The story of millions of years part 15


Late Triassic

Europe… 220 Million Years ago

With mouths open wide they waited; a host of huge animals with spring-trap jaws, their mottled, warty bodies half submerged in the lake.

The water had gone down; the habitable space diminished, and now as summer wore on, the relentless sun evaporating their world about them; the great amphibians were forced ever closer together; reluctant neighbours, neither friends nor foes.

Their smaller relatives had long since disappeared; slithering into the forest with the spring rains and those that had not, those that had remained, had been eaten, the metoposaurs having no conscience when it came to consuming their own kind.

Now, prisoners of their wet skin, the adults endured the long months together, herded and hungry they played a waiting game; pitting fat reserves against the return of the rains; the water then rising; the myriad braded streams that criss-crossed the Triassic floodplain, overflowing, dispersing the now trapped giants far and wide.

But that was some months away, the lake, for now, their prison. There were fish in the lake, trapped also; large fish that hugged the bottom; hiding beneath the multitude of branches and weedy logs that clogged the muddy floor, and these, from time to time, came to the surface for a gulp of air, and did not return.

There were crabs also and clams, too few and far between or simply too hard to eat to interest the hungry mob, so the food they ate came from the shore; beasts terrestrial that ventured to the waters edge to drink, and then, in those few precious seconds between life and death, the stillness of the lake would be dispelled; the seemingly lumbering creatures, lightening fast and having no qualms when it came to stealing from each other and ripping the unfortunate visitor limb from limb.

Only the largest of visitors were safe; archosaurs; stout quadrupeds, too strong to be hauled easily into the water.

These, the metoposaurs watched with impartial, black eyes; eyes as cold as their blood; twin, bony turrets standing proud above the surface, locking the intruders with an unblinking stare.

But sometimes the visitors were smaller; lightweight, unwary travellers arriving through from the humid forest; edging towards the pollen-dusted water to drink.

Here in silence they could slake their thirst; the wide, tree-shrouded lake green with reflection, peppered with baiera leaves, their long, lacy fronds, unmoving yellow boats on the stagnant surface.

Nothing moved save the haze of flies and occasional fleeting pterosaur; aeronautical acrobats; that dipped and dodged, dancing with their own reflection above the silent mirror.

Then, certain it was alone; the visitor, emboldened by calm and spellbound by the wide stretch of water, would finally approach; pushing through the fringe of horsetails, before placing its life in the balance, sure it was safe to drink.

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