I'm going to post the next three chapters after this one as soon as they're ready, which means sometime before midnight, so expect a lot of updates!

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In the Permian Oceans of Arizona, the team has put their plan into motion. Already, the waters have been heavily chummed, leaving the hardest part of the plan: the wait.

Beneath the Mariner, the crimson cloud grows ever larger, releasing the smell of blood and death further into the ocean. In the present, their would be a risk of sea going birds trying to steal the meat, but there is no concern of that here - flying vertebrates will not appear until the Triassic, and there are no flying invertebrates that could jeopardize the plan by going after the bait.

That does leave one problem for the team, though: boredom. Aside from checking the sonar or watching the waves and R.O.V., there isn't much to do. With that in mind, it doesn't take long for the team to quickly get sidetracked. At first, the group attempts to fill the boredom with a game of charades, but that can only go so far when you are stuck with limited space. A game of I-Spy follows, but it doesn't take long for all of the good objects to be spotted. Finally, with no other options left, the team just begins playing tic-tac-toe using a whiteboard on the Mariner. At this point, anything that stops the boredom is appreciated.

This takes up roughly half an hour before, at last, something shows up on the sonar again. Jumping to action, Tai hastily navigates the R.O.V. toward the objects, revealing them to be more of the sharks the group has already encountered. The sharks swim up toward the chum, though some retreat at the unfamiliar sight of the R.O.V. Those that do, though, soon grow accustomed to its presence and resume their search for the chum.

The siblings look at each other, unsure what to do, when suddenly, something else shows up on the sonar - something bigger. The new arrival resembles the smaller sharks, but it is far larger, easily dwarfing its smaller cousins, who hastily retreat. More of the sharks soon begin to arrive, intent on finding a good meal.

"...those a Diablodontus, right?" notes Elise.

"Yes, they are," is Sean's response.

"Thought so. So, do we rescue them by tagging them with buoys?"

"Actually," remakrs Nigel, "I have a new idea for rescuing the sharks. I'll show you know. Follow me!"

Obliging, the team follows Nigel, who reveals a large set of barrel sized plastic cylinders, one of which Nigel rolls of the ship, before heaindg to the R.O.V. screen. There, the team watches as several sharks swim up to the cylinders, only to vanish through a time portal when they get too close.

"...portal creating depth charges?" asks Sean.

"The staff wanted to repurpose something that took lives into something that saves them. I approved of their line of thinking."

"Well, what works, works," is Elise's response.

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Back at the park, Matilda is still on the trail of the mystery scent. She's drawn quite a few onlookers.

Cautiously, the mastodon watched as the giant tyrannosaur stomped across the plains, careful to make sure her herd was nearby. The tyrant dinosaurs was intimidating even to the mighty proboscidean, which was always trying to keep her distance form the ferocious carnivore.

Proboscideans' greatest defenses against predators were their large sizes, their trunks, their tusks, and their thick hides. Any predator that could get past the two weapons they had still needed to avoid being crushed by the trunked mammals' titanic girths, and even then, they needed to break the herbivores' hides. For big cats and most canids, that was practically impossible - weak bite forces meant that they stood no chance of tearing into the flesh of such large herbivores without losing all of their teeth. Only the great bear dogs could hope to tear through a mastodont's hide, and even they would refuse to attack a healthy adult, out of fear of being crushed, gored, or throttled.

Tyrannosaurs, though, were another problem entirely. First off, they were big enough to not be intimidated by a mastodont's bulk. Additionally, not that the watching herbivore was aware of it, tyrannosaurs could easily tear through tough flesh, as their jaws could easily tear through tough hides. Tyrannosaurs were bone crushers, after all - tough hide did not compare to bones.

Eventually, the giant carnivore moved on, and the mastodons returned to browsing.

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In the underbrush bear a rock, Gila slowly began to stir.

Gila was one of the Paleosaniwa Nigel had rescued on his very first mission, a Komodo dragon sized relative of the Gila monster, who had been the source of her nickname. Alongside her mate, she had been given a large, forested exhibit to call home. Yet while the constant supply of meat was appreciated, the female carnivore could not help but feel bored in her new home. There were limits to how far she could explore, and while food was plentiful, hunts were nonexistent. While her new life was an easy one, it was also very boring.

Movement to the West soon caught her attention. To her surprise, it was the telltale shape ignore a tyrannosaur on the prowl. Instantly, Gila perked up - prowling tyrannosaurs often lead to juicy carcasses. Normally, such carcass were forbidden to Gila - she could not break their hides with her jaws. Tyrannosaurs, though, could easily tear open carcasses with their bone crushing jaws, something Gila had learned to exploit. Now, it seemed she would have an opportunity to exploit it again.

Cautiously, Gila and her mate slipped through the posts of their exhibit's fences, something that brought them great discomfort, but was worth enduring for a good meal. Now, they might finally find a good bite to eat, and explore along the way.

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READ AND REVIEW! This is Foameal15k, signing off!