Mesozoic Asia

Flying snacks

Karabastau Formation, 156 million years ago (late Oxfordian), Karatau Mountains, Kazakhstan

Vegetation in this environment is dominated by the Conifers and the now extinct Bennettitales.

In the water, there are small amphibians, like frogs and even primitive salamanders, one of them being a small 20 cm long Karaurus.

They spend almost entirety of their lives in the water, catching any animals that are small enough to fit into their mouth.  

Meanwhile the air is mostly ruled by pterosaurs, although primitive forms of birds around this time have started to appear, they are still not as diverse as pterosaurs. Most of those animals are quite small. One of them being Sordes.

This female has a 0.63 m wingspan and is around the height of a small watermelon. Like all pterosaurs, she has a coat of pycnofibers, which are red with the tip of their tail, being colored black and a pale orange head. Thanks to her long tail, she can easily navigate through the thick forested vegetation. They feed on small fish and small amphibians that are found in the river, by diving into the flowing river, catching them in the process. 

There is another type of pterosaur present and it belongs to the group of the most bizarre pterosaurs who have ever lived. This is a batrachognathus, a species of arugnathids, a group of pterosaurs, that is unique for possessing stubby faces and usually being quite small. 

Batrachognathus is no different when it comes to having the usual size of his cousins, having a wingspan of 60 cm, a weight of 40 g. Not only are they completely anatomically different than sordes, but in diet as well, because most arugnathids, including Batrachognathus are insectivorous. 

They spend most of their time hunting at night, as their big eyes, give them an excellent night vision. But today is a special day for them, as hundreds, upon hundreds of them, all meet at this river, waiting for a natural phenomenon, that they all vividly remember it, one that happens almost every year.

The arrival of the adult dragonflies, that have begun to finally emerge from their freshwater homes, after spending nearly 4 years being nymphs and this is their first time that they ever take to the sky. There are thousands of them and this high abundancy, draws batrachognathus to this water, as it provides, a high abundancy of food.

So the pterosaurs fly into action, snatching many of the newly formed adults of these bugs in their wide jaws. flying above the river snatching as many dragonflies as possible. They have to be careful, when going for insects, as to not bumpy into each other accidentally. 

Some batrachognathus chose to hunt at a lower height, to prevent a potential of crashing with another batrachognathus, those are usually younger individuals that go low, while the older ones go high. But the more experienced males know, why you should not go low.

Because the older batrachognathus, learned that these waters aren't a complete paradise for them, as there is another predator in the river, that they need to watch out for, one that does not hunt on the land, but in the water.

The oblivious youngsters continue to chase dragonflies just above the water, while that said predator is watching them, from the water.  Until, it strikes, leaping out of the water with a great speed, snapping one pterosaur in his jaws and then going back into the water.

The youngster that was close to him, tries to fly away, but he gets caught by another one of the underwater predators.

The culprits are a small group of  goniopholids.

A big group has congregated together, around this area to snatch some of the small pterosaurs, just like how the latter wanted to snatch on dragonflies.

Most of them are able to escape the jaws of their attackers, but then another problem occurs and that is trying to avoid raming into other batrachognathus, with the panic insuing in the flock some blindly ram mid air into other flyers.

While ramming into one another won't cause a complete loss of control so badly, that they end up falling into the river. But it can get them low enough for the crocodilomorphs to snatch on them. And that just happens to two of these pterosaurs.

With the panic continuing to rise, the pterosaurs start to fly away from the chaos, with most of them having eaten their fill and so will move on and so will too the underwater hunters, now noticing that flying snacks have disappeared.