Prehistoric Wild: Life in the Mesozoic

Clash Under the Rising Sun (114 MYA)

Kitadani Formation, Japan, 114 Million Years Ago

Dawn breaks from the horizon, its red light bleeding into the dark sky. The emerging sun's radiance reveals the silhouettes of what resides in this darkened land. At this time, Japan has yet to become the large island of our modern day, instead, it's still a part of mainland Asia.

Littering what will one day be Mount Haku is a forest of conifer trees of varying heights. Autumn has caused these trees' green to become shades of red, orange, and yellow. Mild winds blow their spiny leaves across the warm, humid air. Meanwhile, it also wiggles the pinecones off them, causing them to plummet to the ground below. What may seem like a damaging process is crucial to the tree's reproduction. Inside each cone is a batch of seeds that will be released into the ground and eventually grow into more conifers. Dark shapes of early birds fill the air, filling the forest with their tweets and chirps.

Atop this canopy is where the land's largest resident can be seen. Poking out the top of the trees are the heads of Fukuititans. They are members of the sauropod clade of four-legged dinosaurs known for long necks that support smaller heads. For the Fukuititans, their heads are blunt, short yet relatively large with a mouth full of spoon-shaped teeth. A combination of their massive, upward-raised necks and their proportionately taller, robust forelimbs allow these heads to reach nearly 16 feet into the air. Although not the biggest height a sauropod can reach, it's just enough to get the tallest conifers of their habitat. Like many sauropods, their long neck is balanced out by a shorter tail.

Their skin is a mosaic of small, bead-like scales interlocked with larger ones. These scales are primarily ash gray with diagonal, charcoal stripes on their neck and stomach sides. By contrast, the skin of their underbellies is a solid, pearl river gray.

A hidden part of this forest lies in the shadows of the trees and Fukuititans. Peering rays of early morning light show various, rat-like mammals scurrying on the tree branches. They crawl across the brown bark, catching and eating the many beetles and cockroaches that writhe and fly here. These same tree trunks rise from a dirt floor littered with vegetation. This bed of greenery is primarily cycads with a few rare ferns mixed in as well. Fungi cover various parts of the plants, ground, and trees here. Some are in the form of mushrooms while others are banana-shaped ergot fungus.

It's also on this floor that the beetles thrive in the thousands. Such an abundance of insects makes this a perfect feeding place for one of the area's smaller residents. Plopping down from above a different kind of dinosaur that lives here. It's a pigeon-sized Fukuipteryx, whose name means "Fukui's wing." As its appearance may suggest, it's one of the earliest known birds. It doesn't yet have a beak, but a beak-shaped mouth, covered in black, scaly skin and filled with small teeth. The tail of this ancient bird is short and stubby, in contrast to some of its other dinosaur relatives. However, it retains the clawed feet and hands of the theropods from which it evolved. Like many birds, its form, aside from its hands, mouth, and feet, is completely covered in feathers. This body plumage is primarily light, sky blue with dark blues coloring the wing feathers on its arms and legs.

Stepping and scurrying across the twig and pinecone-littered forest floor, the Fukuipteryx enjoys a plentiful bounty of insects. Little is this early bird aware that such a smorgasbord has its risks. Lurking within the taller foliage around the dirt patch is a killer.

Encased within the shadows of the deep foliage is the top predator of Early Cretaceous Japan. This is Kuro, a male Fukuiraptor. He's a lightly built, 300-pound member of the megaraptoran clade of two-legged theropods. Much like other members of his clade, he has an elongated pair of forelimbs. Each one is equipped with three fingers that each sport a large, sickle-like claw. His slender body is supported by two, powerful legs and a long, stiffened tail. Powerful jaws filled with serrated teeth lay upon his large head. A coat of reddish-brown feathers blankets most of his body. Only his snout, hands, feet, and belly lack this plumage, instead exposing dark-brown, scaly skin. His most striking feature is a crest made of backward-pointing feathers colored in a golden yellow. He also has a circle of black feathers around each of his silver eyes.