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King of the Frost; My entry for the COM, but wanted to submit it under here for actual feedback
Topic Started: May 5 2016, 06:27 PM (427 Views)
Grockstar124
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Antarctica, 66 mya

For once, the black snow has stopped.

It's the middle of December. The forest should be vibrant and lush with greenery and life in the Antarctic summer, the canopies filled with the screeching of birds almost like seagulls, if not for the toothy snouts rather then beaks jutting from their faces. Instead, it is a grayish black wasteland. A coat of greyish-black snow filled with ash three inches deep covers the barren forest floor. The forest trees are either barren or covered in brown needles, and coated with their own covering of soot. No animal life other then the occasional insect can be seen, but buried beneath the ash are skeletons, some of tiny mammals, others massive skeletons of titanosaurs, carnosaurs and hadrosaurs, killed by the lack of food.

Across the world, a similar sight covers the globe as a nuclear winter induced by a impact by a asteroid the size of Mount Everest and the eruption of the Deccan Traps in India has resulted in the extinction of 75% of all life. Only the Permian Great Dying was (and will remain) the only event larger. The Mesozoic, and the era of the Dinosaurs and other giant reptiles is over. Even Antarctica, which was spared the shockwaves and tsunamis, suffered heavily.

The Mesozoic, and the era of the Dinosaurs and other giant reptiles is over. In the evolutionary game of life, 99% of all players have lost to extinction.

Nothing in this world lasts forever.

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Recently, though, the black snow has stopped falling for longer and longer periods. This time, for the first time for a year and a half, the snow will stop falling not for a few hours or a day, but for weeks. While it will take several more years for the climate to completely return to normal, the first steps have begun to come into play. The tiny fronds and leaves of ferns and flowers and the buds on the trees have begun to grow, bringing some flashes of green in a drab landscape of shades of grey. The new world will be inhabited by mammals and birds, who had already begun their diversification a few million years before the extinction. While small pockets of dinosaurs may survive long enough to see the ecosystem recover, non-avian dinosaurs will become a "Dead Clade Walking", repopulating too slowly, or not at all, and only managing to hold a niche or two against the much more adaptable mammals and be out-competed before fading into extinction less a million years or two later.

In Antarctica, however, a species of dinosaur has survived, feeding on multitubercates resembling voles that burrowed under the snow and hoarded food for the winter before the asteroid. It is in fact a distant cousin of the massive tyrannosaurs of North America and Asia who's skeletons rot under the snow. It's ansector lived for only a brief time in Australia, before it drifted away from it's neighbors. It's well known cousins would become the monsters we know and love, but a small group fled into Antarctica, and was preyed upon by the Carnosaurs, resulting in them shrinking to their minscule modern size. As the basal tyrannosauroids were replaced by the true tyrannosaurs elsewhere, the tyrannosauroids in Antarctica scraped out a meager living as minor carnviores, ironically sparing them and keeping them mostly unchanged for over 50 million years.

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Out of the ash stained snow, a thin upright figure covered in soot emerges from a hollow. It shakes itself clean, revealing what at first glance appears to be a flightless bird covered in a white coat of down with smudges of persistent ash mixed in like camouflage, and plumes of more advanced feathers sprouting from a unnaturally long tail and the backs of it's long three clawed arm-like wings, also white, but with black stripes alternating in a horizontal manner.

In reality, this chicken-sized creature is the last dinosaur, theropod, and tyrannosauroid species on Earth, with the down used as insulation and camouflage, and the plumes as a manner of courtship, along with a red crest on top of the male's head resembling a ceratosaur. This is a adult female, and while it is underweight, only further enhancing the appearance of it's distant cousin, it is not so underfed that it's bones are visible under the skin. She is slightly clumsy on her feet, and her abdomen is slightly bloated with developing eggs. She will soon need to find a more suitable permanent home to lay her eggs and care for the young. She finishes cleaning herself to it's satisfaction, and begins to wander once more.

A screeching noise from above draws her attention in time for the ash on a branch above her to dump itself on her, as it shakes from the sudden addition of weight, being frail from a lack of sunlight. A bird has landed above her, resembling tiny geese in coloration and shape, although it's wings retain tiny claws, another drops down on the ground a dozen feet away from herself. They are searching for insects, lizard or bird eggs, seeds, rotting meat, for they are not picky. She considers the possibility of taking one for a meal, but decides against it, besides her growling stomach. While they are fairly meaty, the most likely scenario would be that the bird on the ground would fly away, and the bird above may try to attack her, once very unlikely, is a fact of life in the apocalypse. While the claws on it's wings and the tiny needle teeth hidden in it's beak aren't sharp enough to cause real damage, they would be painful enough to be a major nuisance. It leaves, hoping to find a much safer prey item soon.

After several minutes of further searching, it finds no scent of prey, but a trace of water. Not ice, or water contaminated with ash, actual fresh water. She quickly begins to follow the scent trail, hoping that prey will have gathered there. If everything works out, she may settle there permanently.

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The dinosaur arrives at a fairly small waterhole in a hollow. Around it, small insects dart across the pebbly shore, and the tiniest hints of fern fronds and the leaves of flowers peak through the snow and between the cracks of ancient rocks that had the ash of the Great Dying stain it's surface as the archosaurs and other massive reptiles were purged much like the dinosaurs now. It is a beacon of life in a mostly dead continent. Naturally, melt water flowed into the hole, slowly creating the lake.

A extremely filling but highly dangerous meal, much more so then the birds, presents itself. If it could, it would be mentally kicking itself, but it lacks the intelligence to do so. A beaver-like and sized multitubercate has made it's den on the shore of the lake. It's a nursing female, and as far as it can tell from the smell, they are fairly young. Normally it could wait, but with the extra demand of her forming eggs, she needs to consume much more. It is starving. While the pups are fairly nutritious, if the mother awakes, despite being a herbivore, their sharp claws and it's sharp teeth work just as well on flesh and bone as dirt and tree fiber.

It is desperate, though. It has no choice.

It manages to steal one pup away that got too curious about the dinosaur, easily pulling away the naked pink pup who squeals for help for half a second before the dinosaur crushes it's body with a sickening crunch and the wail becomes a wheeze, before it swallows the pup whole.
The rest of the pups squeal in horror and cry out to wake their mother. They succeed, and the dinosaur barely manages to pull it's head out of the burrow before it snaps at it's snout with it's incisors.

The dinosaur regains it's footing and snarls while it's feathers bristle and stand on end like goosebumps in a automatic response, and the multitubercate smacks it's tail against the ground and bares it's teeth in a silent hiss. Both creatures size each other up, both equal in size and in armament.

Not only are the lives of the combatants and their offspring being determined by this fight, but so are the fates of their modern descendants.
The future of Antarctica, the world and who rules the Cenozoic depends on who wins. Both creatures, both remnants of their golden ages, both starving, they lunge at the same time.

The mammal slashes at it's torso, while the dinosaur's jaws clamp down on it's other raised paw, breaking it's hand completely. It begins to shake it back and forth to attempt to tear it off, although it tears it's snout in response, making it let go in shock. The dinosaur tries to stay on the creature at all costs, clawing at it's face, but it shakes it off, and it hits the ground hard, but gets back up and snaps at the mammal, who has taken the opportunity to charge the dinosaur, but it grinds to a halt.

Both creatures fall back and begin to circle each other like boxers. One of the mammal's eyes is gone, replaced with a bloody mess, and it's right paw is snapped in half. The dinosaur's nose is torn open, staining it's snout with blood, and it's shoulder has been scraped open, and her shoulder bone is visible. While the dinosaur is at risk of bleeding out, the mammal now has a massive blank spot in it's vision. It is desperate.

It pounces onto the dinosaur, teeth bared to crush it's skull, which swings it's jaws to tear out it's throat. Whoever lands the next blow will win the battle. The dinosaur reaches it's target first, having a larger mouth with greater range, the mammal's charge suddenly stopped, and it's teeth clamping down on the tip of it's snout.

The mammal claws desperately at the dinosaur's snout, but it's no use. The dinosaur claws at the mammals soft underbelly, tearing it open easily, it's contents spilling out, hanging loosely from cords deeper in the body, or drop to the rocks below. While the dinosaur has won, her nose is likely ruined forever, and this mother and her cubs will be her last meal for a long time, assuming she doesn't bleed out from the mess that is her snout and her shoulder.

She flings the mortally wounded mammal onto the rocks, which wails in panic in pain. It's pups, who's time is limited, wail back in a higher pitch in response. The mother's wail turns to a horrible gurgling sound as it begins to choke on it's own blood. The dinosaur will likely live long enough to lay her eggs and incubate them long enough for them to hatch. After that, her future is uncertain, but for now, it gorges itself on the exposed innards of her prey, who's failing motions and choking sounds gradually die off. The dinosaur end's it's prey's life by cracking it's head open a few seconds before it would have asphyxiated. She turns back to the empty den, for the pups. Each defenseless, nutritious packet of meat goes down in one gulp.
She then drags the eviscerated corpse back to her newly inherited den. It will last her a few weeks, as her tyrannosaur heritage allows her to crack bone and feast on it's marrow, allowing her far more usage of the corpse then other predators.


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A few weeks later, the eggs hatch. Three pure white hatchlings covered in fine hairs the size of newborn chicken chicks, two female and one male. They have to shake off the dripping fluids and take their first breathes without assistance, as the shrunken, still cooling corpse of their mother died wrapped around them yesterday, as a few feet away from them, the pulverized remains of the multitubercate have been cleaned of almost all meat, although a few insects try to comb through what's left, as most of them have moved to begin to gnaw at the fresher corpse. By the time they are old enough to digest meat properly, their mother's body will be as devoid as meat as the multitubercate. For now, they will feed on the insects and later, the shrew-sized mammal scavengers.

They take in their first breath, and then cough in shock. The first thing they smell is the sharp burned smell of the forest, and the slightly tainted smell of their mother. They shake their heads and sniff again. Under the scent of each, they can smell several kinds of insects, and the freshness of new plant buds. On wobbling stick-thin legs, they taken their first steps in a world in the process of being reborn outside the den. A inch thick layer of wet, fertile ash coats the ground, out of which soft, pale green fronds push out the ground. On the trees, small buds have grown into equally pale branches and needles. No deciduous trees had grown this far down to the south before the extinction.

Throughout the course of many slowly warming spring days nights they hide within the den, snapping up insects and drink from the meltwater seeping into the den, and sleeping, curling up in the nest bedding or their mother's slowly fading down. By the second week, they have the downy beginnings of their arm and tail plumes, and they are taking strips of meat from their carcass. By a month, they are taking greater adventures outside the den and they have developed the plumage of the adults and the male has developed a small pink crest. They will soon leave the nest, and each other, as they are highly territorial except for breeding season.

Such a small population's offspring will likely suffer from genetic mutation due to incest and low genetic diversity, but due to the lack of competition and wide availability of niches available to fill, these mutations will help speciation as they reclaim the continent. While the rest of the world will be one ruled by mammals, Antarctica will remain a fortress, a glimpse into a era that will not be remembered for several million years, when a sapient mind excavates the fossilized bones and fronds of plants and animals across the globe. The question is, will this mind's owner be mammalian or reptilian...
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Paleo_Specs
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Hmmm....


Interesting.

So it's all about polar tyrannosaurs?

I wouldn't call it original, scince we have about 4 genuses of polar tyrannosaurs already...
But it might be interesting if you manage to add a bit of flair.
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a species of canid that's always male because the females are in Hell, that commits blood rituals on unborn souls, and assimilates others into its flesh belongs in a competition meant to foster a sensible and mature discussion of evolution.
Nanotyrannus, COM 2016
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Steampunk FireFinch
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Yutyrannus isn't polar.
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Paleo_Specs
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I wasn't referring to Yutyrannus, I was referring to the jumble of tyrannosaurs we have in Alaska and Canada.
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a species of canid that's always male because the females are in Hell, that commits blood rituals on unborn souls, and assimilates others into its flesh belongs in a competition meant to foster a sensible and mature discussion of evolution.
Nanotyrannus, COM 2016
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Steampunk FireFinch
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Just saying. Only polar tyrannosaur I can think about is Nanuqsaurus. The areas those Tyrannosaurs lived in were more like floodplains next to an interioir seaway than a polar enviroment.
Edited by Steampunk FireFinch, May 6 2016, 07:29 PM.
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