#paradoxia

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 elongated bauplan of the hamerias is greatly suited to navigating the cramp spaces of their habitat, aided further by muscular digited fins. The many barbles on their snouts bear many taste receptors, and coupled with an acute sense of smell, are able to locate prey in the murkiest depths. Sharp bladed teeth would make short work of most prey, but their greatest asset is electrogenesis.

An overwhelming majority of their bodies are made that of their tail, with a sizeable portion of the musculature having been converted into electrical organs. It is with these organs that they are able to punch well above their bodyweight, subduing prey that their jaws alone cannot kill, and repelling great leviathanosaurs like the daemons from predating them.

The largest of the hamerias, the allunian greater hameria rivals many of its contemporary predators, both sexes being around 80 feet long from snout to tail.

Size aside, they are noteworthy in being the best parents of their genus. A curiously monogamous species, both male and females guard their brood of three thousand eggs with their lives, viciously driving away any animal they register as a threat to their young. And while all other species stop their guardianship after the eggs have hatched, the allunian greater hamerias extend their protection up to several weeks after. In this time, the larvae would have undergone a brief but incredibly fast growth spurt, increasing in size ten fold from when they hatched.

While other hamerias hedge their bets on numbers alone, and rely on this rapid and intense growth for survival, the allunian greater hamerias doubled down on their parental behavior as to ensure more young make it pass this volatile period of their lives and thus have better chances overall.

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.