Prehistoric Park

Death of a Dynasty, part 1

Ron and Veronica hopped into the Warthog, followed by Zahi Hawass and Ron's capture team.

"So, what are we after?"

"More T-Rex, first, and a number of other species including Anatotitan copei, and any other animals we can get."

"Such as?"

"Orodromeus makelai, Einiosaurus procurvicornis and Hatzegopteryx thambema."

"Three herbivores and a pterosaur? Easy."

"Not so easy. Any animal that we've got here is endangered, and we'll need more of them."

Zahi watched as the Leopard tank went through the time portal.

"North America, 65.5 mya, here we come!"

Ron drove through, along with his large force of animal specialists.

Nigel and Bob were going to hate him later.

When they arrived, they were near the edge of a forest.

"This is the Blanket Forest, a huge forest that went as far as the Yukon Territories and as south as Mexico, to as far east as Manitoba in Canada and New Mexico in the United States. All of this is araucara, gingko and different kinds of ferns and horsetails."

Ron got out and looked around.

"We're near Lake Athabaska, in Alberta, Canada, where fossils of different dinosaurs have been found here for over a century."

Then Ron saw their first dinosaur of the day: Anatotitan, or 'Duck Titan', as the genera was the largest duckbill of the time and found.

Ron smirked.

Two pterosaurs flew overhead, but Ron could ID them as relatives of Quetzalcoatlus: Hatzegopteryx thambema, as they were adults, but smaller then Quetzalcoatlus.

"Studies have showed that azhdarchids, of which Quetzalcoatlus is a member of, were animals that ate not just fish, but young dinosaurs, crocodiles, mammals, even other pterosaurs. Put dumbly, it means that they can eat anything they want if they want it. Thankfully, Veronica's far too heavy for a Hatzegopteryx to grab, and there's no really young Anatotitan. Luckily, I have bait."

Ron pulled out a can of Spam, and Zahi started laughing.

"That's never going to work!"

Ron opened it and placed it on the ground.

The game warden was soon proven right, as an entire flock of these huge animals landed nearby.

Ron opened another can and placed it on the nearest Land Rover.

"Dylan, set up the time portal. Michael, drive as if you were going to die!"

He drove right at the time portal, which Dylan barely set up in time and jumped out of the way.

The Hatzegopteryx flew after it, straight back to the 21st century.

"And that's other race that has given extinction the fing-"

The roar of a theropod rang throughout the forest.

The Anatotitan ran through the time portal, almost by accident.

Almost, as Ron wanted to bring them back, but not this quickly.

Ron turned to see a huge 60 foot long dinosaur, armed to the teeth...literally.

"That, Dr. Hawass, is the biggest fucking T-Rex me or anyone else has ever seen. Not even fossils survive of something that size!"

And with good reason.

Large forests are rarely preserved, especially in the highlands.

Two more Tyrannosaurs walked up behind it, both 45 feet long and 7 tons apiece.

The 60 foot one had to be 8 to 10 tons, and that made it the biggest theropod dinosaur ever, dwarfing Giganotosaurus and Spinosaurus.

The problem was that these three weren't alone.

Packs of Tyrannosaurs were in the high single digits to low doubles: 7 to 15.

And with such large prey like Anatotitan and Edmontosaurus and even Alamosaurus, they needed large numbers.

Ron ran to the time portal, and the Tyrannosaur pack followed.

And not just those three: all 14 of them, ranging from the huge female to two year olds 15 feet long. Ron ran around the time portal, but the Rexes ran straight through, back to the 21st century.

"That's three species right there! But we'll need to branch out, get away from the forest edge and go into the open plains. But that can wait until tomorrow. Set up camp; we'll sleep here tonight."

Back at the Park

The new animals were settling down.

Well, all but the new Rexes.

Nigel sighed as the two year olds played with the hatchlings and Matilda roared at the huge 60 foot monster Ron brought back.

Bob was setting up a containment area for the larger animals, but the problem was would it hold?

They'd had two breakouts and a dozen near-misses over the past year Ron had been there.

Of course, they were releasing another animal into the wild a few days from now: the Dodos.

They'd been breeding like crazy, so the huge number of dodos (over 800 from 60 birds and their hatchlings over the course of a year) were being sent to the island of Mauritius to save a tree from extinction.

Bob drank a cup of coffee as his new favorite animals, the Gallimimus, ran through the park.

Unlike the Ornithomimus, which grew to Ron's height of 6' 5'', Gallimimus grew to 13 feet high and 20 feet long.

Putting them in the Ornithomimus pen would be pointless.

They would jump over the fence.

Ron did tell Bob to let them out to run around, and they mostly stayed with the Sauropods. Almost every animal was in breeding or rutting season.

The Deinosuchus was getting restless and Nigel identified it as getting ready to mate.

She snapped at anything that came near.

They needed another Deinosuchus soon, and Nigel was getting ready to get a few more.

Bob thought that Nigel had lost his mind, but then again, insanity was in the job description to work there.

And two more pouchers were dead: stealing Albertosaurus eggs.

"Ron said it best: the animals will kill them. We can keep the animals in, but not the pouchers."

The next day

Ron woke up to the sounds of a small dinosaur poking around his tent.

It was the size of an Ornithomimus, but the colors were off.

"Struthiomimus altus. The 'Ostrich Copy'."

There was a small flock of them outside, eating the ferns and the horsetails.

Then two small dinosaurs, a pair of Albertonykus borealus, ran over and started eating worms and termites.

"Albertonykus is an Alverezsaur, with only a claw on the end of their arms to burrow into termite mounds. It's no threat."

The roar from the forest, on the other hand...

"Shit! Pack up and get in the vehicles! We've got another one to worry about!"

They moved quickly, but more Albertonykus ran over, followed quickly by a herd of Einiosaurus and another pack of Tyrannosaurus.

Ron guided the herd using gunshots towards the time portal, when ran toward it himever to lure the other Tyrannosaur pack toward the portal.

The portal activated as the animals ran through, but shut off as they ran and got out of the area.

More of the top predators of Laurasia were in the area, and Ron didn't want to get killed by them.

They drove off, getting two more species of animal and more T-Rexes back in the park.

They drove southeast, toward the Pierre Seaway, which seperated North America until 80 mya, when it started to close up.

It was a very slow process, as the Seaway was still seperating Texas and New Mexico from one another, but that didn't stop Tyrannosaurus Rex from becoming the largest land predator on the planet, as Spinosaurus' Africa 100 mya and Giganotosaurus' South America were smaller then Tyrannosaurus' North America 70-65.5 mya.

Zahi looked at the volcanos to the west.

"What in the name of-"

"The young Rockies. Well, young geologically. They were formed about 20 million years before the end of the Mesozoic, and are still volcanic. Most of them die out. Some, like the infamous Mount St. Helens, stay active for another 65 million years."

A herd of Torosaurus were making their way across the lava plains, and Ron pitied them.

"Sulpher. It makes the eggs harder to make: too thick in some places, too thin in others. And it's making their lives a living hell."

"That worries me. But didn't the dinosaurs become extinct because of an asteroid?"

"It was a one-two-three punch. The number of dinosaur species decreased, but their numbers remained high. Then volcanic activity increased, spitting sulphur into the air, screwing with the eggs. Then a Mount Everest-sized asteroid hit the Chicxulub Sea and killed everything bigger then a sheep. The smaller dinosaurs died out shortly later, due to sulphur levels and predadion by mammals. Only the birds survive of this mighty dynasty."

Ron continued driving, as Zahi chuckled.

"Until Nigel and you came along."

"Of course!"

They got past the Alberta-Saskatchewan boarder, and drove toward to the south, covering 80 kilometers in order to catch up to another animal Ron called a mini-Tyrannosaurus: Dryptosaurus aquilunguis, called Laelaps in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

But they had to move fast, as Ron chose the least best time for an expedition across the contenent: in less then 2 months, the Chicxulub asteroid would kill everything over 200 pounds and bigger then a sheep.

The simple question: would they make it to the east in time?

Sorry for not updating in a long while, but I had to think about what I'd feature.

You should know this was the result of a number of weeks of research and rewrites.

So, I decided to feature some of the last North American dinosaurs, including a giant Rex. I've checked, and North America was a lot bigger then Africa and South America 68-65.5 mya then either one when Spinosaurus or Giganotosaurus were alive. Easy math: the contenent was huge, the prey were huge, and so T-Rex had to be huge, as it had to kill large Hadrosaurs like Edmontosaurus and Anatotitan, Ceratopsians like Torosaurus, Triceratops, Einiosaurus, Chasmosaurus and Pachyrhinosaurus or armored animals like Edmontonia, Euoplocechalus and Ankylosaurus.

Next time: Ron and his capture team make it to Appalacha, and find a pair of Tyrannosaurs that Ron thought he'd never get back to the park.

Ja Ne!

PS: chapters missing. Added them