The story of millions of years part 14


MIDDLE JURASSIC

Europe…. 170 million years ago



In the vast world ocean, killers were on the hunt; thunniform torpedoes flashing through the inky gloom, their large, sensitive eyes scanning the depths; searching for light beyond the realm of the sun.

Here, in their aqueous empire, where all directions were possible, the agile creatures swam; long bodied, long finned and perfectly adapted to shear through the dark; having long ago filled their lungs with the last residue of their terrestrial legacy and together fallen into night.

Below, in the yawning cavern of the depths, at the limits of their endurance, ephemeral lanterns moved, vague half-forms that suddenly in bolts of luminous brilliance wove cerulean trails before them; meandering traces etched upon their eyes.

The Ichthyosaurs were interlopers here; descended from the world above, scattering all before them, the first but not the last of the great creatures of the Earth that would take to the seas and hunt at the margins of possibility.

And they were large; their vast bodies capable of speed, size alone propelling them further in a single sweep of an enormous fluke, than the myriad light-bearers could travel. 

Now the leviathans prepared to feed, separating and stabbing deep into the swarming cephalopods that flashed an angry language they could not understand.

They battled in silence, sleek killers and their luminescent prey; the massive predators having the advantage of size but not time; their reptilian lungs bursting for release, compelling them always upward, back towards the sun.

Large eyes met briefly in the depths, strangers scrutinizing each other before toothed jaws secured their prey; a clump of writhing tentacles ripped from a living host; the severed, boneless limbs, still seemingly possessed of life, coiling about the Ichthyosaur’s narrow rostrum as the rest of the ruined creature, now belching wasted ink, shot away.

It was a casualty of a daily onslaught, an important link in the chain of life, and the squid, beyond repair and now tumbling towards the dark abyss, would be reborn, its very energy long captured from the sun, ingested and repurposed again and again and again. 

The Ichthyosaurs continued to feed; their only directive to consume as much as they could as fast as they could, there being no place in their small, reptilian minds to consider the plight of their prey.

Back and forth they slashed, sleek sabres in the darkness, reptiles, far removed from their origins, their large bodies fast cooling down.

And then, just like that, it was over, their endurance spent.  The squid, those that had not perished, free to cluster about them unmolested; the great behemoths, raiders from an unknown world, now humbled giants no longer able to feed, their lungs close to bursting, their blood saturated with nitrogen.

So would begin an ascent back towards the world of light; the gossamer curtains of bioluminescence parting before them as one by one they made the dangerous journey home.

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