by Steve White
TRILOPHOSAURUS
These large iguana-like Diapsid lizards are a relatively common medium-sized herbivore that can reach a length of 7–8ft. The tip of their jaws ends in a tough, horn-covered beak while the back teeth are flattened and wide for crushing and grinding course plant matter.
There are other types of Diapsid lizards as yet unidentified but apparently closely related to Trilophosaurus. They differ primarily in that their diet is far broader and they will hunt and scavenge as well as browse on softer plants.
POPOSAURUS
Besides Postosuchus, a number of other predatory Rauisuchids inhabit the Chinle (although their exact relationship to one another remains unclear). These include Poposaurus: a large carnivore that can grow over 12ft and weigh up to 220lbs. It has small forelimbs and is an obligate biped, although, unlike dinosaurs, this has not helped with its speed. It is slow and ponderous, using a plantigrade posture (like a human’s or bear, as opposed to the digitigrade structure of dinosaurs and birds). It is, in appearance, not that different to a bipedal Komodo dragon and just as carnivorous. It is an effective opportunist predator and scavenger; it will quite literally eat anything it can catch and consume any meat, no matter how decomposed. Avoid!
SPHENOSUCHID CROCODILES
These small, lightly armoured and nimble crocodilians are not much bigger than a house cat, averaging 2–3ft in length, much of which is tail. They are usually solitary and spend most of their time in the thick understoreys. Their erect posture makes them very fast in comparison to most Chinle Archosaurs, except Coelophysis, for whom these diminutive crocs are a regular meal. They forage for insects and small vertebrates; in the wet season they can be regularly found by waterways feeding on amphibian spawn and tadpoles.
METOPOSAURS AND OTHER AQUATIC HAZARDS
Metoposaurs are not, as their names might imply, reptiles; they are in fact very large and very common amphibians that can grow up to 10ft in length – imagine a more aggressive Japanese giant salamander. The most common forms are Koskinonodon and the smaller Apachesaurus. They are predatory by nature, having an alligator-like body plan, with broad, flattened heads, but with their eyes well forward on their heads. Their jaws are lined with a large number of small teeth, but much of their prey capture relies on suction, the jaws creating a surge of water into their mouths when they spring open that sucks small victims into the Metoposaur’s gullet. These large amphibians are restricted to smaller prey, such as fish and crayfish, but will consume juvenile Phytosaurs and other small aquatic reptiles. They are generally solitary, spending most of their time on the bottom of ponds and streams, where their excellent camouflage, including an array of weed-like lobes lining the head, flanks and limbs, and a covering of detritus, makes them very hard to spot. They usually attack prey from below. They will bite unsuspecting hunters if stood on by accident so should you be required to wade rivers or ponds, beware.
In the wet season, large numbers of Metoposaurs gather in ponds and lakes to mate. These gatherings are noisy and the scene of much intra-species fighting between the males. The larger females lay hundreds of eggs in long strings of spawn, after which the gatherings disperse. The only other time Metoposaurs may be social is when they are compelled to be by circumstance: when the heat of the dry season withers away many of the watercourses they ply and they are forced together. Here, even the largest individual finds itself vulnerable to predators and scavengers.
Their aquatic habitat and large size tends to make Metoposaurs generally safe from predation but they are regularly prey for large Phytosaurs.
Other water hazards include Xenacanthid sharks; these strange, eel-like sharks only grow 2–4ft in length but have, on occasion, bitten an unwary hand. This is not a ‘shark attack’ as such, but most likely a case of mistaken identity in the murky waters of the Chinle.
CONCLUSION
The Chinle may be lacking in truly iconic trophies but there is no tougher, greater challenge for an experienced woodsperson. The dense cover and difficult terrain, the extremes of weather, from mega-monsoons to desiccating heat, and the harsh atmosphere all converge to make this an endurance trial for the hunter. Only the fittest, most dedicated team would choose this reserve but it is unlike any other environment on offer. It is the most alien and inhospitable, and if you really want to feel as if you truly are in another world, this is the one for you.
THE STORM
(Excerpt from Time to Die by Jane Summers. Used with permission.)
‘Dust Off One Actual, Flamingo, Good morning. Comms check. How do you copy?’
‘Flamingo, Dust Off One Actual, read you five by five. Over.’
The Dust Off crew would be in the alert five hangar, reading or gaming. Maybe cards, maybe some first-person shooter. The pilot could relax now. Settle in for a snooze.
‘Red One Actual, Flamingo, Comms check. How do you copy?’
‘Flamingo, Red One Actual, read you five by five. Over.’
The gunship crew would be equally indolent, enjoying the cool of the hangar, flight suits to the waist.
We, on the other hand, were exhausted. Two sweltering nights in and nothing to show but photos for our social media pages. We breakfasted on MREs and rehydrated with plenty of water. Whilst PJ cleaned and checked the weapons, I replaced the CO2 scrubbers on the rebreathers and topped off the air in the pony rig tanks with the compressor.
The shelter sweated even deep in the heart of the Araucarioxylon stand. It was cooler than being exposed to the Triassic sun, but the air was still and rich with the smell of resin. However, it had been too hot to sleep, despite the valiant efforts of the air con.
We didn’t speak. Didn’t need to. Went about our business through the medium of touch and instinct.
The final check was that our head cams were downloading to Mogollon FOB. They were, so we unzipped the shelter and stepped out into the morning.
Where light streamed through the trees at an acute angle, the air was yellow with a pollen storm. I blinked and tears welled. I pulled down my goggles. Haze swirled at the base of the giant conifers.
We still hadn’t spoken beyond ‘Good morning.’
I adjusted the rebreather mask. Sucked in clean, cool air. The clear plastic of the mask clouded when I breathed out. Sweat was already making my skin beneath the rubber seals damp. Beads of it ran from beneath the straps.
PJ hoisted his Benelli over his shoulder. Locked and loaded the shotgun. The cool of the ghillie suit contrasted with the air sticking to my forehead and cheeks.
The radio clicked.
‘Flamingo, Flamingo, this is Mogollon. Weather update.’
PJ turned to me. Frowned.
‘Mogollon, Flamingo, copy on weather update.’
‘Yeah… the drone is showing a storm front coming in from the west.’
Boiling off the Protorockies and sweeping over the highlands.
‘Copy, Mogollon.’
‘Flamingo, we’re issuing an advisory. How copy?’
‘We copy loud and clear. Keep us appraised.’
‘It’s your dollar.’
‘Copy. Out.’
We set off.
The shadows beneath the Araucarioxylons were dark and moist. The pollen clouds and dust added to the sensation that we were walking on the deepest of seabeds. Insects drifted slowly as the pollen, plankton in the air, through the shafts of deep yellow light.
The giant columnar trunks gave the forest the feel of a flooded temple, the roof a vault of deep green leaves overhead. We walked in a mosaic duff of dead needles. Dust hung like incense.
We weaved a trail between the conifers. A dark and brooding fairy-tale forest, the trees hemmed us in. There was a twinge of claustrophobia and the shadows threatened. But the very density of the forest precluded anything large enough to threaten us. Even so, my finger lingered on the trigger of my shotgun, its heft reassuring.
Finally, we could see sky. An iron white sky. The temperature rose. We made it to the deadfall, which had been
predetermined as a navigational feature.
The thick covering of moss and curtains of tree ferns had browned away to desiccated dust in the drought but was still a blackish-green in the shadows. The dead Araucarioxylons had opened a hole in the canopy. Fighting for light, ginkgoes and cycads had grown up around the broken trunks and limbs of the giant conifers, felled by some ancient disaster. The western sky alluded to their fate. Billowing purple-grey thunderheads.
The field of ferns around the weathered trees were browned. Tinder dry. PJ rubbed leaves between his fingers. They crumbled to nothing.
‘What do you think?’ I asked. He looked west. Heat lighting flickered amongst the clouds.
‘I don’t know…’ he drawled. ‘I think we’re far enough away from the watercourses to not have to worry about flash floods.’
‘Wasn’t thinking about floods… ’
Lightning. Definitely, this time.
PJ hitched his rifle over his shoulder.
‘Wanna head back?’ I asked.
I didn’t but the forest looked like it would burn faster than we could run or be rescued by the Pink Team.
I lifted the mask and sniffed. Just old wood and dry and earth. No smoke.
We pushed on.
Lycopods and club mosses give way to horsetails. We were close to the river. A hot breeze rattled the Neocalamites. They clacked together with a hollow wooden crack, like bamboo swords. They rose and thickened into an almost solid wall. The underbrush of ferns and club mosses was now a little greener, leaching the last of the moisture from the thick, muddy soil.
PJ stopped. Raised a fist.
We took a knee.
Again, the density of the horsetail thicket made a large predator unlikely but PJ brought the shotgun to his shoulder. Over the rustle of the harsh, hot breeze there came the click of the safety coming off.
I followed suit.
Something was coming. Needles crunched and wood crackled.
I drew a breath and waited.
The horsetails parted.
I let the breath out. It was an Aetosaur. Calyptosuchus. The armoured bear-pig armadillo-croc with a tiny head and broad porcine snout. Its back was raised into bands of flexible armour lined from neck to tail into ridges of bony scutes. It snuffled amongst the ground covering of ferns. Barged aside the smaller Neocalamites, rooting them out, upending them. Snorted up dust as it grubbed for roots. Would even take beetles or worms if need be. And right now, the need was great.
I lowered my weapon. PJ did the same. We smiled at each other as the delightful boar-sized armadillo-croc went about its business apparently untroubled by the presence of the two strange creatures regarding it. I snapped pictures.
But the Calyptosuchus had attendants. Following out of shadowy depths of the horsetails, elegant Silesaurs. Habitually four-legged but fast runners on two, they looked like pre-pubescent supermodel Sauropods, slim and rangy with long tail, legs and neck, and a little head. However, Silesaurs were not dinosaurs, just early experiments in the body plan. They trailed Aetosaurs to snap up whatever they stirred up or left behind, the scraps of plants they could never forage without the great digging claws of the armadillo-crocs getting at them first.
They waited patiently while the Calyptosuchus snuffled and I admired the prettiness of their gracile forms. I recorded footage for my Tumblr until finally the Aetosaur moved on. The Silesaurs darted to the bowl he had carved but there was nothing worth eating and they moved on with him.
We pushed on down to the trail. Found the tree we had marked the previous day and ducked under the deadfall slumped across an arroyo. Our footprints were still in the cracked rind of mud turned from terracotta to beige by the fall of pollen. My own face was filmed with it. The air was a deep, resplendent lemon and the light playing through the trees fell into beautiful gossamer curtains.
I sipped water from my camelBak as we plunged into the wall of horsetails. Dragonflies darted overhead, big and a glistening scarlet. Neocalamites and banks of Equisetites rose over us, swaying gently, the soft smack of wood on wood, and the rustle of ferns giving a soft, oriental ambience to the day. Something darted through the shadows ahead but was too fast for an ID.
Finally the giants gave way to more moderate-sized horsetails and wilting Clathropteris no thicker than a drumstick. The river was before us.
The pollen storm was thinning which meant we could see to the west. The storm there was building. It was a beautiful-ugly sky. Lightning slithered down and we counted to three before we heard distant thunder.
The radio clicked.
‘Flamingo, Mogollon. Weather check.’
‘Copy, Mogollon. Weather check.’
‘Flamingo, that weather front is really starting to threaten. I’m putting the Pink Team on alert five. How copy?’
‘Copy loud and clear. Any flooding?’
‘We’re not seeing anything from the drones. We’ve got them working the major watercourses and will keep you advised but if the weather deteriorates any further, we may lose coverage all together and be forced to ground the Pink Team, over.’
I glanced across to PJ. He just shrugged.
‘Copy Mogollon.’
‘Flamingo, we’re also worried about fire at this point. Seeing a lot of lightning. We think fire would be the more likely threat right now. There are strong westerly gusts ahead of the front that could really drive it.’
We stood in silence. PJ toed the cracked earth.
‘Flamingo? D’you copy?’
‘We copy.’
‘Flamingo, we’re just warning you that the window to come and get you out is starting to close pretty fast.’
‘How long do you think we have, Mogollon, over?’
A couple of heartbeats passed.
‘I’d say you have maybe three hours. Max. How copy?’
‘Copy, loud and clear.’
I looked at PJ. He pulled back his rebreather mask and rocked his head from side to side to loosen his stiff neck. Pushed a hand through his hair. Sweat made it greasy and black.
He snapped the mask back on. ‘I reckon we can get to the wallow in an hour. The ground is open. They can pick us up from there.’
Made sense. I told Mogollon.
The guy at the other end didn’t sound convinced but once more pointed out it was our dollar. I imagined the Mogollon crews shaking their heads in contempt at the laissez-faire attitude of the rich jerks who came back here to hunt and prove the manhoods they held so cheaply in the boardrooms and squash courts and wine bars they infested. As a woman, I wondered if they felt more or less contempt for me. Still, they were paid well to keep us alive and we were good tippers.
We hit the river and followed the right fork, the path less followed. The path not followed at all. Why, I don’t know. Considering the time frame we were on, the left, the one we had followed yesterday and the day before, the one we knew better, would have taken us to the wallow faster, made more sense. It was broad and easily navigated.
But PJ, shotgun held forward more like a torch, led the way to the right and I unquestioningly followed.
The fork here was actually wetter. The waters were sluggish and little more than liquid mud, but it was standing, not just little more than wet riverbed flanked by dried out beds of crazy-paved earth, curled and peeling. But we soon found the going hard. The riverbed was beset by deadfalls. Conifers and ginkgoes eaten alive by fungus had collapsed. Tangles of dense brush had become snarled around them, and dammed the stream into ponds. Some pools were little more than chocolate-thick mud; some were fetid and stagnant, where every footfall released stinking clouds of marsh gas that I could smell even through the rebreather. Where the banks were dry, the ground was gravelly or beds of dead mussels that crunched beneath our boots.
And it wasn’t just the water that was stagnant. The air was cloying and thick. The lifeless groves of horsetails and club mosses bent in and made the river a haunted tunnel.
Lightning flashed down amongst the deadfalls. Se
conds passed before thunder rolled.
The bright light lit up the dead. A large coelacanth rotted in the mud, trapped in one of the vanishing pools. There were fish skeletons crawling with maggots and swarming with flies. That particular vista remained a feature of natural disasters no matter the epoch.
It was hard to keep alert while struggling through mud and tangled brush. I called a stop.
‘I think we should turn back.’
PJ studied the thick roots and the creeping ferns and mosses covering them. It was dark. Something splashed.
He sighed. ‘Let’s just get through here and we’ll see how it looks. If it’s bad, we’ll call it in and get a pick-up.’
Gripped by the politics of denial, I tried the mud around me. Only the cool air of the rebreather hid the stench of rot and kept the flies from crawling into my nostrils.
‘Cover me,’ he said and began hacking through the deadfall with his machete. I sited down the shotgun into the shadows but all PJ shook loose was a little Sphenodont that darted into the underbrush.
Finally, he made a hole and we struggled through.
We both took a drink and surveyed ahead. The river widened and the sun beat down through gaping holes in the canopy. The breeze drove pollen and dust into a yellow haze that spiralled up through the clacking horsetails.
The riverbed here was deep. Or had been. It was now little more than a shrinking pool of greyish-browny mud. Trapped in it was a multitude of huge Koskinonodons. The huge crocodilian amphibians were covered in glutinous mud to protect their rubbery hides. Some gapped their broad, flattened jaws. Their eyes were coal-black in the mud and when they blinked, a nictitating membrane swept across them as they sank into their sockets. They had fleshy little limbs and long, flat tails; some of the Metoposaurs struggled in death throes, their limbs scrabbling in the muck, tails lashing and kicking up fans of mud. Others looked too exhausted to struggle, their jaws agape, but if one of the more mobile amphibians came too close, the jaws would crack shut and the offended Koskinonodon would hiss like a snake, or gargle. However, many of the Metoposaurs were dead. Some of those at the edge of the pool were caked in dried clay, cooked and desiccated. Others merely mummified skeletons. A few, however, were freshly dead. The great predators were out of their element and easy pickings for scavengers. Large, iguana-like Diapsids tore at a fresh carcass. Their scaly heads were coated in blood and gore, and surrounded by a fog of flies. Darting about the lumbering saurians, nimble Sphenosuchians, dog-like and dog-sized, with long legs and slender tails. They snapped up scraps and irritated the huge Diapsids as they cantered about the charnel hole. Two squabbled over the remains of very large lungfish until they were driven off by the bigger scavengers.