Prehistoric Wild: Life in the Mesozoic

The Stray Spawns (74 MYA)

Xingezhuang Formation, China, 74 Million Years Ago

On the edge of Asia's Bohai Sea lies what is now the Shandong province of East China. This land will one day be recognized as part of the country's northern plains, situated on the lower reaches of the Yellow River. Like the rest of the Middle Kingdom, it also experiences distinct seasonal shifts from hot summers and cold winters.

Such regular changes in the environment are absent here in the Late Cretaceous. The climate regularly stays mild and humid year-round, as with much of the rest of the world at this time. This global warmth has resulted in a world where the ice caps have yet to form, causing what would be ice to contribute to higher sea levels. These oceans bleed into the edge of China, creating interconnected rivers and floodplains. The surface of the waters amongst them sparkles with the fading orange light of dusk.

Such changes from the modern eastern land have created one dominated by wetlands, marshes, and dense forests. A vast variety of plant life helps contribute to this lush environment, including conifers, cycads, ferns, and flowering plants. What we recognize as flowers themselves have yet to take on the expansive myriad of colors they come in today, mainly restricting themselves to magnolia-esque ones with white pedals. The trees are so thick and tightly packed that few rays of sunshine stab through the canopy into the shadows.

Despite such darkness, life is just as alive under the canopy. Ancient, rodent-like mammals scurry along the trees and forest floor, hunting for many of the insects here that make up the bulk of their diet. Their diverse prey here comes in the form of ancient ants, beetles, dragonflies, and termites.

In these forests, our early ancestors have competition. The trees and floor are full of lizards that also feast on the insects. In the air, ancient birds dart and flutter around on the hunt for the myriads of small arthropods. Undoubtedly, these feathered creatures are best adapted for hunting this type of prey as they're able to more easily snatch up even aerial insects.

Indeed, even small animals have managed to thrive here. Even so, they still live in the shadow of much larger residents. Their distant calls reverberate throughout the forest, sounding like a French horn, but with a haunting, creaky, almost metallic echo. In one patch of the forest, different cries can be heard, sounding almost like a tuba, but higher-pitched and lacking the echo of the other animal sounds. The source of these less-distant sounds emerges from a thicker batch of vegetation, rustling it as it brushes against the skin of two animals.

This is a pair of juvenile Shantungosaurus, Chinese members of the hadrosaur family of "duck-billed" dinosaurs. Only three years old, each of their robust yet lean bodies reach no more than 10 feet long. Four strong, well-developed legs support them as they walk through the greenery. The front legs are shorter, each ending in a single hoof-like nail. On the opposite end, the rear ones are both longer and more powerfully built, terminating in three-toed feet that spread wide to support their weight. Their forms are balanced by long, slightly tapered tails, having thick, muscular bases that narrow to the tip.

Just like other hadrosaurs, their proportionately large heads end in a keratinous, downward-curved beak. Hidden in their cheeks are over a thousand tightly packed, diamond-shaped teeth. Large eyes set wide apart on the sides of their heads give them a curious and alert expression. Their scaly skin is textured like a basketball and dyed in India green with darker, diagonal streaks of darker cadmium mottled in and a pale green underbelly. A thinner patch of their skin is present on the top of their snouts. With every sound they make, it inflates into a sac colored in a dull, muted red.

These are a brother and sister pair, Mei and Ming. The latter is distinguished by having a brighter-colored snout sac like other males. As young herd animals, traveling on their own would be considered suicide. However, these siblings have found themselves lost in this Chinese wilderness. Far from their adult size, they can be easy prey for local carnivores. Such will be their fates if they don't find their herd soon.