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Kendrick had awoken to find his friend Maynard missing in action. All he could find left of his squad-mate was a few ragged bits of skin and a trail of blood leading deeper into the wilderness. It happened to another man the following night, and again the night after that.
The Vietnamese spoke of demons that haunted the jungle, abducting children from unsuspecting villages.
Leaves brushed softly against feathers and leathery skin.
YES PALEOACCURATE DINOSAURS UES YES YES YES YES YES
Kendrick fell backwards, screaming, and a fiery pain flared through his body as talons sliced his stomach open.
Outdated hunting theory but still very cool!
One soldier sat beside a hut, trembling violently, his head in his hands. His bloodshot eyes were aimed at the body of a woman lying in front of him.
Oh it's going to become "the hunter becomes the hunted" type of story
It's well set up with the whole "we're the better animals and fight solely to prove our strength" speech the guy was giving at the start
“She’s been telling everybody that her husband was taken from their hut last night by a feathered serpent, a demon. It’s all horseshit.
“He was right about one thing, though. He certainly knows about primitive nature. The man’s turned his men into animals.”
Oh they absolutely are going in that direction
Ryan’s heart had become filled with a distilled hatred that seldom seeped through his rigid exterior. A wool mask covered all but his eyes. His squad had never seen his face; they only knew him for his cold, calculating stare.
Only Gerald knew about Logan’s schizophrenia.
There were a lot of sounds that he recognized, like monkeys, birds, and tree frogs. However, he also heard some sounds he wasn’t familiar with. There was a deep, rumbling bass lying beneath all of the other cries of the animals.
That's a rexes call
I am loving this book so far! there's so much you can attach to specific dinosaurs already if you know what to look for!
As his breathing slowed down, he began to detect a deep, rumbling bass beneath his respirations. Ryan’s eyes widened and his muscles tensed. Something else was breathing. Ryan was wrenched off of his feet
Called it!
“Morality is a gradient, infinite shades of light and darkness. You may drift through it, but even when you think you’re in the light, you’re still in the shadows. You don’t know who you’re hurting until the damage is done. Remember that.”
by now, so we should just settle down and get some rest. We can pick up the trail again tomorrow morning.” “Actually, most tigers have a territory range anywhere from 20 to 60 square miles,” Xavier said. “I doubt we’re out of its territory.
“If something natural is killing these trees, like an animal, then we would have to assume that it’s either a swarm of insects or some sort of huge herbivore. The latter is the only way to explain the broken trees, as they seem too healthy and firm to have been rotting or diseased. “So, if there is some sort of population of large animals eating these patches of forest, they have to have their population capped somehow.
We love characters that try to logic their way through problems! It's so much nicer than the "AHH A DEMON SCARY THING!!!" so many characters do
“Something would have to hunt these herbivores, and it would have to be a particularly adept predator to kill something that would do this much damage to the forest. So what I’m thinking is that maybe we’ve come upon a very rare, very rich ecosystem supporting some as-of-yet discovered species of animal.
“Christians should act Christ-like,” Eli said, and he took a swig. “So play dead.”
“That’s what’s waiting for you at the end of it all, when you’re praying on your death bed. Not light, not god, not harps, just silence. Silence is all that’s ever waiting for you.”
He tightened his hands around his rifle and held his breath. The sound of breathing continued.
The way these dinos just appear is AMAZING
Aleksandr spun around and jaws clamped shut over his throat. Talons hooked into the flesh of his back and feathers cloaked his body. The AK-47 fell from his hands and hit the ground with a muffled thump.
RAPTOR PREY RESTRAINT YEAHHHHH
HAHAHAAAA THE ONLY INACCURACY I NOTICED HAS BEEN FIXED
Another pair of eyes shone from a tree trunk across the clearing, thirty feet off the ground. Half a dozen eyes watched him from the darkness.
Raptors probably didn't pack hunt, but I do appreciate giving them the ability to climb
The creature’s body was outlined in stars; its body was the size of a wolf, with a thick coat of shining iridescent feathers, and a long snout filled with glistening fangs. It held onto the tree with a pair of wing-like forearms, and its long tail stood up straight like a flag.
Xavier peered around the corner of the tent and caught his breath when he saw the behemoth beyond the campsite. The silhouette of a twenty-foot tall leviathan slowly circled the clearing. Each methodic footstep made the forest shake.
20 is the absolute max for a rex so it's unlikely this is one. Also T-Rex, and likely other large tyrannosaurs, had padded feet so they wouldn't have made the forest shake with each step
Somebody stirred inside the tent, and the creature growled lowly. The air trembled around Xavier, and his sphincter tightened.
Impressive attention to detail. Most rex vocalizations would likely have been to low frequency for us to hear, but we would've felt them all right!
the behemoth moved through the jungle, as agile as a bird, away and into the darkness. The footsteps gave way to silence. After a few minutes, the jungle returned to life.
For a second, he wondered if it had been a meteorite that crashed into the jungle, or if it had rolled down the hill to its current location. That would have explained the path that led through the bamboo…. The boulder suddenly expanded with the roar of surging wind.
The animal was curled in the fetal position with its back turned to them. To the left, the creature’s thick tail curled away from them, and to the right, its head was tucked out of sight. It was easily forty feet long and powerfully muscled. Dull brown feathers covered the creature’s thick neck like fur.
In a matter of steps, she would have him in her jaws. The chicks squealed from the bottom of the hill. The footsteps suddenly faltered and fell away. The Mother released a final guttural roar and the forest descended to silence.
Just running them off, I'm glad they aren't making the dinosaurs merciless moviemonsters in this book
A low, resonant growl pulled Ryan out of his thoughts. He slowly lifted his head and saw gargantuan, reptilian feet gripping the earth with black talons. His eyes crawled up the muscular legs like tree trunks, up to the massive heaving chest and short arms with two-fingered claws, to the thick musculature of the neck. Moonlight shone on a majestic mane of feathers shining like shards of obsidian. Ryan looked higher and he saw the behemoth’s head twenty feet in the air. The rectangular jaws opened and closed, tasting the air, and the knife-blade teeth dripped red with blood. The nostrils on the
...more
Ryan looked over his shoulder and saw the T. rex falling behind; it walked slowly downhill, as if it were afraid of twisting an ankle. Ryan was sure that if such a huge beast fell, there would be no saving it.
That is correct! A rex falling over would break at least one bone when it hit the ground
The footsteps faltered. A baritone growl trembled through the earth like a thousand bass strings were being plucked at once. Leon seized up in Ryan’s grasp. Their faces were close together; Ryan could see Leon’s huge eyes tearing up.
The T. rex lowered its head and barked like an artillery gun. The sound was so forceful that it physically struck them both. The T. rex snorted heavily and swung its head back and forth. It barked again, short and brisk. It was then that Ryan realized what was happening; the T. Rex had lost them, so it was trying to scare them out of hiding.
Leon yelped and leapt off the cliff. Ryan dove after him and screamed as gravity wrenched him down. He caught a glimpse of the sky as he fell; scorched burgundy and charcoal clouds, with an intense yellow sun climbing above the mountains. It was then that Ryan saw the tyrannosaurus had lost its footing and was falling in after them.
That fall alone will seriously injured it, they don't have much to worry about
Except the fall of course
Ryan looked over his shoulder and saw that the T. rex had reclaimed its bearings. It slid through the water like an enormous crocodile, water glittering on its feathers like crystal beads. “Oh, of course it can swim!” Ryan screamed.
Also accurate, it's likely they were pretty good swimmers
“That’s the Mother T. rex across the river,” the Russian said. “T. rex’s mate for life, like penguins, with the Mother raising the chicks and the Father hunting for the family. Without the Father present, the Mother will have to bring their chicks along to hunt. The Father is going to do everything in his power to get back to his territory and return to his family. We should be safe…for now.”
the deinonychus flocks
I'm glad they aren't calling them Velociraptors!
However deinonychus and Tyrannosaurus rex did not live at the same time. They were in the same area though so I'm sure a time machine could bring them both back
Two orange creatures collided head-first in front of Xavier with the sound of a shotgun blast.
Pachycephalosaurs, good to see them!
“Stygimolochs,” Gerald said.
Preetty sure those aren't valid anymore
The fight was savage. A stygimoloch with dark striations on its back slashed the other’s flank with the talons on its foot. The other stygimoloch, which had a larger dome and longer thorns, slammed its head into the striped stygimoloch’s arm with a sickening crunch of bone. The striped stygimoloch howled in pain and staggered backwards. Splintered bone protruded from the mangled arm.
It's unlikely they aimed for much other than each other's heads, and it's unlikely one would lift its foot mid fight to kick when it's locked heads with a different pachy
A female stygimoloch with a diminished crown of thorns trotted in front of the clashing males, waving her tail eagerly.
We have no evidence for sexual dimorphism in pachycephalosaurs
Amongst the bright, bloody blossoms, a pair of yellow eyes stared back. A leathery, turquoise snout slid through the waxy leaves. The jaws parted; a snarl sifted through the creature’s bared teeth.
The deinonychus wrestled on top of the stygimoloch and hooked a pair of sickle-shaped toe-claws into its spine. The stygimoloch howled in pain and swung its head backwards. The deinonychus caught the stygimoloch’s throat in its taloned hands and pulled back,
Raptor Prey Restraint! Mostly, at least
The small carnivore leapt at Xavier, but he dove away. The deinonychus hit the tree behind him, dug its claws into the thick bark, and skittered up the trunk like a giant gecko.
Several deinonychus slunk out from around the trees and walked closer on their muscular hind-limbs. They moved with the head-bobbing gait of birds, and their arms were folded against their chests like wings. The small carnivores lowered their heads at Vulture Squad and hissed viciously. The other deinonychus clinging to the trunks and branches of the persimmon trees watched them in silence.
The deinonychus hissed and swiped its claws through his jacket. Xavier snarled and used the deinonychus’s weight to roll onto his side. The deinonychus rolled onto its back with Xavier straddling on top of it. The claws were still hooked into his vest, and the deinonychus began to kick wildly to get out from under him, but it couldn’t free itself. Xavier was thrown back and forth, but he was attached firmly. They were stuck. Xavier fell onto the deinonychus and drove his elbow into its throat.
Logan’s fingers met something gnarled, sharp, and heavy. He grasped the object and swung it into the side of the deinonychus’s head. The rock connected with a sharp, splintering crack and the deinonychus shrieked with demented horror. The deinonychus collapsed beside him, shaking and spasming.
About ten feet tall, twenty feet long. They’re covered in feathers that they use as camouflage to hide in the undergrowth. Ambush predators. “To my knowledge, there’s a pack of four in this valley, and they’re the most intelligent and efficient carnivorous dinosaurs here. If they lose their prey but draw blood, they’ll track the prey animal every night until they catch it. You’ve bled, they have your scent,
Pack hunting is unlikely, and it's even more unlikely that Utahs would track and hunt a singular prey animal until it killed it instead of just trying again with a different animal
“They disembowel their prey. Take the digestive track while their prey is still alive and leave it for dead.
Outdated raptor hunting method
Sergei and Nikita peered at the gliding figure. It appeared to be as large as a fighter jet, but with wings like that of a bat. A long, thin head swiveled on a lengthy neck like a periscope, scanning the valley below. The creature listed on the breeze like a kite, then banked low.
Potentially accurate, large azdarchids hunted on land and not in the air
Quetzalcoatlus.
ha ha called it
“Dragons,” Nikita whispered. “Fucking dragons!”
