Concurrent with Juxia rescue….

Sighing in relief, Yusuf put the container in the disposal bin and started cleaning up the vet station. Now he could finally get the chance to cleaning off the smell of feces.

"Yusuf," said the familiar voice of Suzanne, "how are things going?"

"Fine. I've determined that there are no parasites in the paracerathere's stool."

"Splendid. I wish that this wasn't something we had to do, but, well, no one said that looking after giant animals was clean."

No, no one did. But most people didn't realize just how disgusting that care could get. As a rule, giant herbivores tended to produce colossal amounts of waste, which needed to be handled with care to avoid disease. Normally, it just needed to be cleaned out by rake, but with animals this large, bulk-loaders were needed. Yusuf had felt both relief and guilt when he had learned during his first assignment that the bulk-loader for the Giganotosaurus exhibit had engine troubles and wouldn't be usable for the first cleaning with the other new hires - relief that he wouldn't have to be one of those cleaning up the mess in person, and guilt for all the new hires who would be doing so instead. Especially since they had to push all of it in wheelbarrows.

Of course, eventually even he would have to start dealing with the literal mountains of shit - changes in an animal's stool were often signs its health was abnormal, which often meant dissecting the waste to determine what was wrong. Today was a different case - the park had been collecting the dung of the newly arrived mammals so that they could examine them for any signs of parasites, and also create a base pool of feces samples so they could recognize future abnormalities. Needless to say, it was a smelly and rather disgusting job. It did beat having to work with that Japanese vet, though - the blond was talented, but his ego left much to be desired.

Why that Ichirou man on the board had recommended him was an enigma.

A bellow pulled Yusuf out of his thoughts, instead drawing his attention to a nearby window. There, one of the paraceretheres - the same one he had been examining the stool of - was exploring the holding pen, waiting to be released into its permanent enclosure. Seeing it made all the negativity in Yusuf fade away, for this was why he had accepted the offer to work here - to help these magnificent creatures gain a second chance against extinction. One day, extinction would claim a victory over everything, but that was not today.

XxXxX

The next day…

Standing just outside of Triceratops Creek, the Japanese woman checked her watch. It was just five minutes until the clock hit 8AM.

'She's normally really early,'thought the dark haired woman.'Did something happen on the way up?'

Said question was answered as one of the park's special transportation vehicles (read:golf carts) came to a halt on the far side of the road. Out of it came a brown-haired haired girl, also of Japanese descent, who looked a little disheveled, but nonetheless composed herself before crossing the road.

"Nice to see you again, rookie. You're Suzume, right?"

"Hai," confirmed the brown-haired girl, "that's me. And you're Karin, aren't you."

Karin nodded. "I am. Thanks for the help yesterday with theTalos -wasn't expecting the AC to fail then and there."

Suzume smiled. "Being a dino-keeper means being ready for anything!"

Karen couldn't help chuckling. "Yeah, I guess it does. Come on, then - I need to show you the ropes here. Then, I can introduce you to all the Triceratops in here."

XxXxX

An hour later, Suzume and Karin were in the exhibit's food preparation area, mixing together leaves and fruits for the giant ceratopsians.

"Nice work so far - you handled everything I taught you well."

Suzume grinned. "It's nothing," she replied as she worked on the fodder. "I've been preparing for this job for years, ever since my father told me about this place."

"Oh yeah - he's on the governing board, isn't he? Dr. Ichirou Suma, correct?"

"Yep, that's him!"

'So energetic',noted the older keeper. Before she could say anything further, though, a horned form began leaning against the bars separating the preparation area from the exhibit proper, much to Suzume's surprise. The look on the girl's face elicited a laugh out of Karen, which only grew as Suma tried to defend her reaction.

"Relax. People normally act this way the first time they meet Masaru - he's kinda greedy and likes to try and sneak in tidbits before the others get to eat."

"...I see."

Noticing that Suzume had gone quiet, Karin glanced at the girl and saw that her vision was focused on Masaru, or more specifically, his asymmetrical horns. These weren't uncommon among the park's ceratopsians, but Masaru's case was especially pronounced. "So, you noticed his broken horn?"

"Eh, yes. I mean, how did that happen? Why do so many of the Triceratops have unequal horns?"

"It comes down to fighting with each other - males will duel with each other for dominance over territories and females, and it isn't uncommon for their horns to get damaged in those fights. When Masaru was rescued, he'd just lost a fight with an even bigger male."

"Which one was that?"

"Thunderhorn."

Suzume's eyes widened. "He lost his horn fighting the Triceratops with those giant horns?"

Smiling, Karen nodded. "He fought hard, but his opponent was too much. But you can't fault him for trying, can you?"

"..No. I don't think you can."

The two worked in silence after that, the only sound being Masaru's breathing as he waited patiently for them to finish once his attempt to break in failed. A brief interruption in the quiet occurred when Karin revealed that they would be mixing fish into the feed so that the ceratopsians could receive extra protein and calcium for their horns. The surprise soon faded, leading to the pair working in silence once more.

Eventually, however, Karin found that she needed to sate her curiosity. "Suzume?"

"Yes, Karin-sama?!"

"Can you answer me a question about your dad?"

Suzume thought for a moment. "I think that depends on the question."

"That makes sense. Alright, then. Guess I need to make it two questions. First off, your dad was the one who was doing that research into bringing back dinosaurs using fossil DNA, right? Like in those Jurassic Park movies?"

"That's him!"

"Right. So, my second question: what happened to him?"

"Huh?"

"How did he, well, go from there to here? Last I remember, he had his reputation destroyed after a lab accident got one of his research assistants killed."

"..Oh. You meant that."

'Crap',thought Karin, instantly noticing the shift in Suzume's demeanor - her voice had changed, and her eyes dropped to the ground. Her breathing had become more measured, as if she was trying to keep it from going out of control. "Look, I'm sorry. That was too personal. Forget I asked."

"It's fine," replied Suzume, shaking her head and refocusing her eyes on Karen. "I wouldn't quite say it's a long story, but it might be a bit to explain."

"Okay. Just…start when you're ready."

"Ok. So, my dad did try to do that fossil revival plan for bringing back dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures. It didn't work out."

"Anything specific, beyond DNA not lasting very long?"

"Something about genetic diversity for a revived species not being high enough to maintain a breeding population. Any species he brought back would just be a population of endlings. So that scrapped his plans - at least for dinosaurs."

"Oh, so he didn't quite give up his dream?"

"No. He started making plans to try bringing back more recently extinct animals - passenger pigeons, baiji, the Xerces Blue, the Dodo, and other creatures more like them. That was more promising."

"And then something went wrong?"

"Yeah. One of the animals he tried to bring back had some kind of sickness. One of his assistants, Yamada Kallen, got sick from it and…well, we weren't able to find a treatment in time."

Suzume closed her eyes and let out a sigh. "She had a brother, and a daughter my age. We went to school together before that, but after Kallen died, our friendship wasn't the same."

Suzume didn't notice Karin walking toward her until the older woman had her arms wrapped around Suzume, who couldn't help blushing. "Wha?!"

"You looked like you needed a hug. Sorry for bringing up a bad memory."

"It's fine. And thanks."

"You're welcome. So, is there anything you want to ask me?"

"Does it have to be personal?"

"No. Besides, I don't have any big stories or tragedies to tell. My life's been a bit too bland for that."

"Well, if that's the case, which dinosaur is the hardest to care for here? It doesn't have to be a dinosaur, before you ask."

"Let me think…well, first, there's Ichigo…"

XxXxX

Some distance to the north, a brunette girl groaned as she heaved yet another shovel full of dirt into a wheelbarrow.

"Need a rest?" asked the blond haired boy watching her, resting beside a wheelbarrow filled with dirt stacked higher than hers.

"Not yet, Mateo," was her reply. "Not until we have to dump in the fertilizer."

"Alright, Camila. I'll leave you be."

"You know, when I heard you were helping grow food for a zoo, I expected that elephants, horses, and tigers would be eating the fruits of your labor. Not dinosaurs, mammoths, and saberteeth."

"NDA, remember?"

"I know, I signed it. So, what exactly are we planting here? Carrots? Apples? Hay?"

"No. This is for pork."

Camila stopped her digging to glance at him. A loud squeal briefly directed her vision toward a small wooden pen, where a group of pigs were currently stuffing their heads in a feeding trough. "This is for pigs?"

"Yeah - need to make new pits for them to wallow in. Raising meat here cuts down on the cost of shipping it. Plus, you know, pollution from air travel."

"That makes sense. I am kinda surprised that Mr. Marven would raise animals for food - I've seen his shows, he doesn't seem to be that kind of man."

"Animals need to eat, and unlike people, many predators can't go vegan. Nigel respects that."

"Off topic, but do we get to eat any of this stuff? Doesn't make sense to grow all this food just for people."

"Of course some of this is set aside for human consumption. We're not wasteful."

As the two continued to talk, a pickup truck drove across a nearby road, a mixture of leafy greens, assorted fruits, and even a few logs stored within. Beyond a source of food for both humans and animals, the park's farming area was a source of building materials, for structures, fencing, amenities and decorations. All of this helped to limit the environmental impact the park created. That it helped turn a profit was just a nice bonus.

XxXxX

At the park's primary administration center, Nigel stepped into an office. There, waiting for him at a table, were Robert Winstone and Vincent.

"So," asked Nigel, "everything going well?"

"Yes," affirmed Vincent. "And I must say, phase 2 is progressing nicely. We've also received word that the park at Goldfinch Fields is almost ready to start receiving animals."

"Splendid news, that is," noted Winstone. "Having a place close to home to see extinct creatures will do wonders for promoting our cause."

"That is indeed excellent news," agreed Nigel, "but I don't think that's why you called me here, was it?"

"No, that wasn't the reason," confirmed Robert. "We talked with the rest of the board, and we decided that we wanted a more…concrete plan for the future."

"Oh. Could you explain further?"

"We mean," answered Vincent, "that we want a list of, say, the next five rescue missions you wish to undertake. My apologies, Mr. Marven, but while your previous strategy regarding targets has worked effectively, it has been deemed as potentially too stressful for employees. I don't mean to-"

"No, I understand. Actually, I already planned out the next ten missions, and I can get those in writing if you give me just five minutes."

Vincent looked as if the wind had been taken out of his sails. "Oh. I see. That was a lot easier than I expected. May I at least inquire where you intend to travel for the most immediate future rescue?"

"South Africa."

"There are a number of fossil sites that are in the-"

"The Karoo Basin."

"Ah. That narrows things down a bit. Which part of the Beaufort Group are you looking at?"

"The Abrahamskraal Formation."

"Splendid. Just beware of the creatures there - I'm told they have someterribleheads."

XxXxX

Next time, Nigel and his team travel back 265 million years to Prehistoric South Africa…

(Shot of a scurbland filled with various stem mammals)

…To rescue a long neglected group of synapsids..

(Shot of a herd of dome-headed creatures running away from a large predator)

…while meeting some more familiar faces along the way…

(Shot of the same predator now fighting a group of saber-toothed creatures while Nigel and his team try to get away)

Back at the park, meanwhile, the new members of the security team face their first test…

(shot of several amphicynodonts being chased by the security team)

All next time on Welcome to Prehistoric Kingdom: The Terrible Heads!

XxXxX

And done!

So, yes, next chapter will focus on rescuing one of the more neglected groups of synapsids from the Permian period - the Dinocephalians. They make up both the largest predators and the largest herbivores (or at least the most common ones) of the Middle Permian, but tend to get ignored for whatever reason. The two most popular ones are Moschops (thank you carnivores) and Estemmenosuchus, which is known for its famous head phalanges. South Africa, as it happens, was home tomanyof these creatures, so they'll be getting a lot of love in the next chapter.

Now to summarize what happened in this chapter:

First off, I wanted to give a bit of focus to the park's medical team, and decided they would be the thing that connected this chapter of the story to the previous one by showing them checking the newly arrived rescues for signs of illness. As anyone who has worked with animals can tell you (be it with zoo creatures or pets), you can tell if an animal is sick by checking its stool - that is to say, its poop - for any oddities. Disgusting it is, yet still effective. Of course, with the park having such large animals, they need to handle literal mountains (or at least foothills) of shit, so having bulk loaders helps. Before anyone asks, since Paraceratherium is known from Pakistan among other places (the type species comes from Pakistan), I envision Yusuf as being pakistani. With the park having plans for global operations, it would be bizarre if they didn't have a global set of employees.

Which brings me to the next segment. I hinted at it in previous chapters, and was blatant enough about it in the first Off the Books' chapter that a user on SB guessed, but here it becomes official: the cast of Dinosaur Sanctuary (the only manga I've ever managed to read and not get bored with even if I like its anime adaptation) is here at the park. While the only members to show up in the flesh so far are Suzume, her still-alive-in-this-story-father Ichirou, and Karin Kirishima, the rest of the cast is still here, we just haven't seen them. That being said, the Japanese vet mentioned in the first segment is Ren Shiranui from said manga, and yes, he's a jerk - the fifth chapter has him mock Suzume to her face in an incredibly condescending manner and even speaks ill of her dead father in that same scene. Obviously, that won't happen here, but he's still a jerk (even if the recently revealed reason why he is such a jerk didn't happen in this story). The mention about the newbies having to shovel dung out of the Giganotosaurus exhibit is a reference to the first chapter of the manga, where Suzume has to do so as a form of hazing. Since Prehistoric Kingdom obviously has a bigger budget and less obviously has a stricter set of people running it, I changed this to the bulk loader that was supposed to be used breaking down on the over, forcing the trainees to do things by hand.

I should also mention something regarding the Giganotosaurus: in my previous story, the Giganotosaurus was a male named Atahualpa. Since this name is reserved for whatever animal I want partnered with a specific character, I decided to change the Giganotosaurus into a female and make her this universe's version of Yuki from Dinosaur Sanctuary. Regarding the rest of the dinosaur cast, Troodon Vena and Niko are present but were changed to being Talos due to Troodon being of questionable validity (the events of chapter two of the manga where Suzume has to help Karin and Kaidou keep the Troodon cool while they brood their nest happened last chapter and were why Suzume was getting the ice in her unnamed cameo last chapter) , Roy the Dilophosaurus exists but isn't undergoing health issues because he is not a genetically engineered dinosaur, Ichigo the Allosaurus is still alive since she was mentioned by name by Karin, Hanako is also here and is a bit younger than she was in canon, Hachibei and Daisy the Pachycephalosaurus are also here, as is Momiji the Stegosaurus. The rest have yet to be rescued/be born yet. Also, I'm combining Ichigo's escape attempt with the mass breakout that was caused by the spooked titanosaur, so Kaidou got his injuries in a different manner than in the manga.

Regarding the accident Suzume mentioned, in Dinosaur Sanctuary canon, Ichirou is established as having figured out a way to resurrect dinosaurs from fossils like in Jurassic Park, which was used to breed dinosaurs from time periods before the Cretaceous period, as the island where living dinosaurs were found in the manga only has creatures from the Cretaceous on it. Ichirou had his reputation ruined in 2006 when construction at Dinoland Enoshima (the focus of the story) caused the park's skittish Allosaurus to panic, maul one of her keepers to death, injure the other one (Kaidou, if you're wondering) and try to break out, ending with her being shot and killed after getting trapped by a closing door. Dinosaur park interest dried up overnight, and Ichirou would end up committing suicide. I don't know how many people are familiar with the manga, so I am summarizing it up here for those who have no idea about it. Sorry if this is insulting for those who already know.

As for what happened in this story, Ichirou tried to do the fossil revival stuff (and might have been successful, I'm not decided yet), but eventually abandoned it after realizing that an animals he brought back would have extremely low genetic diversity and effectively be a population of endlings - the scientific term for the last members of a dying species. Even if he created dozens of them, they wouldn't be diverse enough to produce a viable breeding population before inbreeding destroyed them. He then shifted onto trying to resurrect more recently extinct species, but ran into problems when some of those animals were resurrected with illnesses they had in life. One of these ended up killing a research assistant when the disease crossed the species barrier and he wasn't able to find a cure in time. While Ichirou definitely didn't commit suicide in this story since, you know, he showed up alive in the second and third chapter and I am not interested in having a character in this story impersonating someone famous, he definitely considered it but was talked down by his wife (IDK what happened with her in the manga, only that she's dead and that Suzume was raised by her aunt and uncle). What the exact illness was that killed Kallen is...a big spoiler, so no revealing it yet. I will drop hints about the cause in future chapters.

Oh, and I almos forgot: Masaru is a male Triceratops prorsus in this story, and uses the Verdant skin from Prehistoric Kingdom, as does Thunderhorn. Since it might not be obvious from how I described the incident that cost him his horn in this story, he's the Triceratops that shows up in the Prehistoric Planet 2 finale and gets beaten by the trike with giant horns. That, in turn, is Thunderhorn.

As for the final segment, I just wanted to show off how much effort goes into simply feeding the park's residents - most of them eat absolutely mind-boggling amounts of food, so the park has to acquire titanic amounts of it to sustain their appetites. Food is grown on-site both to maintain secrecy and for the sake of limiting environmental damage. Okay, time for me to step into the one political field I will breach into for this story because it relates to the conservation and environmentalism themes: the meat industry has big impacts on global warming. This comes not just from the animals themselves, but also the effort to get the meat produced and transported. Meat farming produces tons of pollution from things like trucks transporting meat, factory farming, deforestation to create more grazing land, and the fact that you need to grow plants that grazing animals can eat for certain areas. Like, for example, the US uses large amounts of water to grow alfalfa in the Southwest to feed animals raised in Saudi Arabia (which I don't approve of, BTW - it's hot as fuck here and I'd rather the water be used here to handle our problems instead of being used to line pockets selling fodder to the Saudis but whatever). Since the park is big on conservation, they try to raise most of the food onsite and use renewable methods to get it processed and shipped - electric cars, for example. It isn't a perfect solution, but it is what it is.

Okay, this author's note is getting longer than I want it to be, time to cut it short. Next chapter won't be out for at least a week, probably longer so I can get out a chapter of Off the Books. Until then, Read and Review at your leisure! This is Flameal15k, signing off!