Prehistoric Wild: Life in the Mesozoic

Journey of the Long-Necks (156 MYA)

Morrison Formation, Colorado, 156 Million Years Ago

Dawn approaches, its orange light breaching from the horizon. Glare from the emerging daylight beams shed the shadows of the night, revealing a fern and forest-covered, arid land. The scattered patches of forest are made up of ginkgo and conifer trees of varying sizes and are surrounded by beds of ferns, cycads, horsetails, and shrubs. What would be shades of green and brown are instead stained in more faded colors, scars from the months-long dry season. These effects are also seen in the sunbaked, sandy ground covered in small, beige pebbles. Even what would be rivers and small ponds are reduced to brown puddles in cracked, scarcely wet dirt.

In this drought-stricken land, something large lumbers. Its massive body casts an inching shadow across a patch of dirt. The sounds of its footsteps quake the land like the smallest of earthquakes. Its grumbling and booming sounds are loud enough to vibrate the bones of any animal around it. The source of all this is one of the largest animals to walk the earth, a sauropod dinosaur. Much like other members of its famed family, it walks on four, pillar-shaped legs, has a tail for counterbalance and its long neck lifts its smaller head tens of feet above the ground. Its distinct features are hidden in shadow, a silhouette cast against the rising sun.

The quakes from its heavy footsteps become less frequent as the giant animal comes to a halt. Its back foot digs into the parched ground before pulling backward, kicking up a cloud of beige dust. This action is repeated until eventually, a wide, one-foot-deep hole is carved out in the soft sand. At this point, its digging stops and it slowly lowers the back half of its body over the ditch. The booming and grumbling sounds of the sauropod vanish, replaced with a strained, creaking groan. It is here that this lumbering giant begins to dispense its highly precious cargo... eggs. Each one is perfectly round and roughly the size of a bowling ball. Pure white, hard shells help to protect the still-developing wonders that lie inside.

One by one, each egg softly plops out of the squatting mother until finally, 28 of them fill the hole in the warm sand. Gently, the new mother uses her back foot to spread the dug-up sand onto the eggs. Soon, her future young are completely buried and hidden in a layer of soft, warm soil. For the coming few months, this will function as a natural incubator until the little creatures inside are ready to hatch.

However, it will not be an event that the mother will witness. Once her fragile cargo is safely covered, she starts to march away, the quakes of her footsteps reemerging. Her immense shadow soon follows behind, retreating from the entombed nest and allowing the scorching sunlight to warm it. Her job here is now finished and once her young hatch, their destinies will be their own.

***

Two whole months have now passed and the land that will one day be Colorado has already seen more rain than it has the entirety of the dry season. This has allowed the once-dry plant life to be rejuvenated in more luscious shades of green. Rivers and lakes have also returned with some of their water seeping into the dirt around them. This same dirt has become much moister and more covered in ferns and horsetails.

Though another bit of change is shortly due to come. Mysteriously, a new set of sounds starts to occur. Soft, mewling chirps can be heard, but their source is unseen. Soon, a small part of the ground shifts and breaks as a bump begins to rise from it. The chirps along with whistle-like ones start to become more frequent as the bump grows larger. Cracks and openings in the dirt reveal smooth, scaly, green skin with vertical dark stripes across it. This same skin is reflective, moist, and glossy, causing bits of dirt and eggshell to stick to it as well as light to shimmer off it. The lower parts of this skin had a brighter, yellowish shade of green. More sand and dirt crumble away revealing another part of what the skin belongs to, a head. Its eyes are proportionately massive, its mouth is small with a tiny egg tooth on the top lip, and its nostrils are positioned just below a large bump on top. This head is also carried on a thick, long neck. The eyelids open to reveal orange irises witnessing the above-ground world for the first time. This is a baby sauropod, the first to be born of its mother's massive clutch.