Here's the next chapter of Inside Their World!

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Greedily, Terminator tore into the carcass. The bones crunched in his snout, allowing him to taste the delicious marrow. Nearby, another of his kind dug into a strange fruit, enjoying the odd taste of its orange, seedy innards. Further away, more of their kind was resting in the shade, trying to avoid the heat of the day.

Terminator's kind had adapted well to the park: their new home was filled with things to eat: small animals, strange carcasses the hairless straight walkers had offered him, and plenty of new types of plants. In their own home they had survived, but here, they thrived. This could be attributed to a variety of reasons, but the simplest one was that they were entelodonts, and entelodonts could eat anything.

Terminator's kind had two advantages over other predators: bulk that let them steal kills was one, but by far their biggest advantage was that they didn't need to depend entirely on meat for food. Entelodonts could eat anything they wanted (well, accept for feces), meaning that, when they were hungry, they didn't need to rely on kills for sustenance. Fruits, vegetables, nuts, tubers, it didn't matter what plant they saw; all were edible. Having such a broad diet was beneficial to these giant mammals, for it meant that they were unlikely to go hungry.

Of course, they still liked to eat meat, and the easiest way to get fresh flesh was to steal it from another predator. Entelodonts were built for power and could bulldoze through other carnivores whenever they were hungry, bullying the weaker animal off of its kill and claiming it as their own. They preferred to do this to hyaenadonts, whose only edge against other predators were their razor-sharp teeth. Unfortunately for the hyaenodonts, the entelodnts had even more powerful bites.

All good things eventually came to an end, though. The hyaenodonts had begun to disappear, leaving the entelodonts without their main source of stealable carcasses. This hadn't been too much of a problem, for the entelodonts had merely grown larger, becoming more effective predators in their own right. Now, they grew large enough to take down anything they wanted.

Yet even then, they had faced opposition. New predators had emerged to take the hyaenodonts' place: bear dogs had appeared. These predators were smarter than the hyaenodonts, smarter than the entelodonts. They also got fairly big. They ran fairly fast. Worst of all, the bear dogs could hunt in packs. These traits meant that, occasionally, entelodonts like Terminator found themselves losing their kills to the bear dogs. These were rare occurrences, but they happened, and they were getting more frequent. The tide of evolution had begun to turn against the entelodonts. IN a few million years, they would have disappeared for good.

Of course, it seemed fate had changed in their favor, and now the entelodonts found themselves in a world free of competition from the bear dogs. Here, they were free to hunt and rule unmolested.

A snapping twig brought Terminator's attention away from his meal. Nearby, behind a barrier of wood, a hyaenodont was marking its territory. His name was Bonesnapper, and he was among the last of his kind. The entelodonts, at the very least, had had a few million years left when they were rescued before they went extinct. Bonesnapper was part of the last population of hyaenodonts left in the world. In a couple centuries, competition and in-breeding would've wiped them out. Now, though, they were free to start anew.

Bonesnapper had already eaten, so once he finished marking his territory, he moved to shade and prepared to nap. The nearby rustling of branches, though, kept him awake. Turning toward it's source, Bonesnapper was mildly surprised to see a clawed Moropus picking at a tree. The herbivore was of no concern to him, though, so Bonesnapper simply ignored it.

The Moropus was named Morrell, and he didn't really care that he was so close to two different types of giant predators. His clawed fingers discouraged aggression from predators unless they had the element of surprise, and it was unlikely that they would be able to climb the wooden barriers that separated them from Morrell.

Morrell was a browser, with teeth unsuited for grazing. While his kind would last a long time, by the end of the Miocene, grass would push them into the shadows, only able to find food in forests. Still, the Chaolicothere's would endure until the Pleistocene before they finally died out.

Just then, a loud crashing sound snagged Terminator, Bonesnapper and Morrell's attentions. Turning toward it, they watched as a peculiar looking animal slowly crashed out of the underbrush. It had a huge frill with eyespots on it, horns, and a beaked mouth. It briefly looked at them, then began to devour a nearby bush.

All three mammals could only stare on in wonder at the beast, still unsure what to make of it. It resembled a rhino, but it's horns were far larger than any rhino they had ever seen. It's horns, though, more heavily resembled an antilocaprid, but much bigger. Clearly, these were weapons meant for goring. Yet the strangest thing about the herbivore was its size: it dwarfed even Terminator, who was one of the largest mammals to roam the plains.

A second set of crashing sounds precluded the arrival of two more of this giants, who quickly began to join their companion in grazing. Briefly, the first horned beast stared down one of its fellows, eyespots becoming more prominent for a moment, before relaxing as the new arrival back down. The defeated giant retreated to a mushroom covered log and began to dig in, the appetizing fungus being excellent consolation for the lost bush.

It seemed that there was more to this new land than meets the eye.

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AN: Read and Review! This is Flameal15k, signing off!