Thescelosaurs of Kaimere (5e Creature)
Thescelosaurs of Kaimere[edit]
Archetiposauria[edit]
Common Drakes (Archetiposauridae)[edit]
Serpent Drakes (Ophititanidae)[edit]
Spirit Drakes (Dracospiritidae)[edit]
Cuniclosauria[edit]
Dromaeodrachia[edit]
Fifteen million years ago, Kaimere was choked in ash and fire: the Tyrant Dynasty ended in armageddon, as a great lesson had opened in the crust from Arvel to Ni'Khar all the way up to Kairul, lava bleeding at each planetary wound. The hadrosaurs that defined the landscape with their foraging and the ruling tyrannosaurs that preyed on them were the first to perish. Giant sauropods were suffocated as the forests they cultivated burned, roasting millions of animals alive. Ceratopsians struggled as their wetland homes clogged with dust. Despite the dramatic description, this event was less severe than the extinction at the end of the Cretaceous on Earth, but it lasted much longer with peaks and valleys of devastation over many centuries. By the time the intense volcanic activity and its consequences subsided, most species over 100 lbs were extinct and the survivors, those small hardy animals that could make due on what was left and hide out the destruction in burrows, had their pick of niches to choose from and within half a million years Ni'Khar's forests were packed with large dinosaurs. Not hadrosaurs or sauropods, but a humble, unassuming group that is often seen as a footnote in prehistory: the thescelosaurs.[1]
The Meek Shall Inherit the World. While many clades independently grew large from small ancestors, some quite late in their evolution like tyrannosaurs and ceratopsians, many groups remained small the entire Mesozoic and thescelosaurs were among them: the largest member of the family, the nominative Thescelosaurus,[2] being in about the same weight class as larger deer species. Thescelosaurs on earth fall into two divides: Orodrominae,[3] Orodromeus and its closest relatives; and Thescelosaurinae, Thescelosaurus and its closest relatives. Regardless though, both are believed to have burrowing adaptations, these traits being key to their survival in Kaimere. Part of the reason they never grew large is because this bodyplan is very successful: after all, most groups of dinosaurs evolved from something with a similar look. There is something to be said for thriving in someone else's shadow, but when the Dynastic Extinction wiped out the megafauna and made the world more or less a clean slate, something had to take their place and thescelosaurs quickly answered the call.
While generally excluded from megafaunal niches in Kairul by pachycephalosaurs,[4] they exploded in diversity and abundance in Ni'Khar and within a geological blink of an eye grew several orders of magnitude. While many thescelosaurs remain quite small, those that did grow large quickly became some of the most important and dominant megafauna in their regions. Ni'Khari thescelosaurs, like thescelosaurs of old, are generally split into two groups: Cuniclosaruia ("digging or rabbit lizards"), highly abundant and generally small burrowers, and Archetiposaruia ("archetype lizards"), often thought of as the quintissential dinosaurs though this overlooks their adaptive radiation and diversity: Archetiposauridae, the nominative family of the clade, for the most part simply grew big, though they are also diagnosed by a set of sharp, keratinized plates long the dorsal side of the tail and sharp quills on the body; Ophititanidae ("Snake titans") are the most specious family of archetiposaurs, being generally aquatic omnivores that are so similar in much of their appearance and anatomy to basal sauropodomorphs[5] that for much of the 20th century that was what the Assembly classified them as; Dracospiritidae ("Dragon spirits"), the spirit drakes, are the most derived of the thescelosaurs as a whole, being among the most predatory- though still largely herbivores for the most part -and having thick skin that lets them sink to the bottom of wetland waters. Spirit drakes also sport a mane of long feathers and forward facing eyes for which the clade is named, as in darkness they can seem to look like lost souls in the swamp. A well observed divide between archetiposaurs and cuniclosaurs is their reproductive strategies: cuniclosaurs are born able to feed themselves, while archetiposaurs require crop milk until they grow their teeth in. This is thought in the latter to be the reason for close social structures in archetiposaurs and the reduced infant mortality. These two are traditionally grouped together, with the Kairulen Dromaeodracia ("running dragons") being a distinct thescelosaur lineage, but recent genetic studies have turned this notion on its head: based on these studies, Archetiposaurs and Dromaeodracids seem to be closer to each other than the Cuniclosaurs, with the leading theory now being that Cuniclosaurs are Orodromine line thescelosaurs while Archetiposaurs and Dromaeodracids are Thescelosaurine line, meaning the two groups of Known World thesceolosaurs' last common ancestor was somewhere in the Early Cretaceous or Late Jurassic. Further complicating these understandings of their relationship are the elasmarians[6] of generally Arvelith origin, which although they strongly resemble Dromaeodracids and were traditionally grouped together are even more distantly related. Regardless of difficulties with classification, it is easily apparent that thescelosaurs have truly become one of the most recognizable dinosaurs in Kaimere, especially within the Known World, and their rise to dominance from such humble origins stands as a testament to evolutionary success and the proof that perhaps animals traditionally seen as uninteresting and not eye catching are more fascinating than they first appear.
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