The fifteen-foot-long Liopleurodon decides to take a prize for its territorial victory. It sinks its jaws into its younger sibling’s abdomen to the most nutritious part of the body: the liver.
Tearing its sister’s liver out, it swallows it whole. The young Liopleurodon rises from the coral reef. It surveys the surrounding ocean for miles around, gaining insight about what types of prey live in this territory. This is where she will hunt until she swims out to deeper water when she is older and larger. Then not even great white sharks or orcas will challenge her.
Having been born through parthenogenesis, the fifteen-foot-long Liopleurodon will reach full size very quickly. Within a few years, it will reach maturity and become pregnant with another generation.
This Liopleurodon will grow to become even larger and deadlier than her mother. The number of her human victims will be greater. She has killed her sibling, making her the last of her kind, but she will eventually give birth to many offspring.
One day, the oceans will once again be ruled by the largest and most powerful carnivore that has ever lived: Liopleurodon ferox!
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to several people for their help in seeing Lio: KING OF THE CARNIVORES successfully completed. While I wrote the story when I was fourteen, anyone who knows me knows I have been fascinated with prehistoric creatures since I started to speak.
I would like to thank my parents and sister for their encouragement and for the hours they spent proofreading and editing. I am very lucky to have so much support from my family.
Summary
Liopleurodon ferox was the deadliest predator to have ever lived on the planet. This reptilian monster had teeth larger than a man’s head. It had a mouth the size of a minivan, and jaws that could crush granite into rubble. With a sense of smell that was more powerful than a vulture’s, it could track its prey from
miles away.
Liopleurodon ruled the oceans millions of years ago, during the dinosaur era. This creature could devour anything in the ocean, including sharks and smaller members of its own kind. This killer was the terror of ocean dwelling animals over one hundred million years ago and it’s now extinct, right? Wrong!
One member of this species was frozen in ice during the Jurassic period, and was discovered in modern times. When a devious man sets her free, everything in the seas, including humans, is on the menu. Only one man, a scientist who studied Liopleurodon since he was a child, stands between thousands of beach goers and the eighty-foot-long, one-hundred-and-fifty-ton carnivore that returned from the past to continue her hunt…
Michael Zucker, age 15, lives in Paradise Valley, Arizona, with his sister and parents. Michael has had an interest in prehistory since he was very young. He has always had a special interest in ancient marine predators, especially Liopleurodon. This is his first of, hopefully, many books.
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