large predatory mammals with long ears and shaggy brown fur whom he managed to outrun only to bump into another abnormally large mammal with equally large ears, long whiskers and a yellow, spotted pelt who viciously attacked him and clawed him to protect her cubs.
Several more hostile encounters with the local mammalian carnivores, including one very small but very vicious black and white burrower had sent Currie packing back to the park where he saw that none of the resident wildlife would follow. This, of course, got him caught and placed in a cage.
Maybe if he was more careful he could avoid being recaptured. After all, hiding and staying undetected is what his kin did best.
...
I was surprised to see that Prehistoric Park had a few fanfics floating around the internet, including some that give short biographies for the park's prehistoric residents, which inspired me to give my own take on it.
I didn't see any that focused on the Campanian animals from "Supercroc" so I choose them as the focus of this one-shot. Of course, it's also updated to fit current paleontological data.
I named the troodont after a certain well-known paleontologist (and also because it sounds similar to "scurry" XD), and no points for guessing where the Deinosuchus got her name XD
Would you like to see me make more of these?