Earth: 90,000,000 Years Ago...
Earth, a planet that lies in the Milky Way Galaxy, its solar system takes 248,000,000 years to rotate with the galaxy once. If one rotation of the galaxy was equal one day; the Earth would be 20 hours old, the dinosaurs would be 48 minutes old, and humans, 28 seconds...
Earth is like Equus, a planet that can support life, is gifted by the sun's life-giving warmth and light, has a molten core that creates a magnetic field that protects the atmosphere from harmful ultra-violet rays, and has a rich history of life within the soil of their land. Humans have yet to evolve where our story begins, for they aren't the dominant species of the earth yet, for you see, the masters of the Earth are; dinosaurs...
My Little Pony - Giants of Patagonia
Earth - XX/XX/1993
Deep in the desert scrubland of Patagonia, a team of Argentinian Paleontologists were on a dig to look for more fossil finds for their museum. One of the diggers shouted to the other members of the team, alerting them that he found something that was promising to the trained eye. What was jutting out of a tiny cliff face, was a part of the fossilized back bone...of an enormous herbivore...
Equestria - XX/XX of the 1,001st year of celestial peace
A lone pegasus mare was flying over a large grassland fifty miles from Ghastly Gorge, looking for more trouble involving the strange and sudden weather patterns that were appearing all over Equestria. She then saw something very unusual on the ground...
The pegasus said in confusion, "What in Equestria is that?"
She was looking at a trail of round depressions in the earth, each one bigger than her own body.
Her eyes widen in shock when see said, "Wait, these are footprints...Uhhg...I would really hate to run into whatever made these..."
The pegasus landed to get a better look at the footprints, but regretted doing so as she stepped in something brown...
Its stench was like elephant dung, enough to make the pegasus to scrunch up her nose, it was also crawling with dung beetles, the brown, smelly stuff, it turned out...was someone or something's feeses. Which made the pegasus mare gag and feel extremely grossed out.
She said, "Guughgg...This is really disgusting. Why in Equestria would beetles want to crawl around and eat somepony else's crap. Wait...This crap is still warm, and if what I remember is correct...Whoever dumped this stuff is still around..."
She looked around, and saw nothing, and she figured that whoever dumped that pile of dung, is also the one that made those footprints. Her blood temperature dropped significantly at the guarantee, that whatever creature made those footprints and dumped that huge pile of crap, it seemed to be clearly bigger than even a dragon, the largest creature the pegasus knows of...
She said to herself, "I really hope I don't become whatever made those prints doesn't think about eating me...I better fly up and be on the...gah!"
As she took to the air, the pegasus hit the neck of a massive sauropod dinosaur, far bigger than most dragons or even Ursa Majors, it was eating peacefully until the pegasus headbutted it in the neck, causing the ancient titan to get into a vicious coughing fit.
"What the heck did I...fly.......into......" The pegasus said as she gazed at the thick neck of a large creature that resembled a wingless dragon, coughing wildly as it tried to catch air. The dinosaur caught its breath, and looked at the wide-eyed, tan winged mammal, it sniffed a little, then mooed like a gigantic cow. The sauropod lowered its head to the ground and plucked a soft bush as it swallowed the bush whole...
The pegasus practically screamed, "What the heck is that thing!"
London, England - 160,000,000 B.C.E.
Deep in the tropical seas of the ancient earth, where the English captital of London will one day stand, schools of ancient fish swim along eating smaller organisms and zooplankton. The fish scatter when unusual, dolphin-like creatures swim at blinding speeds, snapping up several fish in their toothless jaws.
Though they look like dolphins or giant fish, they are really icthyosaurs, reptiles that have adapted for life in the ocean. These predators eat up fish, smaller aquatic life forms, and for this specific species called Othalmosaurus, hunt for squids and other invertebrates at night, where their enormous eyes allow them to perfectly see in pitch-black darkness. However, they themselves are prey for more dangerous and larger creatures like sharks, but sharks themselves are prey for a bigger reptile that not only frightened off the Othalmosaurus, but also scared off the sharks, and four-flippered predators with long necks called plesiosaurs.
The large predator was a type of pliosaur, called Liopleurodon, this individual is bigger than most of his kind. Whereas Liopleurodon can usually grow to be seven meters, this Liopleurodon is an frightening ten meters. His jaws can tear a smaller animal like the sharks or Othalmosaurus apart like a dog with a toy. In these seas, Liopleurodon is the king of the hill, no other creatures dare challenge him. If he's lucky, he'll even snap up any unsuspecting dinosaur that wanders into these waters.
The Liopleurodon glides through the water like a bird-of-prey, searching for his next meal...
Patagonia - 90,000,000 B.C.E.
Inside a nest under the blazing sun, one tiny sauropod hatchling emerges from its egg, which was no bigger than a grapefruit. The young male looks around and sees many of his siblings hatching as well, along with numerous others in the thirty or so nests surrounding his. He sees an abelisaur known as Skorpiovenator, snatch up and eat some newborn hatchlings in other nests, a veritable feast for any nest raider. He runs when a raptor known as Unelagia hisses at the fleeing hatchlings and stole one of the unhatched eggs in his nest.
The sauropod hatchling, we'll call him Strong One, has to eat around six pounds of food each day to fuel his growth, so that one day he can be as large as the one hundred twenty foot long adult of his species wandering nearby is...
If he can live that long...
Equestria - XX/XX/the 1,001st year of Celestial Year of peace
Nearly fifty miles from Vanhoover, a herd of the massive sauropods are migrating south, for climates best suited to the enviroments they instinctively remember. Many ponies, griffins, and dragons look in confusement, wonder, and disbelief as these dinosaurs walked along, like the great elephants in the savannahs of the distant lands east.
These titans are actually one of the largest animals to have ever lived, many of the healthy and elderly adults are a mind boggling one hundred ten to one hundred thirty-seven feet long, and the biggest weigh around one hundred tons. They are anywhere between nine-to-fifteen stories tall, no other land animals had ever gotten this big, not even close, on Earth or Equus. They are sauropods of the ancient land of south american Patagonia...
...Called...Argentinosaurus...
...the largest of all dinosaurs known to man...
Author's Note
A nice start right?
Here's a link to a YouTube video that has the documentary that inspired this spin-off;
Dinosaurs: Giants of Patagonia
This spin-off is greatly inspired, and will be referencing frequently by that IMAX film.
That amazing film is also where you can get an idea of what the soundtrack sounds like when you picture the story in your mind...
Here are the prehistoric animals in this part of the story...
Argentinosaurus
Skorpiovenator
Unelagia
Othalmosaurus
Liopleurodon
prehistoric sharks and fish
unidentified plesiosaurs
Please review and comment this spin-off, and be sure to read the main story; My Little Pony - The Age of Dinosaurs to get a better grasp of what is going on here...
Until next time...
Bye...
Equestria - XX/XX/the 1,001st year of Celestial peace
Princess Luna was flying alongside a few, puzzling pterosaurs that now glide Equus' skies, they were medium sized reptiles with beaks that curved upwards, with the lower beak bristled with teeth-like rods similar to a whale's.
Luna said to herself, "I remember seeing these things in Tia's copy of that book with the bat-like lizards, what were they called again? Oh yes, something like, Terror-dastier-oh…"
The proud Princess of the Night really meant, Pterodaustro, a bizarre, filter-feeding species of pterosaur. Their wingspans can reach at their peaks, three to five meters in length. They land alongside flowing rivers and feed on an assortment of microscopic organisms or tiny animals, it didn't really matter to these Pterodaustro, though. All that really concerns them, is getting food and water, reproduce, and staying alive as long as they can.
Luna thought these creatures were very amusing to look at, but then, something enormous caught her attention to the ground. She left the Pterodaustro, to gaze upon a migrating herd of Argentinosaurus, one of the largest animals to ever walk on land. Moving on to greener passages and warmer temperatures, these giant sauropods are constantly on the move.
When Luna landed on the ground, the dark blue alicorn felt the bone-rattling quakes caused by the stomping of the herd, well over 1,400 tons of dinosaur flesh and bone searching for food. Many other ponies were following the gentle, but still dangerous, dinosaurs, taking all kinds of photographs, souvenirs, and seeing what their motives are.
Luna sighed with disappointment as she thought, Do these peasants know anything about making an animal feel most uncomfortable. They are asking or even begging an audience with thy just Spirit of Death…
The Argentinosaurus didn't mind, their massive bulk made them virtually impregnable to attack from predators that eye them hungrily. They found the unicorns and earth ponies at their feet, not worth a glance, and the pegasi flying around their faces, as annoying as over-sized bees, buzzing annoyingly to where they instinctively snorted and shook their bodies.
What about Strong One? You might ask, so, let's see…
Earth - Around 90,000,000 B.C.E.
Strong One and many of his siblings followed the adult Argentinosaurus, eating the plants the giants drop. He is genetically programmed to rapidly grow into a giant, like his mother who laid fifty to sixty eggs in a clutch.
At birth, Strong One, and all sauropod hatchlings, were no bigger than a small breed of dog, like a terrier or chihuahua, and weighed around six pounds, more or less a few...
But it has been about two months since he had hatched, so Strong One had already grown at an astonishing rate, he is now three feet long and weighs about nine pounds, almost the size of a newborn human baby. This is thanks to his diet, most sauropod hatchlings have to each around one ton of food a year to fuel their growth, that usually equates to around six pounds a day.
It is because of their shared traits with birds today, that a large percentage of dinosaur species, usually reach their adult size within or around the first ten years of their lives, some even sooner...
...Like another dinosaur that lived alongside one of the largest terrestrial animals to ever live...
Sitting in the shade of a small grove of around five trees, was a nest of another dinosaur, with almost twenty eggs in a clutch. For this species, twenty eggs would be comparable to a human mother giving birth to sextuplets, a blessed (or cursed) number of baby dinosaurs to be born...
But the same Unenlagia that raided the Argentinosaurus nests, tried to do the same again, only this time, fate will not permit him an easy meal, as footsteps thundered towards him, and the Unenlagia panics and drops an egg he grabbed, when a large, predatory dinosaur's jaws lunged at him. The jaws belonged to the mother of the nest, and she will not let the thief take a single egg, and she snapped her massive jaws shut, nearly taking the Unenlagia's head clean off. The raptor fled, screeching like a panicking mule (even sounding like one), as the mother's jaws missed his tail by a single centimeter, way too close for the raptor's comfort...
So, the Unenlagia gives up, thinking that it was not worth it to try and steal these eggs, as the mother growled ferociously, warning any other egg-stealer, that if they come near her nest, they will be torn into bloody pieces. She inspects the egg the raptor dropped, a miracle that her egg landed on a very soft patch of sand, and then, she tenderly scoots the egg back into the nest, and lies down next to her nest.
The dinosaur was a carnivorous predator that not only, predates the Tyrannosaurus by over twenty million years of evolution, but also was bigger than the predator of the North American continent. She is a species of a recently discovered family of vicious predators, known as the giganotosaurids, flesh-eating dinosaurs that preyed on the sauropods. Three members of this family already found to be larger than Tyrannosaurus.
The giganotosaurid hears one of the eggs cracking, along with a familiar sound of a creature, (to our ears), that sounded like a baby alligator. The first of her hatchlings has started to come out of its eggshell, a tiny female we will name, Long Tooth, despite how small, cute, and fluffy she appears now, Long Tooth is programmed to rapidly grow into a forty-five foot long, eight ton, monster like her mother. She clumsily stammers to her mother, who looked up and hisses aggressively at a wandering male, (who happens to be the mother's mate, and Long Tooth's father). The male hisses back and then goes off hunting, knowing his mate would sooner or later, try to rip his throat out if he stays any longer around her newborns. Long Tooth squeaks to her mother, and then climbed into her mother's jaws, something alligator and crocodile mothers still do today.
Equestria - XX/XX/the 1,001st year of Celestial peace
The Argentinosaurus herd moves further down south, at an expansive beach in the southern most tip of the continent Equestria lies upon.
The ponies that were brave enough to follow the giant herbivores were quite perplexed at why these sauropods walked all the way here of all places. They looked out and noticed that another landmass was quite a distance away, and when they looked at it, they saw grasslands and savanna-like trees on the landmass, (which is a chunk of Equestria that was sealed off by the ocean). Many of them were wondering why these titans walked such a great distance, to a location they couldn't reach...
But then, the ocean slowly receded, revealing a hidden land-bridge that was easily thirty-six yards wide and ten miles long. It was formed long ago, by the shifting tectonic movements that created, what the ponies first believed, by an island chain that were really, undersea mountains that were pushed closely together, to create a land bridge that was only crossable during a low tide.
The Argentinosaurus knew by instinct, that something will enable them to move to their targeted location, with more herds of other dinosaurs following the titans to the landmass in the distance (It was as big as Greenland by comparison). But, like all instances, where there are herbivores, carnivores are not far behind, and it could not be any truer that the giganotosaurs tailing all the prey, a sizable number of them following all the plant-eaters to their new home.
The predators were patient, they knew better, all the easy prey are moving closely with the Argentinosaurus, including the ponies. The size of the sauropods, and the sheer number of herbivorous dinosaurs, act as a deterrent to the hungry predators, they can wait for weeks without food...
They got a lucky break, when an elderly Argentinosaurus collapsed from a combination of heart failure, a brain tumor, and heat exhaustion, brought the plus one hundred thirty-eight foot long giant to its knees. The carnivores gathered around the dead sauropod, like vultures, and began to feast on the corpse, much to the natives of Equestria's disgust and horror. Scientists in our world, and the few scholars that followed the sauropods, estimated that out of the seventy-five tonne weight of a fully-grown Argentinosaurus;
One tonne is blood...
Twelve tonnes is the organs...
Seven tonnes is tissue…
Eleven tonnes is muscle…
Thirty tonnes is fat...
And, Twenty tonnes is bone…
One lone Argentinosaurus looked behind at the fallen elder as its corpse is greedily devoured by the giganotosaurs, this individual looking on, is in fact, a fully-grown Strong One, he continues on, driven by instinct to follow the herd for food…
A giganotosaurid in the pack, a grown-up Long Tooth, gazed at the Argentinosaurus herd as she swallowed a chunk of meat. Instinct, and the aggression of the older, fitter pack members, is following the Argentinosaurus caravan, making the ponies that tailed the sauropods quite nervous.
They had no clue how right they are, as an Earth Pony mare said, "Those things give me the chills, but it seems that they won't come too close to these Argentinosaurus, so a mental note for me is to stick close to herds of large dinosaurs for safety…"
She sidesteps as one of the Argentinosaurus' massive feet thundered down, as the pony continued, "…Safety…at great risk…for some…"
The mare was absolutely terrified of the sheer size of the sauropods.
To be continued…
Author's Note
The Author doesn't seem to have anything to say at the moment…
Come back later for a update on the Author's notes…
