Shiny Gander

At a length of thirty five feet and weighing almost four tons, it is a modestly sized species for its genus. Like the rest of its cousins, it spends the majority of its life out in open water living in mixed-sex sibling pods. These pods are almost always clutch mates.

Intelligent as they are, they employ a vast majority of strategies when hunting for the fisks that make up the majority of their diet. Regardless of form, the capture is done the same way. A long, barbed, and stiff projectile tongue launches out of their jaws and skewers the fisk once they close the distance. The unfortunate fisk is then processed with their set of fearsome looking teeth.

The tall sail running down from the back of their head down to the base of the short tail is a collapsible structure that can be folded away during high speed swimming. When it is employed, it is in fitness displays. Both male and female dieterigyos bear this impressive structure and use it to gauge the viability of their partners.

A mass migration of female dieterigyos takes place on an annual basis, temporarily leaving their brothers and marching in the thousands for suitable nesting beaches. The decision to select which beach is a unanimous agreement by the most senior of mothers that have years of experience behind them.

A clutch could contain nearly two hundred eggs, each one miniscule in size compared to their mothers. These eggs are buried deep under warm sand and incubate inside for three and a half months. Once hatched, most will not survive the sprint to the seas. Those that do, however, have a reliably high chance of surviving under the mutual protection of their siblings, with the odds being a snowball series of benefits with the more clutch mates that survive.

The insulasian yubesara is a large bodied yundri fisk that inhabits near shore waters, from as shallow as two hundred feet to seas as deep as several kilometers. They are active and formidable predators, ones that hold their own amongst the likes of krakens and leviathanosaurs they share their habitat with. These fisks regularly reach lengths of twenty five meters, but some might add an additional ten meters over the course of their lives, given that they survive and consume enough food.

Bladed black teeth, many of which are a foot long, are set in rows and anchored by deep roots. While the lower jaw bears a single row on each side, the upper jaw contains a midline row that runs from the front towards the middle length. This tooth arrangement is common to that of many yundri fisks, with some taxa offering far more bizarre forms.

Yubesaras are ambush predators that hunt mostly marine reptyls and mammyls, preferring to do so during low light conditions. And while most hunts are solitary, they are not above cooperating with another one of their kind, though the aftermath of such joint hunts sees the larger individual taking the most of the spoils.

Females deposit their pups in especially shallow waters, from fifty to a hundred feet in depth, away from most of the larger deep water predators that would threaten them. Though the shallows boast no shortage of threats, these are usually not as adept as the newborn yubesaras in terms of high speed swimming, ensuring a level of security.

A large food base supports predator guilds going up. One such predator that benefits from this is one that sits at the top of the shallow water food chain.

*Litoterror giganteus*, or the *greater coastal kraken* is a colossal predator measuring over 25 meters long. It is an ambush predator, one armed with a powerful armor shearing beak and eight strong barbed tentacles. Prey is typically captured first by the cephalic tentacles before being restrained by the larger body tentacles, constricting the hapless victim in a crushing embrace soon ended by a bite to its vulnerable areas.

The size of prey taken ranges from fisk swallowed whole to remipterosaurs matching nearly two thirds its own mass. A single great feeding event could satiate the kraken for months on end.

A great point of interest for those studying the greater coastal kraken is its intelligence. Abandoned lairs of adult females show leftovers of what seem to be works of art. Shells or bones of prey carved with intricate patterns, engravings on the coral made by beak or hook, knots of vegetation tied to various shapes have all been found.

This high intelligence extends not just towards an expression of their creativity, but also their interactions with other species. Domestication seems to be something that the greater coastal kraken practices to an extent with the various helper animals it encourages to stay within the lairs of females, or hunting companions employed by transient males. Communication with coastal populations of ebony lacerorns also seem to be a common occurence.

Yet despite all of this potential for cooperation, they are extremely aggressive towards their own kind. Cannibalism is exceedingly common when krakens of the same sex cross paths with one another, and the same goes for when a female happens upon an unsuspecting male that is not courting her.

To successfully woo her, a male would have to trail her every move from a safe distance over a period of days to weeks, offering her gifts of food or artwork in intervals of hours. Persistance does not guarantee his success, so much as it is the quality of his offerings.

If the female is receptive to his advances, the male leaves her a sperm packet packaged in mucus for her to accept or reject. If she accepts, the female would use it to fertilize her clutches of over six thousand eggs, all of which she would deposit in crevices within or near her lair. The young are six inches long at hatching, and being fully independent immediately swim far away the moment they break out of their egg cases.

They grow slowly over the first decade and a half of their lives, before reaching a rapid growth spurt in their late teenage years when they rocket in size. Before then, they must survive. Luckily they are well armed with not only beak and hook, but also an inky mucus secretion that clogs the jaws and respiratory organs of would be predators. This ability is retained up to adulthood, but degrades in potency.

If they somehow managed to survive against all odds, a lifespan of up to a century or more could be expected for an exceptional kraken specimen

Blusterbeasts are a sub-clade of scorners that have evolved a thickened skull roof and keratinous covering, both of which form a dome atop their heads. The genus to which the rapag blusterbeast belongs to has instead a dome that is nearly perfectly flattened.

These domes evolved for intraspecific conflicts. Both sexes possess these structures, and use them against fellow blusterbeasts of the same sex. Males fight to win access to mate with as many females as possible, and females fight to gain first claim of dominant males and prime nesting sites.

Adaptations to hold up their domes has resulted greatly enlarged spinal processes that anchor strong ligaments, stiff neck vertebrae, and thick muscles running down their necks and back. As such, mobility of the neck is highly limited in all angles. This forces them to feed mostly by browsing. The four pronged rhamphotheca characteristic of their clade in the paramniote tree are flat and bladed, aiding to shear plant material and ease in feeding.

Being so small for their clade, many blusterbeasts prefer to exclusively flee from predators. The rapag blusterbeast, similar to a handful other species, go a step further and climb onto the great trees of the Rapag Woods in their flight. All scorners maintain the retractable claws of their previously arboreal ancestors for one reason or another, even the titanic spirehorn scornbeast. Blusterbeasts put these to good use, even being able to climb incredibly fast in spite of what their anatomy would suggest.

The bluestream tetrapter is a raptorial tetrapter of the namesake genus of their kind, a native to the Rapag Woods. A small swift and agile flyer of a fifteen foot wingspan that hunts other flighted animals on the wing, it dispatches them with one powerful and decisive bite. Indeed their jaws are very powerful for their size.

Though a solitary hunter, tetrapters are social otherwise, roosting in great colonies among the canopy of the large umbrendron trees of Rapag. As these colonies are an appealing target to much larger predators, including fellow thaumatosaurs, they will employ their numbers to mob and occasionally, when possible, kill potential threats. The altruistic sense of community is so great that tetrapters will share meals with colony mates, even ones unrelated to themselves.

They form no paired bonds when it comes to mating. Any tetrapter of any sex may mate with many different individuals through the two week time window of the breeding season. Their eggs are laid into woven basket nests guarded fiercely by the colony, and after a brief incubation of under three weeks, hatch into a swarm of independent flaplings that will head off to found their own colonies.

The red-speckled daemon is a large leviathanosaur, a clade of mostly aquatic or semi-aquatic reptyls which includes the likes of the giant leviarex. The red-speckled daemon itself is among the largest in size. Regularly reaching 80 feet long on average, with century old bulls, or rivermasters as they're known, approaching a staggering 120 feet long. Yet it is rare for them to reach such significant old age. The vast majority never exceed their 3rd or 5th decade due to their combative and violent lives.

Males clash in fights for dominance at feeding events and for mates, and females compete for the same reasons as well as for prime nesting sites. The tusks on their upper jaws are an honest indicator of the health and age of an individual, yet it still doesn't mitigate the on-sight aggression they have by any great margin.

Cannibalism is common among red-speckled daemons, in fact an adult may have nearly 10% of it's diet consisting of other daemons. Hatchlings that are too weak to dig themselves out of the nest mounds are also consumed by their mothers, ensuring only the strongest and healthiest are raised. Some take it even further, with the very rare daemons becoming active cannibalistic specialists that often lurk along the margins of female congregations, opportunistically snatching several juveniles or even small females. They may also partner up with other specialists to hunt other equally sized and healthy adults.

Yet for all these seemingly morbid aspects of their day to day lives, they're still remarkably social animals. Males can form coalitions with each other, even teaming up to topple a resident dominant male from his throne. Females of course gather to minimize the chances of their own nests being raided. Some groups take it even further than that, some daemons may even have "friends" so to speak. They will selectively choose to travel, feed and fight alongside the same individuals regardless if related or not, sometimes for their entire lives.

At 30 feet tall standing upright and weighing well over 8 tons, they are some of the largest nectarivores in Paradoxia. Such a high energy diet allows them to attain stupendous sizes for their ecology, though some flexibility is fairly present, with fruits and animal matter rounding up the smaller 15% of their diet. Thus, unsurprisingly they're one of the key pollinators of the giant flowers found in this rainforest. Some plant species going as far as to co-evolve alongside the hedonist in a mutual symbiotic relationship, one that has lasted for several million years.

Lumbering hedonists are social, living in herds of 8 members. A given herd is a nuclear family of a mated pair and their multi-generational offspring, with the patriarch and his oldest sons providing for most of the protection against predators. They keep in contact with other herds throughout the day, communicating in infrasound. Every so often these families will get together in massive congregations to socialize directly, exchanging information or just enjoying their time together. It is during these events where dispersing subadults find their future mates.

Five feet from snout to tail on average, they're small for the standards of Paradoxia, but make up for what they lack in size with ferocity. As ambush predators, they lie and wait among the reefs and keep a look out for prey with their vision, among the keenest in their family. Once spotting prey, they burst forward like blue torpedoes and dispatch them with sharp bladed teeth, often biting smaller animals clean in half, before retreating back into seclusion before other hungry mouths get attracted to the scent of blood in the water. Other larger predators higher up in the trophic level wouldn't pass up a snack like a coelacuda.

Once a year common coelacudas will bulk up on food, and then migrate into the center of the Insulasia Ocean in great schools comprising of the entire adult population to spawn. This massive gathering is unsurprisingly taken advantage of by many predators and fisker folk, who flock in to gorge on the fat fisk. Those that are lucky enough to survive may do this again the next year, or the year after.

The major fisks of Paradoxia can be divided into four major clades, and among the most abundant are the jawless fisks which constitute more than 70% of all marine chordates on Paradoxia. The common coelacuda is not within this clade. In truth, it belongs to a less diverse but still successful group of fisks. But it cannot be considered a true fisk by colloquial terms, for it bears strong resemblance to a tetrapod what with its bony fins, hinged jaws, and a shoulder girdle. And yet it cannot be considered a true tetrapod either.

The clade to which this animal belongs to represents a bizarre transition, an almost 'missing link' between fisk and amphibian. Whatever it is, it isn't likely to be known anytime soon.

The sandsharks are a very specialized inhabitant of this strange biome. Superficially piscine in appearance, though this is mostly due to the fact that a fossorial lifestyle has similar challenges and pressures as an aquatic one, sandsharks are very widespread and successful in this basin. Able to live their entire four decade long lives without even a sip of water, and possessing fat stores on their backs and around their tails.

This particular species, the southern one (defined by it's lighter colouration and larger size), is the type species of it's genus, measuring at 12 feet long and weighing 400 lbs. Like all other sandsharks, they live and travel in a fusion-fission lifestyle, breaking up and meeting with other members of the extended pack every once in a while on a regular basis. These packs consist of individuals of all sexes and ages, though freshly hatched juveniles are congregated in a creche guarded by elder adults.

They prefer sand areas that are at least six feet deep, enough for the adults to fully submerge themselves in, while the juveniles can tolerate a much shallower two feet. As they are terrestrial, there is no risk in them 'breaching' themselves outside of deep sand, and they do make occasional visits outside of the basin shores to scavenge or forage, but they do prefer to stick to their familiar element. There is no hierarchical system to their packs, each individual has an equal standing with one another, and pair bonds rarely last between males and females.

Dispersal in sandsharks is a year round occurrence, and the same animal may find itself moving between up to a dozen packs throughout it's entire life. This wander lust of theirs however does create one question. How does the genus remain from becoming monotypical? Surely with how far and often they travel, intermixing between species will occur, and the lines of genetic isolation start to fade. And yet, Haerenaspectros remains in the present day with two distinct species, with very little admixture.

Reaching a total length of 36 feet long and weighing several tons, this imposing beast is one of the largest animals of Allun's desert region. Some especially old male specimens can even max out at under 50 feet, nearing the size of the sandwhales (of which they also prey upon).

As ambush predators, the desert baron's prime hunting method is to lurk below the sands with only the top of their heads visible, before closing in on unsuspecting prey. To aid this, the dark patch of scales that cover the top of their scales helps reduce glare and protect it from solar damage. But it also makes the baron stand out against the stark bright sands unless it is also partially covered in it, so they can often be seen lurking under the shaded side of dunes where the darkness mitigates this visibility. Vision is not the only sense they employ in hunting, alongside a keen sense of smell, their hearing is also quite potent, and with the ability to sense vibrations in the sands thanks to sensitive scales that run along the length of their bodies, they can sense potential prey even if they are fully submerged in sand.

A male baron defends his territory with utmost aggression, and will chase off or even cannibalize other males that enter it. To reaffirm boundaries between neighboring male barons, they will emit a loud booming roar that can travel for miles across the desert, and since a single male can own a territory as large as 190 square miles, they must also be constantly on the move patrolling it. All this effort is done to secure the largest numbers of prey and females. Their tendency to claim huge territories means that there is a high chance for it to overlap with that of the females. The bigger it is the more likely the chances of it happening.

If a male successfully courts a female, that is by offering her a nuptial gift of food, she will lay a clutch of her eggs which can number up to 12 in a secluded area. If the male is particularly successful, he may court 5 females in a relatively short span of time, meaning that he may have to guard 60 eggs at a time. During this rearing period he will subsist entirely off of fat stores in his tail. This fat store is also a factor in attracting mates, as the females can judge if he is up to the grueling task of guarding eggs by the size of his tail alone, thus the pressure to have the largest and prey rich territories there is.

The young would hatch after a 4 month incubation period and are fully capable of fending for and feeding themselves, but will shadow their fathers for several weeks picking off the scraps and leftovers of his kills. Only a small fraction would survive to adulthood, some falling victim to cannibalism, and others to the many predators of the desert, but those that do survive their youth are in good stead to see their 6th decade of life.