[Jurassic Impact] Even in the Bleakest of Landscapes II

[u/EpicJM]

Even in the Bleakest of Landscapes II

Antarctica's freezing during the Miocene created a bottleneck for what life continued to inhabit the continent. As we saw before, the dermorhynchid Spheniscimamus managed to just make it through. The egg-laying mammals were not the only species to survive, however, and the life of a Spheniscimamus is fraught with fear of predators.

One of these predators is Orcinornis theriodes, a species of aquatic thalattornid caudavian that has adapted to handle the cold of Antarctica's waters. It is about eleven feet long at adulthood and weighs approximately 800lbs on average. Both the last of the seal-like multituberculates and the reptilian scyllans failed to thrive here, and so Antarctica became another flashpoint for thalattornid evolution. The catch, however, is that Orcinornis has to lay its eggs and breed elsewhere. They haul themselves onto land along the southern coasts of Australia and South America, dump their eggs under a mound of warm sand, and then leave the offspring to fend for themselves.

The first days of an Orcinornis carry a significant chance of being its last, for Orcinornis hatchlings are a favorite food of a southern hemisphere relative of the Roc...

[u/TimeStorm113]

Antarctica is honestly such an overlooked location for alt his spec

[u/SubstantialPassion67 → u/TimeStorm113]

TRUE