Bruce cruised through the depths. The warm water of this sea reminded him of his old home. It'd been a few years since he'd arrived in the present, having been rescued long before the park had been built, making him on of the park's older residents. He'd been alive for a long time now, and had finally reached maturity for his species. For the first time in his life, he was ready to mate.
Of course, he wasn't going to complete that biological imperative just yet. Though the park did have a few more of his kind, among them many females, he would not attempt to seek one out just yet - his instincts weren't telling him it was time yet. Additionally, many of the females were larger than him, and would likely try to eat him if he offended them. Nature was seldom kind to the dumb.
Bruce's patrolling was interrupted, however, when a strange, metallic shape came into view. The armored entity was one he had seen before, but this one was behaving differently from the others. Rather than swimming toward him, it instead observed the reefs below, watching the corals, invertebrates, and small fish go about their lives, uncaring of the giant carnivore.
Bruce knew better than to attack it. HE had tried this before, only to find the taste lacking. Additionally, it had yet to try and poach his kills, leaving him with no reason to attempt to kill it. For now, he would simply watch it, only going on the offensive if it dared to attack him first.
The attack never came. The armored creature merely continued to observe the smaller creatures, before eventually moving away. Briefly, though, it paused and turned to face the giant shark. A moment later, a strange looking quadruped was ejected from the armored beast's body. The smell of blood soon filled the water. Attention now focused on the carcass, Bruce charged. HIs first attack tore the bovid in half, and it only took him three bites to devour the carcass.
The armored creature observed all of this, then completed its retreat.
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From within the mini-sub, Lucas smiled. The photos he'd gotten of Bruce were magnificent. They would surely be enough to convince their sponsors that the park was a success.
Also, wow, Bruce was big. He looked like he was almost fully grown!
….Were there plans to try and pair him up with one of the females? Maybe he should ask someone about it later.
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While Lucas returns to the sub pen, Vera and Alice are still helping out their simian friend.
Once again, the little plesiadapid hopped across a branch. This time, she pulled it off flawlessly. No reward came, but she didn't need one - she felt happy enough as is. Nearby, Vera and Alice smiled -it seemed their charge had learned well.
They had spent the past three days trying to get it to learn how to climb, and so far, it seemed that their training - well, conditioning was more like it - had been working. They'd been slowly weening her off the fruit rewards they had offered her earlier, in order to condition her such that he would not what she had learned when she was no longer being conditioned. As the trees she was jumping into were filled with fruits of their own, though, this wasn't really a concern - after all, she was already starting to forage in the tree she had jumped into.
Hopefully, her family would still accept her.
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Back in Prehistoric Oregon, the team is still cruising along.
Many creatures had swum in these ancient seas. Eurypterids, placoderms, nautiloids, eugenodonts, ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs of all kinds had swum thorugh these oceans. One day, mosasaurs and sea turtles would join them, as would birds. Mammals, however, would never be part of that cast - the sea would drain away before whales could appear, and the pinnipeds would not show up until after the cetaceans had evolved. This was the peculiar irony of this ocean - it would see many ancient inhabitants, yet no modern ones would call it their home.
Among all that would call this ocean home, though, none would cruise across its surface like the humans did now - nature did not select for the great swimmers that floated on the water instead of swimming beneath it. Those creatures would be too slow to avoid predators, and unless they bread fast and young, they would never achieve the numbers needed to sustain them. That was why the only great objects that cruised across the surface of the ocean were those that weren't alive - you didn't need to worry about predators eating you if you weren't alive to begin with.
Since the rescue of the plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs, the team had yet to encounter any other living creatures aside from nautiloids. Now, though, it seemed their luck was about to change - on the sonar, a group of large animals had been detected. The ship had swiftly changed course to approach them, and now, they were almost upon the odd blips.
At last they came upon the unknown creatures. There, the group found them to be long necked plesiosaurs. These ones, however, did not appear to be fish eaters, seeing how they were tearing apart the long dead carcass of an ichthyosaur. Indeed, these ones had noticeably larger jaws than their contemporaries, with similarly large teeth.
Tai was the first to take a guess at their identity. "..Rhomaleosaurs?"
Tristan could only nod. "Yep, that's what they are. Borealonectes, if you want the genus."
While the group stared on, the plesiosaurs continued to butcher the carcass. It was a few minutes before the team began to ready the portal and some bait. Consequently, the team completely failed to notice another blip show up on the sonar.
Even if they had noticed that blip, though, they would not have been able to notice the creature scuttling beneath their boat, now joined by more of its kind, all looking for a meal.
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AN: Read and Review! This is Flameal15k, signing off!
