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Literature Text
Australia has a long history of giant reptiles. From the immense snake Wonambi to the armored meiolaniids to the land-dwelling mekosuchines to the great 'devil dragon' Megalania, massive reptiles have always figured prominently in the continent's fauna, and Xenocene Australasia is no different. Here, reptiles rule supreme, thanks to the isolation afforded by the steep mountains of the Guinea Land Bridge and the ocean surrounding it from every other direction, developing into gargantuan apex predators and titanic herbivores that look like they stepped out of an old black-and-white monster movie.
World serpent
Megophis rex (Great king of serpents)
Range: Southwestern marshlands
The largest snake in Australia, and perhaps even the world, the world serpent is an enormous species of python that lurks in the swamps of the southwestern edge of the continent. Measuring over 35 feet long and exceeding half a ton in weight, these immense predators rival the Palaeocene Titanoboa for the title of largest snake in history. Amphibious creatures that spend most of their lives in water, world serpents are colored in mottled greens and browns to blend into their swampy habitat, with the ability to somewhat flatten their bodies via spreading their ribs similarly to the flying snakes of the Holocene, swimming in an up-and-down undulating motion. They primarily prey on large fish, turtles, and monotremes, but they have no issues with taking down crocodiles almost as large as they are.
Other than coming together for procreation, world serpents are solitary, immediately parting ways after mating. The female will later lay a clutch of about twenty eggs and bury them in a mound of dirt and leaf litter among the roots of a large tree, coiling around the nest and guarding her young until they hatch, upon which she will immediately depart, leaving the young to care for themselves. Most of them will be eaten by other predators, but the ones that survive reach sexual maturity at around four to five years of age.
Horseodile
Hipposuchus velox (Swift horse-crocodile)
Range: Central savannas
The freshwater crocodile of the Holocene was a hardy, adaptable animal, its ability to sprint for short distances allowing it to easily reach new water sources in times of drought. As the millions of years marched by, this ability to run on land served the species well, allowing them to easily take many predatory niches on land across Australia, and no animal is a better example of its line's increasingly cursorial nature than the horseodile. As its name implies, the animal greatly resembles a horse in its body plan and is about the same size as one as well, but instead of fur, it is covered in the trademark scales and scutes of a crocodilian, with three blunt hoof-like claws on each foot, a midlength tail, and a distinctly crocodilian skull, albeit a good bit deeper and with teeth more adapted for slicing than piercing and gripping. Much like the long-extinct Pristichampsus, these predatory beasts are pursuit predators, chasing down other reptiles and midsized mammals either at a brisk trot to wear down prey until it collapses of exhaustion or at a full-blown gallop only slightly slower than the horses of the Holocene, often ending the hunt early with brutal kicks and with their powerful jaws. While not pack-hunters by nature, horseodiles aren't averse to moving in loosely-organized 'herds' of up to half a dozen in times of plenty, similarly to Holocene Komodo dragons.
Unlike most crocodilians, the horsodile's eggs hatch within the body, and only one 'foal' is given birth to at a time, protected by both parents until it can survive on its own at about 18 months of age; they're considered to be fully grown at about seven years old, but like all crocodilians, horseodiles never stop growing until they die.
Drop-Croc
Cadentasuchus inexpectatus (Unexpected falling crocodile)
Range: Eastern woodlands
Another quality of the crocodilian that allowed the group to pull through mostly unscathed was their surprising ability to climb; Holocene crocodiles and alligators were often reported scaling brick walls and chain-link fences standing over a dozen feet tall. One species of terrestrial crocodilian, a descendant of ancient arboreal zhilis similar in appearance to the ones still extant in Guinea, has taken this ability of its ancestors' to its logical extreme: the drop-croc.
Out of all the strange crocodilians of Australia, the drop-croc is perhaps the most aberrant in its anatomy, resembling nothing less than a Holocene ape in its body plan. However, there are considerable differences between this creature and any primate: it is covered in the scales and scutes trademarked by all members of its family group, emerald green in color and much smaller and smoother than normal in order to provide camouflage and reduce weight, respectively; its powerful hind legs are digitigrade, with three grasping talons on each foot, and are about the same length as its sturdy, muscular arms, which have four clawed fingers on each hand; its skull is distinctly reptilian, with a blunt snout and a mouthful of short, sharp, sturdy teeth; it has a fairly short, but still quite noticeable tail measuring about two feet long; and it stands much taller than any ape of the Holocene at a little over six feet tall and weighing in about as much as a leopard.
As their name suggests, drop-crocs are arboreal animals, primarily feeding on birds, small mammals, and various types of reptiles, but they are most notorious for their hunting habits when they wish to take down larger ground-bound beasts. Like the drop bears of urban myths, the drop-croc leaps down from the trees onto the back of its unfortunate victim, using its considerable weight to stun the animal for a few moments to buy it time as its rips into it with razor-sharp curved claws and snapping jaws.
Eggs are laid either singly or in pairs in a small nest constructed from twigs, leaves, and bits of fur from the drop-croc's victims, with the mother watching over the hatchlings and teaching them to climb and survive until they reach age six.
Pantheridile
Tigrissuchus deinus (Terrible tiger crocodile)
Range: Eastern forests
Continuing with the crocodilians' trend of replicating the body plans of prehistoric animals, the pantheridile looks very much like the Quaternary mekosuchian Quinkana, and is around the same size. However, there are several key differences between this descendant of the freshwater crocodile and its long-extinct lookalike. First, it's considerably bulkier, with powerfully-built limbs equipped with dangerous-looking sickle-like claws, a sturdy body, a long flexible tail, and the distinctive armor of its Holocene ancestors, as well as a sturdier, more robust skull that more resembles that of the Late Cretaceous Baurusuchus than the skull of Quinkana, with forwards-facing eyes set underneath heavy brow ridges and a long, flexible tail. Colored a greenish-brown in color with dark tan stripes, this predatory beast essentially acts like a crocodilian version of a tiger - it's a stealthy, solitary predator that's mainly active at dawn and dusk, sneaking up on prey animals from the grass and pouncing, inflicting massive amounts of damage with its powerful jaws and slashing talons. Also like a tiger, it can swim and climb with incredible skill, and its footfalls are muffled with specialized fatty pads on the bottoms of its toes. Preferred prey items are wombison, rabuffalo, large snakes and lizards, and on rare occasions, young boomers.
Solitary by nature and normally inhabiting territories whose borders they mark with scratches on bark, pantheridiles mate for life, with mated pairs convening year after year to produce young. Eggs are laid in clutches of four to five, and are cared for solely by the mother. The hatchlings reach sexual maturity at around age four, whereupon they leave to set up territories of their own.
Burrunjor
Burrunjor ferox (Fierce burrunjor)
Range: Borders between the central deserts and the western grasslands
Like many of its close relatives, the burrunjor is a gigantic relative of the zhilis of southern Asia that wouldn’t look out of place among older depictions of Mesozoic megafauna. Measuring almost 25 feet long and weighing in at more than a ton, the burrunjor is bipedal, standing on two long, powerful hind legs each ending in a three-toed birdlike foot in a semi-upright stance reminiscent of a kangaroo, with its long, thick tail dragging on the ground behind it. The torso is lean and streamlined, much like that of a theropod dinosaur, and is equipped with a pair of fairly short arms normally kept folded against the body, with pronated hands each sporting four fingers ending in sharp claws. The neck is about as long in proportion to the body as the long-extinct Allosaurus, and ends in a skull with a similar construction to those of the Late Cretaceous baurusuchians, with robust crushing jaws filled with razor-sharp fangs each the size of a human hand. Similarly to the tyrannosaurs of the Cretaceous period, burrunjor teeth exhibit a primitive form of heterodonty: the fangs at the front of the jaws are narrow and suited for slicing through flesh, while the ones near the back are thicker and sturdier, ideal for cracking bones. The eyes face forwards, and the scutes and osteoderms typical of the creature’s Holocene ancestor runs from the back of the head all the way down to the tip of the tail, providing protection against rival burrunjor and even larger predators.
Opportunists, burrunjor are typically solitary, but they have been known to move in pairs or in groups of up to four animals, preying on virtually anything that they can find as they roam the outback. They’re capable of dispatching prey with a wide range of strategies: their mottled brown coloration allows the beasts to spring ambushes, but their long, strong hind legs also make it possible for the crocodilians to pursue prey at speeds of over 35 mph, allowing the predators to bring down their kill with hatchet-like strikes from their jaws and vicious kicks from their taloned hind feet. Mating season occurs in early March through late April, with the father staying behind to guard a clutch of up to a dozen leathery-shelled eggs buried within a mound of earth and decaying plant life, raising the baby burrunjor that hatch out until they reach two years of age, upon which the clutch scatters to the winds to fend for themselves.
Kasai
Tyrannosuchus rex (Tyrant crocodile king)
Range: Western grasslands
The undisputed king of the Australian outback, the kasai is a titanic predator related to the burrunjor that is essentially the crocodilian family tree’s best attempt at a tyrannosaur. Like the burrunjor, it stands partially upright on two long, powerful hind legs with three-clawed bird-like feet, with a long thick tail dragging on the ground behind it, forelimbs held up off the ground, and a massive head with dozens of razor-sharp teeth displaying a primitive sort of heterodonty in its mouth. Unlike the burrunjor, however, the kasai is built for raw power rather than speed, with a much bulkier body, legs, and tail, longer, brawnier arms with four large hooked claws on each hand, thicker hide and heavier armor running down its spine and flanks, darker coloration of a mottled green and brown, and a proportionally larger, more robust skull more like those of a tyrannosaur in shape than an baurusuchian with larger, sharper teeth and Allosaurus-like brow horns that set its red-orange eyes in a permanent glare. And finally, it’s much, much larger: it measures over 30 feet long, with older specimens often topping 40 feet or so. The devil dragon can exceed these titans in sheer size, but the varanids have nothing on the kasai's sheer bulk - it can weigh more than eight tons.
Solitary apex predators, kasai prey upon the largest of Australia’s megafauna – doomducks, macroswans, wombison and wombastrodons, to name just a few, which it primarily brings down through ambush, wrestling its prey to the ground and either ripping it apart with its clawed arms or with its bone-crushing fang-filled jaws, which are capable of exerting more than 4,500 psi of force. Like tyrannosaurs, they have an excellent sense of smell, able to detect carrion from miles away, and have no qualms with stealing kills from other predators. Like burrunjors, these massive beasts only come together with any regularity between early March and late April – their mating season. Unlike burrunjors, however, kasai only lay half a dozen eggs at the absolute maximum, usually only laying two or three at a time, and both parents watch over the hatchlings and care for them until they can fend for themselves at about five years old.
Ammut
Ammuttachampsa osiris (Osiris' Ammut crocodile)
Range: Alongside rivers in the southeastern grasslands
If the Cretaceous crocodilian Kaprosuchus was a 'boar croc,' then the ammut of Australia is the 'entelodont croc,' a relative of the horseodile that looks like something that stepped out of the legends of ancient Egypt. Standing at roughly six feet tall at the shoulder and weighing in at more than a ton, the reptile's body is massively built, with larger forequarters than hind quarters, a sloping back like a hyena's, crocodilian scutes and osteoderms down its back, and bulkier hind limbs than front limbs. The legs are held directly underneath the body, and each foot is equipped with three stubby toes equipped with blunt nails, while the tail is relatively short and flexible. The neck is short and thick with muscle, but the most formidable feature by far of the beast is its head; very similar in structure to an entelodont, with several pairs of massive tusk-like fangs in the mouth and large, sharp osteoderms in the place of bony projections on the underside of jaws.
Largely solitary beasts, ammut are terrestrial predators of megafaunal mammals like boomers and massive kangaroo descendants, typically bringing down their prey through a burst of speed and slamming into the victim, using its sheer mass to knock over its quarry before dispatching it with its bone-crushing jaws, usually crushing the skull or snapping the neck with a single chomp. Territory is marked with loud bellowing roars as well as marking trees and game trails with urine; the creatures only ignore these warning signs when seeking new territory or a mate. After copulation, the female lays roughly half a dozen eggs in a scraped-out nest and guards them until they hatch, then cares for them until they can fend for themselves at age five; they're sexually mature and considered to be fully grown four years later, but like most crocodilians, ammut don't stop growing until they die. The young are often eaten by other predators during this 'teenage' period, including other ammut; it's not uncommon for mothers to set upon and devour their own offspring mere months after they have left her care.
Bunyip
Bunyip bunyip (Bunyip bunyip)
Range: Swamps, lakes, and billabongs all across the continent
The waterways of Xenocene Australia are inhabited by a wide range of snakes, aquatic varanids, crocodilians, large predatory fish, and all manner of other large, dangerous organisms, but one creature reigns supreme over them all – the bunyip. A loud, aggressive apex predator, this monstrous beast looks like a crocodile crossed with a walrus, with thick leathery greenish-brown hide, a bulky, but streamlined, elongated body, a long thick laterally flattened tail, four sturdy legs held in a slight sprawl with webbed five-toed feet, slightly burlier forelimbs than hindlimbs, sharp curved claws on its front paws, and a walrus-like face with sunken-in yellow eyes, slit-shaped nostrils, sharp teeth, and two pairs of long, sharp tusk-like fangs derived from the incisors, one (slightly smaller) set on the lower jaw and one on the upper jaw and both protruding from the lips.
Despite its appearance, the bunyip actually isn’t a reptile – it’s a mammal, specifically a descendant of the common wombat. Just after the Anthropocene ended, one group of wombats took to the water, eventually developing into otter-like generalists. One particular population managed to find itself in an area where there were no other aquatic predators; the exact reason for this is not apparent in the fossil record. With no competition available, these proto-bunyips quickly grew larger and fiercer, changing their diets from mollusks and crustaceans to fish and small birds, then small animals coming down to the water’s edge to drink before finally graduating to other megafauna. The end result of this evolution was the bunyip – a superpredator fully capable of holding its own against and even occasionally preying upon the titanic snakes and crocodilians that it shares its habitat with.
Bunyips are amphibious, mainly dragging animals coming to drink down from the water’s edge into the river itself, where they dispatch their victims via tearing it apart with their fangs and claws rather than via a ‘death roll’ like a crocodile would; however, they are fully capable of moving about on land, clambering about like a cross between a crocodile and a seal with surprising speed, and are even capable of climbing up trees, and are perfectly willing to pursue prey up onto dry land. Their fang-filled jaws can open staggeringly wide in order to bring their tusks into play, similarly to the Pleistocene cat Smilodon, and can chomp down with a truly incredible amount of force – almost a thousand pounds of pressure per square inch. Furthermore, the beast’s hides are incredibly tough, underlain with an organic mesh of cartilage and tiny osteoderms that essentially act like an organic form of chain mail, which is strong enough to withstand most smaller forms of firearms.
Male and female bunyips are nearly impossible to tell apart – both grow to an average size of about 28-30 feet long, and can tip the scales at over two tons per animal. Solitary by nature, these titanic beasts keep huge territories stretching over hundreds of miles each, and rarely stray from them. Every week or so, especially during nights of the full moon, the massive mammals nocturnally broadcast their presence to other bunyips via bloodcurdling, ear-splittingly loud murderous bellows, as well as through the usage of bite and claw marks on the trunks of trees. Mating season occurs in the dead heat of summer, the only time when bunyips seek each other out; and when they do, confrontations are incredibly violent. Like Holocene hippopotami, male bunyips, or bulls, clash violently for the right to mate, bellowing as loud as they can and chomping down with their vicious fangs. Females also duel each other, but for different reasons – their sparring matches establish a sort of ‘pecking order’ with the biggest, most capable female at the top and descending downwards. After copulation, the male immediately departs for his own territory, leaving the mother bunyip to give birth alone to a single cub. Pregnancy lasts for about ten months, with the cub being kept in a watertight sealable pouch until it’s strong enough to swim alongside its mother under its own power at about a month of age. Bunyips are notoriously protective of their offspring, and will fight to the death to defend them.
Devil Dragon
Diablodraco infernalis (Devil-dragon from Hell)
Range: Central badlands and scrublands, but can be found in most other regions, albeit in much smaller numbers
Descended from the likes of goannas and perentie lizards, devil dragons are among the largest terrestrial squamates of the Xenocene; indeed, in the history of life on Earth. Standing almost ten feet tall at the shoulder and measuring a colossal 45 feet in length at the absolute max (Most are in the 35-foot range), these immense lizards are covered in thick scales that are a dull reddish-brown in color with a light shade of tan on the underside; the creature is further protected by crocodile-like scutes derived from its larger scales that run down from the back of its head to the tip of its tail. The devil dragon's legs are considerably longer than a normal varanid of its size would typically had, and are held in a half-sprawl in the same manner as a crocodile; on each foot, it sports four toes, each tipped with a massive razor-sharp talon. The body is quite big and bulky, but it's also fairly elongated; the lizard's tail, which either drags on the ground behind it or is held up in the air, is a bit longer than the rest of its body, and the scutes running down it are sharper than the ones on the back, almost like the tail of some sort of dragon. The neck is slightly more elongated than one would expect from a lizard of its size, but the head honestly looks positively prehistoric, like a slightly more robust mix between an Allosaurus and a Megalania, complete with brow horns similar in shape to those of the carnosaur. The jaws are lined with teeth the size of steak knives, and also houses an incredibly long forked tongue that can stretch nearly six feet; the creature's piercing yellow eyes are placed about where they would be on a carnosaur, but unlike those long-extinct reptiles, the devil dragon's eyes face forwards, granting it binocular vision.
Lords of the central deserts and wastelands, few are the creatures that will challenge a fully-grown devil dragon; their jaws can somewhat unhinge like a snake's to engulf man-sized animals whole, and their powerful jaws are perfectly suited for ripping off massive chunks of flesh from their prey. Indeed, these immense varanids hunt larger animals by biting off one chunk of meat, then retreating into the brush and stealthily following the wounded creature as the menagerie of bacteria within the dragon's saliva and its blood-thinning venom (The latter of which is 'chewed' into its prey through the teeth in the lower jaw, similarly to the Holocene Gila monster lizard) play merry hell with the unfortunate animal. When it's too weakened to fight back very much, the dragon closes in, ripping apart its prey with its talons and teeth. Besides this waiting approach, however, devil dragons are capable of using a variety of different strategies against prey animals, from biting down on the throat to suffocate prey, swimming after fish like a crocodile, leaping down from above onto prey animals from raised rock outcrops or even large dead trees, or even giving chase with a short burst of speed (About 25 mph) and pulling the victim down to the ground with their powerful forelimbs.
When threatened by beasts that can challenge its might, devil dragons are far from pushovers; they can rear up with the use of their immense tails as a counterbalance to tower over most creatures at nearly 20 feet tall and maul victims like a Holocene bear, or use their tails in a similar manner to the sauropods or stegosaurs of the Mesozoic - that is, as devastating weapons that can tear through flesh with the sheer force of the swing alone, to say nothing about the sharpened scutes down its length.
Male devil dragons are the ones who care for young, with mating rights determined in wrestling matches similar to those of Holocene varanids, except on a much larger scale. The female abandons her mate and her young immediately after laying almost three dozen softball-sized eggs in the earth; the male will then watch over the young until they hatch into a colony of 2-foot-long animals, upon which he, too, takes his leave. These young devils are drably colored in light browns and tans, and quickly scatter into the brush, feeding on small mammals and reptiles and gradually moving on to bigger and bigger animals as they get older and stronger. Most of these young creatures will meet their end before getting to adulthood, be it by birds, mammals, large reptiles, or even other devil dragons.
Mountain Dragon
Montanodraco papua (Mountain dragon of Papua)
Range: Mountains of Guinea
A cousin to the much larger devil dragon of the Australian badlands, the mountain dragon is a considerably smaller, but still massive, species of varanid that makes its home in the mountains of what was once New Guinea. Measuring nearly 30 feet long and standing about six feet at the shoulder, this immense varanid has the same half-sprawled legs as its outback-dwelling relative, but it is much more slender in build, with slightly longer legs and larger, more vicious talons, no scutes or osteoderms on its jet-black form, and a sleeker, more streamlined head with narrower jaws that's crowned with a pair of backwards-pointing horns with a very slight upwards curve halfway down their length. The neck is slightly longer in proportion to its body than it would be on a devil dragon, and the tail is also quite a bit longer and thinner; it has no spikes or scutes, just tough leathery hide running down the last third of its length like a whip.
Like devil dragons, mountain dragons are solitary, but where the devil dragon has size and power, the mountain dragon has stealth and speed. It lurks in the trees and on the ground of the montane rainforests of New Guinea, slinking around noiselessly thanks to specialized pads of tissue on the tips of its digits similarly to those of a cat's paws, and uses its razor-sharp talons and slicing teeth to dispatch its prey, along with a very special chemical weapon. Like Holocene monitor lizards, the mountain dragon has venom-producing organs; however, it has taken this venom to the next level, developing highly corrosive toxins that it can spit from a vent on the floor of its mouth like a Holocene spitting cobra at targets from over four meters away. The acid is prevented from dissolving the dragon's innards through the presence of the lizard's saliva, which contains greatly increased amounts of alkaline chemicals, as well as mucus similar to that found within the stomach lining the walls of the glands that produce the compound. The bile of a mountain dragon can eat through thick hide and bony armor quite easily, and it also contains a very faint pheromone that the varanid can easily pick up, thanks to its long forked tongue and Jacobson's organ that it uses to 'taste' the air. All that the lizard needs to do is get one or two good bites in, spray another blast of acid, then tail the victim from the trees or the brush until it's weak enough to easily dispatch. The tail can also be used as a deadly weapon, much like that of a sauropod, as well as for balance while climbing cliffs and tall trees, and for display in the form of cracking the tail like a whip; the thick leathery skin on the end of the appendage serves to cushion the muscle and bone underneath during the latter movement.
Mating habits and egg-rearing tactics are similar to those of the devil dragon, but baby mountain dragons spend their youth up in the trees, feeding on insects, smaller wingdrakes, birds, eggs, and other small tidbits.
Forest Dragon
Sylvestridraco papua (Forest dragon of Papua)
Range: Lowland jungles of Guinea
While the mountain dragon stalks the montaine rainforests of Guinea, another mega-monitor lurks in the steaming lowlands. The forest dragon is a bit larger than the mountain dragon at about 35 feet long, but it is considerably heavier at nearly one and a half tons. Its semi-sprawled legs are thicker and sturdier than either a devil dragon's or a mountain dragon's, and hold it lower down to the ground. It's also quite a bit more heavily built than either one, more like a crocodile than a varanid. The neck is shorter and thicker than either one of its relatives', and the tail is deeper, better for swimming. Like the mountain dragon, it has a pair of horns on its head, but these horns lie a bit flatter against the skull, and are considerably shorter and thicker than those of the mountain dragon; in addition, its head is considerably wider than its jet-black cousin, almost triangular when viewed from above and with deeper, more robust jaws. The scales of the creature are a deep forest green with pale yellow on the underside, and it sports all of the scutes and osteoderms of a devil dragon, further accentuated with a row of short bone spikes running down the animal's spine, and its clawed toes have a slight amount of webbing in between them.
Amphibious predators that are equally happy either on the forest floor or swimming through swamps and rivers, forest dragons are ambush predators, lunging out from hiding to drag their victims down to the ground with their powerful arms and jaws and maul it with their fangs and claws. Like the closely-related mountain dragon, these immense monitor lizards do have corrosive venom, but they do not spit it; instead, they use the stuff to sizzle through tough hide when they bite down on a prey animal, as well as to further hurt escaped prey items over time as it stalks them Komodo dragon-style.
As with devil dragons and mountain dragons, the father forest dragon cares for the eggs and leaves immediately upon their hatching; unlike the other two mega-monitors, though, forest dragon young take to the water, eating fish and frogs and gradually moving upwards to larger and larger prey as they get older and larger.
Mokele
Mokele mbembe (One who stops the flow of rivers)
Range: Swamplands and jungles of the Guinea Land Bridge
While the devil dragon rules in the Australian outback, the Guinea Land Bridge is home to several species of very strange and very derived varanids whose ancestry lies with the fruit-eating and omnivorous monitor lizards of the Holocene that lived on various Indonesian islands. When the Guinea Land Bridge formed, these lizards suddenly found themselves in an environment full of food and with little to no competition for said food, and quickly developed into a group of large, ponderous browsers.
Largest of them all is the mokele, a titanic 50-foot-long beast that looks very much like an oldschool reconstruction of a sauropod. The legs are no longer set in a sprawl; in order to hold up the lizard's immense weight, they are almost totally underneath the gigantic reptile's large heavyset body, and have bulked up considerably, with the digitigrade hind legs being about the same length as the front legs, while the feet have gone from five long clawed toes on each foot to three stubby ones with relatively blunt (But still decently sharp) claws. The neck and tail are long and flexible, with the former held upright like a swan's nearly 30 feet off the ground and ending in a skull very similar in shape to that of the long-extinct Plateosaurus, albeit with teeth that are suited to eating both meat and plants. It's covered in thick greenish-grey scaly skin striped with darker green, camouflaging itself in the thick greenery of its habitat, and it has webbed feet and a deepened tail to assist in swimming.
Mokele are largely solitary herbivores, browsing on whatever greenery that they come across in their endless eating, although they won't pass up eggs, insects, or the occasional small animal. Occasionally, they will travel in small herds of up to half a dozen, often a big bull male, his mate, and their various offspring, but sometimes with several adult mated pairs. Very few animals are capable of bringing them down, but several do exist; when faced with such predators, the titanic varanids defend themselves with their stomping feet, powerful kicks, snapping jaws, and long lashing tails.
Eggs are laid in clutches of almost four dozen in an immense mound of dirt and rotting plants; the mother and father will not stray more than a mile or so from this nest, constantly on the search for more food to feed themselves with, making their nests ripe for robbing by smaller predators. It's not uncommon for young mokele, already the size of cats and equipped with cryptic mottled green-and-brown coloration, as well as jaws lined with needle-sharp teeth, to hatch without their parents and head off before they return, either scattering or sticking together in threes or fours. For the beginning of their lives, mokele are carnivores, eating insects, small fish, mammals, and little reptiles, but they gradually commit to full-on herbivory as they grow older. Sexual maturity is at twelve years of age, and the animals stop growing at thirty.
Irizima
Irizima ferox (Fierce irizima)
Range: Forests of Guinea
A smaller cousin to the mokele, the irizima is a varanid that has not yet abandoned its carnivorous roots; it is a massive omnivore of Guinea, feeding on virtually anything that it comes across. Considerably smaller than a mokele at 30 feet long, the irizima is also much slimmer and more lightly built than its cousin, with legs held directly underneath its body. Unlike the mokele, the irizima has three digits on each foot; the hind feet have thicker, blunter toe claws, while the claws on the hands are massive, sharp, and hooked, each one measuring over 18 inches in length and perfect for its role in slicing through flesh and hide. The tail is thinner than the mokele's, and the neck is shorter and thicker; it has to be, in order to support the monster's head. Quite a bit larger than that of a mokele, the irizima's skull looks almost like that of a theropod dinosaur mixed with a prosauropod's, with jaws lined with blade-like teeth and eyes set underneath bony ridges in a permanent glare.
Colored a deep emerald green striped with black, irizima are omnipedal creatures, equally capable of moving on four legs as they are walking partially upright on two feet, tail dragging behind them for support and balance. Preying on equally massive creatures like mokele, mbielu, and large mammals as well as on vegetation, these immense varanids hunt both on land and in the water, wrestling their prey to the ground and tearing it apart with their immense talons and blade-like teeth; when attacking in water, they hold their prey underneath the surface to drown it. They're solitary to the extreme and extremely territorial, battling nearly to the death whenever they cross paths with another one of their kind except during mating season, and even then both parties will likely walk away with several bite marks in them. Young hatch from eggs that are laid in rows of about two dozen in thick beds of ferns, then abandoned by their mother; in the inverse of mokele, irizima hatchlings are herbivores and gradually work their way up to eating meat.
Mbielu
Mbielusaurus mbielu (Plank-backed lizard)
Range: Rivers and swamplands of the Guinea Land Bridge
A smaller, more aquatic cousin to the mokele, the mbielu is considerably smaller than its browsing cousin, ‘only’ measuring about 18 feet in length. It’s also much more adapted to aquatic life than the mokele is, with a longer, sleeker body that’s set lower to the ground, shorter legs set in a sort of half-sprawl, and eyes and nostrils set near the top of its snout. The toes are connected to one another with webs of skin, and the lungs are large and compact to allow the animal to hold its breath for longer periods of time. The neck is fairly long, but not nearly as much as the mokele’s, and is set in a horizontal stance; the head is also narrower than the mokele’s, almost like that of the stegosaurs of the Jurassic in shape. And also like a stegosaur, the mbielu sports several row of bony plates running down its spine, each one shaped somewhat like an upright plank of wood with rounded edges. Five rows of these plates grow from the mbielu’s back, one running directly down the spine from the back of the head to three-quarters of the way down the tail and two more rows going from above the shoulders to halfway down the tail, one set above the other. Essentially, the mbielu looks like the now-defunct species of ankylosaur known as Acanthopholis, but somewhat sleeker and lower to the ground, and with plates on its back instead of bony armor.
Unlike mokele, mbielu are solitary animals and purely herbivorous, slowly swimming through the rivers of Guinea with their plated backs exposed and grazing on water plants and browsing upon low-hanging fruits and leaves. It’s not uncommon for the backs of these enormous lizards to become covered in green algae, making the animals look like moving rocky islands.
Mbielu rarely come up onto dry land, but they can and will do it, usually to forage for plant matter higher up on the riverbank, but they also need to do it to lay their eggs, which are deposited in clutches of up to two dozen and buried underneath several inches of soil, then left alone - the mother will stay in the immediate area to chase off would-be egg thieves, but she does not actively incubate the nest. When the offspring hatch, they immediately make a break for the water, followed by their mother, who will be trailed by her offspring until they are big enough to fend for themselves at age five - it’s not uncommon for juvenile mbielu to move in small herds until they’ve reached sexual maturity at age eight.
World serpent
Megophis rex (Great king of serpents)
Range: Southwestern marshlands
The largest snake in Australia, and perhaps even the world, the world serpent is an enormous species of python that lurks in the swamps of the southwestern edge of the continent. Measuring over 35 feet long and exceeding half a ton in weight, these immense predators rival the Palaeocene Titanoboa for the title of largest snake in history. Amphibious creatures that spend most of their lives in water, world serpents are colored in mottled greens and browns to blend into their swampy habitat, with the ability to somewhat flatten their bodies via spreading their ribs similarly to the flying snakes of the Holocene, swimming in an up-and-down undulating motion. They primarily prey on large fish, turtles, and monotremes, but they have no issues with taking down crocodiles almost as large as they are.
Other than coming together for procreation, world serpents are solitary, immediately parting ways after mating. The female will later lay a clutch of about twenty eggs and bury them in a mound of dirt and leaf litter among the roots of a large tree, coiling around the nest and guarding her young until they hatch, upon which she will immediately depart, leaving the young to care for themselves. Most of them will be eaten by other predators, but the ones that survive reach sexual maturity at around four to five years of age.
Horseodile
Hipposuchus velox (Swift horse-crocodile)
Range: Central savannas
The freshwater crocodile of the Holocene was a hardy, adaptable animal, its ability to sprint for short distances allowing it to easily reach new water sources in times of drought. As the millions of years marched by, this ability to run on land served the species well, allowing them to easily take many predatory niches on land across Australia, and no animal is a better example of its line's increasingly cursorial nature than the horseodile. As its name implies, the animal greatly resembles a horse in its body plan and is about the same size as one as well, but instead of fur, it is covered in the trademark scales and scutes of a crocodilian, with three blunt hoof-like claws on each foot, a midlength tail, and a distinctly crocodilian skull, albeit a good bit deeper and with teeth more adapted for slicing than piercing and gripping. Much like the long-extinct Pristichampsus, these predatory beasts are pursuit predators, chasing down other reptiles and midsized mammals either at a brisk trot to wear down prey until it collapses of exhaustion or at a full-blown gallop only slightly slower than the horses of the Holocene, often ending the hunt early with brutal kicks and with their powerful jaws. While not pack-hunters by nature, horseodiles aren't averse to moving in loosely-organized 'herds' of up to half a dozen in times of plenty, similarly to Holocene Komodo dragons.
Unlike most crocodilians, the horsodile's eggs hatch within the body, and only one 'foal' is given birth to at a time, protected by both parents until it can survive on its own at about 18 months of age; they're considered to be fully grown at about seven years old, but like all crocodilians, horseodiles never stop growing until they die.
Drop-Croc
Cadentasuchus inexpectatus (Unexpected falling crocodile)
Range: Eastern woodlands
Another quality of the crocodilian that allowed the group to pull through mostly unscathed was their surprising ability to climb; Holocene crocodiles and alligators were often reported scaling brick walls and chain-link fences standing over a dozen feet tall. One species of terrestrial crocodilian, a descendant of ancient arboreal zhilis similar in appearance to the ones still extant in Guinea, has taken this ability of its ancestors' to its logical extreme: the drop-croc.
Out of all the strange crocodilians of Australia, the drop-croc is perhaps the most aberrant in its anatomy, resembling nothing less than a Holocene ape in its body plan. However, there are considerable differences between this creature and any primate: it is covered in the scales and scutes trademarked by all members of its family group, emerald green in color and much smaller and smoother than normal in order to provide camouflage and reduce weight, respectively; its powerful hind legs are digitigrade, with three grasping talons on each foot, and are about the same length as its sturdy, muscular arms, which have four clawed fingers on each hand; its skull is distinctly reptilian, with a blunt snout and a mouthful of short, sharp, sturdy teeth; it has a fairly short, but still quite noticeable tail measuring about two feet long; and it stands much taller than any ape of the Holocene at a little over six feet tall and weighing in about as much as a leopard.
As their name suggests, drop-crocs are arboreal animals, primarily feeding on birds, small mammals, and various types of reptiles, but they are most notorious for their hunting habits when they wish to take down larger ground-bound beasts. Like the drop bears of urban myths, the drop-croc leaps down from the trees onto the back of its unfortunate victim, using its considerable weight to stun the animal for a few moments to buy it time as its rips into it with razor-sharp curved claws and snapping jaws.
Eggs are laid either singly or in pairs in a small nest constructed from twigs, leaves, and bits of fur from the drop-croc's victims, with the mother watching over the hatchlings and teaching them to climb and survive until they reach age six.
Pantheridile
Tigrissuchus deinus (Terrible tiger crocodile)
Range: Eastern forests
Continuing with the crocodilians' trend of replicating the body plans of prehistoric animals, the pantheridile looks very much like the Quaternary mekosuchian Quinkana, and is around the same size. However, there are several key differences between this descendant of the freshwater crocodile and its long-extinct lookalike. First, it's considerably bulkier, with powerfully-built limbs equipped with dangerous-looking sickle-like claws, a sturdy body, a long flexible tail, and the distinctive armor of its Holocene ancestors, as well as a sturdier, more robust skull that more resembles that of the Late Cretaceous Baurusuchus than the skull of Quinkana, with forwards-facing eyes set underneath heavy brow ridges and a long, flexible tail. Colored a greenish-brown in color with dark tan stripes, this predatory beast essentially acts like a crocodilian version of a tiger - it's a stealthy, solitary predator that's mainly active at dawn and dusk, sneaking up on prey animals from the grass and pouncing, inflicting massive amounts of damage with its powerful jaws and slashing talons. Also like a tiger, it can swim and climb with incredible skill, and its footfalls are muffled with specialized fatty pads on the bottoms of its toes. Preferred prey items are wombison, rabuffalo, large snakes and lizards, and on rare occasions, young boomers.
Solitary by nature and normally inhabiting territories whose borders they mark with scratches on bark, pantheridiles mate for life, with mated pairs convening year after year to produce young. Eggs are laid in clutches of four to five, and are cared for solely by the mother. The hatchlings reach sexual maturity at around age four, whereupon they leave to set up territories of their own.
Burrunjor
Burrunjor ferox (Fierce burrunjor)
Range: Borders between the central deserts and the western grasslands
Like many of its close relatives, the burrunjor is a gigantic relative of the zhilis of southern Asia that wouldn’t look out of place among older depictions of Mesozoic megafauna. Measuring almost 25 feet long and weighing in at more than a ton, the burrunjor is bipedal, standing on two long, powerful hind legs each ending in a three-toed birdlike foot in a semi-upright stance reminiscent of a kangaroo, with its long, thick tail dragging on the ground behind it. The torso is lean and streamlined, much like that of a theropod dinosaur, and is equipped with a pair of fairly short arms normally kept folded against the body, with pronated hands each sporting four fingers ending in sharp claws. The neck is about as long in proportion to the body as the long-extinct Allosaurus, and ends in a skull with a similar construction to those of the Late Cretaceous baurusuchians, with robust crushing jaws filled with razor-sharp fangs each the size of a human hand. Similarly to the tyrannosaurs of the Cretaceous period, burrunjor teeth exhibit a primitive form of heterodonty: the fangs at the front of the jaws are narrow and suited for slicing through flesh, while the ones near the back are thicker and sturdier, ideal for cracking bones. The eyes face forwards, and the scutes and osteoderms typical of the creature’s Holocene ancestor runs from the back of the head all the way down to the tip of the tail, providing protection against rival burrunjor and even larger predators.
Opportunists, burrunjor are typically solitary, but they have been known to move in pairs or in groups of up to four animals, preying on virtually anything that they can find as they roam the outback. They’re capable of dispatching prey with a wide range of strategies: their mottled brown coloration allows the beasts to spring ambushes, but their long, strong hind legs also make it possible for the crocodilians to pursue prey at speeds of over 35 mph, allowing the predators to bring down their kill with hatchet-like strikes from their jaws and vicious kicks from their taloned hind feet. Mating season occurs in early March through late April, with the father staying behind to guard a clutch of up to a dozen leathery-shelled eggs buried within a mound of earth and decaying plant life, raising the baby burrunjor that hatch out until they reach two years of age, upon which the clutch scatters to the winds to fend for themselves.
Kasai
Tyrannosuchus rex (Tyrant crocodile king)
Range: Western grasslands
The undisputed king of the Australian outback, the kasai is a titanic predator related to the burrunjor that is essentially the crocodilian family tree’s best attempt at a tyrannosaur. Like the burrunjor, it stands partially upright on two long, powerful hind legs with three-clawed bird-like feet, with a long thick tail dragging on the ground behind it, forelimbs held up off the ground, and a massive head with dozens of razor-sharp teeth displaying a primitive sort of heterodonty in its mouth. Unlike the burrunjor, however, the kasai is built for raw power rather than speed, with a much bulkier body, legs, and tail, longer, brawnier arms with four large hooked claws on each hand, thicker hide and heavier armor running down its spine and flanks, darker coloration of a mottled green and brown, and a proportionally larger, more robust skull more like those of a tyrannosaur in shape than an baurusuchian with larger, sharper teeth and Allosaurus-like brow horns that set its red-orange eyes in a permanent glare. And finally, it’s much, much larger: it measures over 30 feet long, with older specimens often topping 40 feet or so. The devil dragon can exceed these titans in sheer size, but the varanids have nothing on the kasai's sheer bulk - it can weigh more than eight tons.
Solitary apex predators, kasai prey upon the largest of Australia’s megafauna – doomducks, macroswans, wombison and wombastrodons, to name just a few, which it primarily brings down through ambush, wrestling its prey to the ground and either ripping it apart with its clawed arms or with its bone-crushing fang-filled jaws, which are capable of exerting more than 4,500 psi of force. Like tyrannosaurs, they have an excellent sense of smell, able to detect carrion from miles away, and have no qualms with stealing kills from other predators. Like burrunjors, these massive beasts only come together with any regularity between early March and late April – their mating season. Unlike burrunjors, however, kasai only lay half a dozen eggs at the absolute maximum, usually only laying two or three at a time, and both parents watch over the hatchlings and care for them until they can fend for themselves at about five years old.
Ammut
Ammuttachampsa osiris (Osiris' Ammut crocodile)
Range: Alongside rivers in the southeastern grasslands
If the Cretaceous crocodilian Kaprosuchus was a 'boar croc,' then the ammut of Australia is the 'entelodont croc,' a relative of the horseodile that looks like something that stepped out of the legends of ancient Egypt. Standing at roughly six feet tall at the shoulder and weighing in at more than a ton, the reptile's body is massively built, with larger forequarters than hind quarters, a sloping back like a hyena's, crocodilian scutes and osteoderms down its back, and bulkier hind limbs than front limbs. The legs are held directly underneath the body, and each foot is equipped with three stubby toes equipped with blunt nails, while the tail is relatively short and flexible. The neck is short and thick with muscle, but the most formidable feature by far of the beast is its head; very similar in structure to an entelodont, with several pairs of massive tusk-like fangs in the mouth and large, sharp osteoderms in the place of bony projections on the underside of jaws.
Largely solitary beasts, ammut are terrestrial predators of megafaunal mammals like boomers and massive kangaroo descendants, typically bringing down their prey through a burst of speed and slamming into the victim, using its sheer mass to knock over its quarry before dispatching it with its bone-crushing jaws, usually crushing the skull or snapping the neck with a single chomp. Territory is marked with loud bellowing roars as well as marking trees and game trails with urine; the creatures only ignore these warning signs when seeking new territory or a mate. After copulation, the female lays roughly half a dozen eggs in a scraped-out nest and guards them until they hatch, then cares for them until they can fend for themselves at age five; they're sexually mature and considered to be fully grown four years later, but like most crocodilians, ammut don't stop growing until they die. The young are often eaten by other predators during this 'teenage' period, including other ammut; it's not uncommon for mothers to set upon and devour their own offspring mere months after they have left her care.
Bunyip
Bunyip bunyip (Bunyip bunyip)
Range: Swamps, lakes, and billabongs all across the continent
The waterways of Xenocene Australia are inhabited by a wide range of snakes, aquatic varanids, crocodilians, large predatory fish, and all manner of other large, dangerous organisms, but one creature reigns supreme over them all – the bunyip. A loud, aggressive apex predator, this monstrous beast looks like a crocodile crossed with a walrus, with thick leathery greenish-brown hide, a bulky, but streamlined, elongated body, a long thick laterally flattened tail, four sturdy legs held in a slight sprawl with webbed five-toed feet, slightly burlier forelimbs than hindlimbs, sharp curved claws on its front paws, and a walrus-like face with sunken-in yellow eyes, slit-shaped nostrils, sharp teeth, and two pairs of long, sharp tusk-like fangs derived from the incisors, one (slightly smaller) set on the lower jaw and one on the upper jaw and both protruding from the lips.
Despite its appearance, the bunyip actually isn’t a reptile – it’s a mammal, specifically a descendant of the common wombat. Just after the Anthropocene ended, one group of wombats took to the water, eventually developing into otter-like generalists. One particular population managed to find itself in an area where there were no other aquatic predators; the exact reason for this is not apparent in the fossil record. With no competition available, these proto-bunyips quickly grew larger and fiercer, changing their diets from mollusks and crustaceans to fish and small birds, then small animals coming down to the water’s edge to drink before finally graduating to other megafauna. The end result of this evolution was the bunyip – a superpredator fully capable of holding its own against and even occasionally preying upon the titanic snakes and crocodilians that it shares its habitat with.
Bunyips are amphibious, mainly dragging animals coming to drink down from the water’s edge into the river itself, where they dispatch their victims via tearing it apart with their fangs and claws rather than via a ‘death roll’ like a crocodile would; however, they are fully capable of moving about on land, clambering about like a cross between a crocodile and a seal with surprising speed, and are even capable of climbing up trees, and are perfectly willing to pursue prey up onto dry land. Their fang-filled jaws can open staggeringly wide in order to bring their tusks into play, similarly to the Pleistocene cat Smilodon, and can chomp down with a truly incredible amount of force – almost a thousand pounds of pressure per square inch. Furthermore, the beast’s hides are incredibly tough, underlain with an organic mesh of cartilage and tiny osteoderms that essentially act like an organic form of chain mail, which is strong enough to withstand most smaller forms of firearms.
Male and female bunyips are nearly impossible to tell apart – both grow to an average size of about 28-30 feet long, and can tip the scales at over two tons per animal. Solitary by nature, these titanic beasts keep huge territories stretching over hundreds of miles each, and rarely stray from them. Every week or so, especially during nights of the full moon, the massive mammals nocturnally broadcast their presence to other bunyips via bloodcurdling, ear-splittingly loud murderous bellows, as well as through the usage of bite and claw marks on the trunks of trees. Mating season occurs in the dead heat of summer, the only time when bunyips seek each other out; and when they do, confrontations are incredibly violent. Like Holocene hippopotami, male bunyips, or bulls, clash violently for the right to mate, bellowing as loud as they can and chomping down with their vicious fangs. Females also duel each other, but for different reasons – their sparring matches establish a sort of ‘pecking order’ with the biggest, most capable female at the top and descending downwards. After copulation, the male immediately departs for his own territory, leaving the mother bunyip to give birth alone to a single cub. Pregnancy lasts for about ten months, with the cub being kept in a watertight sealable pouch until it’s strong enough to swim alongside its mother under its own power at about a month of age. Bunyips are notoriously protective of their offspring, and will fight to the death to defend them.
Devil Dragon
Diablodraco infernalis (Devil-dragon from Hell)
Range: Central badlands and scrublands, but can be found in most other regions, albeit in much smaller numbers
Descended from the likes of goannas and perentie lizards, devil dragons are among the largest terrestrial squamates of the Xenocene; indeed, in the history of life on Earth. Standing almost ten feet tall at the shoulder and measuring a colossal 45 feet in length at the absolute max (Most are in the 35-foot range), these immense lizards are covered in thick scales that are a dull reddish-brown in color with a light shade of tan on the underside; the creature is further protected by crocodile-like scutes derived from its larger scales that run down from the back of its head to the tip of its tail. The devil dragon's legs are considerably longer than a normal varanid of its size would typically had, and are held in a half-sprawl in the same manner as a crocodile; on each foot, it sports four toes, each tipped with a massive razor-sharp talon. The body is quite big and bulky, but it's also fairly elongated; the lizard's tail, which either drags on the ground behind it or is held up in the air, is a bit longer than the rest of its body, and the scutes running down it are sharper than the ones on the back, almost like the tail of some sort of dragon. The neck is slightly more elongated than one would expect from a lizard of its size, but the head honestly looks positively prehistoric, like a slightly more robust mix between an Allosaurus and a Megalania, complete with brow horns similar in shape to those of the carnosaur. The jaws are lined with teeth the size of steak knives, and also houses an incredibly long forked tongue that can stretch nearly six feet; the creature's piercing yellow eyes are placed about where they would be on a carnosaur, but unlike those long-extinct reptiles, the devil dragon's eyes face forwards, granting it binocular vision.
Lords of the central deserts and wastelands, few are the creatures that will challenge a fully-grown devil dragon; their jaws can somewhat unhinge like a snake's to engulf man-sized animals whole, and their powerful jaws are perfectly suited for ripping off massive chunks of flesh from their prey. Indeed, these immense varanids hunt larger animals by biting off one chunk of meat, then retreating into the brush and stealthily following the wounded creature as the menagerie of bacteria within the dragon's saliva and its blood-thinning venom (The latter of which is 'chewed' into its prey through the teeth in the lower jaw, similarly to the Holocene Gila monster lizard) play merry hell with the unfortunate animal. When it's too weakened to fight back very much, the dragon closes in, ripping apart its prey with its talons and teeth. Besides this waiting approach, however, devil dragons are capable of using a variety of different strategies against prey animals, from biting down on the throat to suffocate prey, swimming after fish like a crocodile, leaping down from above onto prey animals from raised rock outcrops or even large dead trees, or even giving chase with a short burst of speed (About 25 mph) and pulling the victim down to the ground with their powerful forelimbs.
When threatened by beasts that can challenge its might, devil dragons are far from pushovers; they can rear up with the use of their immense tails as a counterbalance to tower over most creatures at nearly 20 feet tall and maul victims like a Holocene bear, or use their tails in a similar manner to the sauropods or stegosaurs of the Mesozoic - that is, as devastating weapons that can tear through flesh with the sheer force of the swing alone, to say nothing about the sharpened scutes down its length.
Male devil dragons are the ones who care for young, with mating rights determined in wrestling matches similar to those of Holocene varanids, except on a much larger scale. The female abandons her mate and her young immediately after laying almost three dozen softball-sized eggs in the earth; the male will then watch over the young until they hatch into a colony of 2-foot-long animals, upon which he, too, takes his leave. These young devils are drably colored in light browns and tans, and quickly scatter into the brush, feeding on small mammals and reptiles and gradually moving on to bigger and bigger animals as they get older and stronger. Most of these young creatures will meet their end before getting to adulthood, be it by birds, mammals, large reptiles, or even other devil dragons.
Mountain Dragon
Montanodraco papua (Mountain dragon of Papua)
Range: Mountains of Guinea
A cousin to the much larger devil dragon of the Australian badlands, the mountain dragon is a considerably smaller, but still massive, species of varanid that makes its home in the mountains of what was once New Guinea. Measuring nearly 30 feet long and standing about six feet at the shoulder, this immense varanid has the same half-sprawled legs as its outback-dwelling relative, but it is much more slender in build, with slightly longer legs and larger, more vicious talons, no scutes or osteoderms on its jet-black form, and a sleeker, more streamlined head with narrower jaws that's crowned with a pair of backwards-pointing horns with a very slight upwards curve halfway down their length. The neck is slightly longer in proportion to its body than it would be on a devil dragon, and the tail is also quite a bit longer and thinner; it has no spikes or scutes, just tough leathery hide running down the last third of its length like a whip.
Like devil dragons, mountain dragons are solitary, but where the devil dragon has size and power, the mountain dragon has stealth and speed. It lurks in the trees and on the ground of the montane rainforests of New Guinea, slinking around noiselessly thanks to specialized pads of tissue on the tips of its digits similarly to those of a cat's paws, and uses its razor-sharp talons and slicing teeth to dispatch its prey, along with a very special chemical weapon. Like Holocene monitor lizards, the mountain dragon has venom-producing organs; however, it has taken this venom to the next level, developing highly corrosive toxins that it can spit from a vent on the floor of its mouth like a Holocene spitting cobra at targets from over four meters away. The acid is prevented from dissolving the dragon's innards through the presence of the lizard's saliva, which contains greatly increased amounts of alkaline chemicals, as well as mucus similar to that found within the stomach lining the walls of the glands that produce the compound. The bile of a mountain dragon can eat through thick hide and bony armor quite easily, and it also contains a very faint pheromone that the varanid can easily pick up, thanks to its long forked tongue and Jacobson's organ that it uses to 'taste' the air. All that the lizard needs to do is get one or two good bites in, spray another blast of acid, then tail the victim from the trees or the brush until it's weak enough to easily dispatch. The tail can also be used as a deadly weapon, much like that of a sauropod, as well as for balance while climbing cliffs and tall trees, and for display in the form of cracking the tail like a whip; the thick leathery skin on the end of the appendage serves to cushion the muscle and bone underneath during the latter movement.
Mating habits and egg-rearing tactics are similar to those of the devil dragon, but baby mountain dragons spend their youth up in the trees, feeding on insects, smaller wingdrakes, birds, eggs, and other small tidbits.
Forest Dragon
Sylvestridraco papua (Forest dragon of Papua)
Range: Lowland jungles of Guinea
While the mountain dragon stalks the montaine rainforests of Guinea, another mega-monitor lurks in the steaming lowlands. The forest dragon is a bit larger than the mountain dragon at about 35 feet long, but it is considerably heavier at nearly one and a half tons. Its semi-sprawled legs are thicker and sturdier than either a devil dragon's or a mountain dragon's, and hold it lower down to the ground. It's also quite a bit more heavily built than either one, more like a crocodile than a varanid. The neck is shorter and thicker than either one of its relatives', and the tail is deeper, better for swimming. Like the mountain dragon, it has a pair of horns on its head, but these horns lie a bit flatter against the skull, and are considerably shorter and thicker than those of the mountain dragon; in addition, its head is considerably wider than its jet-black cousin, almost triangular when viewed from above and with deeper, more robust jaws. The scales of the creature are a deep forest green with pale yellow on the underside, and it sports all of the scutes and osteoderms of a devil dragon, further accentuated with a row of short bone spikes running down the animal's spine, and its clawed toes have a slight amount of webbing in between them.
Amphibious predators that are equally happy either on the forest floor or swimming through swamps and rivers, forest dragons are ambush predators, lunging out from hiding to drag their victims down to the ground with their powerful arms and jaws and maul it with their fangs and claws. Like the closely-related mountain dragon, these immense monitor lizards do have corrosive venom, but they do not spit it; instead, they use the stuff to sizzle through tough hide when they bite down on a prey animal, as well as to further hurt escaped prey items over time as it stalks them Komodo dragon-style.
As with devil dragons and mountain dragons, the father forest dragon cares for the eggs and leaves immediately upon their hatching; unlike the other two mega-monitors, though, forest dragon young take to the water, eating fish and frogs and gradually moving upwards to larger and larger prey as they get older and larger.
Mokele
Mokele mbembe (One who stops the flow of rivers)
Range: Swamplands and jungles of the Guinea Land Bridge
While the devil dragon rules in the Australian outback, the Guinea Land Bridge is home to several species of very strange and very derived varanids whose ancestry lies with the fruit-eating and omnivorous monitor lizards of the Holocene that lived on various Indonesian islands. When the Guinea Land Bridge formed, these lizards suddenly found themselves in an environment full of food and with little to no competition for said food, and quickly developed into a group of large, ponderous browsers.
Largest of them all is the mokele, a titanic 50-foot-long beast that looks very much like an oldschool reconstruction of a sauropod. The legs are no longer set in a sprawl; in order to hold up the lizard's immense weight, they are almost totally underneath the gigantic reptile's large heavyset body, and have bulked up considerably, with the digitigrade hind legs being about the same length as the front legs, while the feet have gone from five long clawed toes on each foot to three stubby ones with relatively blunt (But still decently sharp) claws. The neck and tail are long and flexible, with the former held upright like a swan's nearly 30 feet off the ground and ending in a skull very similar in shape to that of the long-extinct Plateosaurus, albeit with teeth that are suited to eating both meat and plants. It's covered in thick greenish-grey scaly skin striped with darker green, camouflaging itself in the thick greenery of its habitat, and it has webbed feet and a deepened tail to assist in swimming.
Mokele are largely solitary herbivores, browsing on whatever greenery that they come across in their endless eating, although they won't pass up eggs, insects, or the occasional small animal. Occasionally, they will travel in small herds of up to half a dozen, often a big bull male, his mate, and their various offspring, but sometimes with several adult mated pairs. Very few animals are capable of bringing them down, but several do exist; when faced with such predators, the titanic varanids defend themselves with their stomping feet, powerful kicks, snapping jaws, and long lashing tails.
Eggs are laid in clutches of almost four dozen in an immense mound of dirt and rotting plants; the mother and father will not stray more than a mile or so from this nest, constantly on the search for more food to feed themselves with, making their nests ripe for robbing by smaller predators. It's not uncommon for young mokele, already the size of cats and equipped with cryptic mottled green-and-brown coloration, as well as jaws lined with needle-sharp teeth, to hatch without their parents and head off before they return, either scattering or sticking together in threes or fours. For the beginning of their lives, mokele are carnivores, eating insects, small fish, mammals, and little reptiles, but they gradually commit to full-on herbivory as they grow older. Sexual maturity is at twelve years of age, and the animals stop growing at thirty.
Irizima
Irizima ferox (Fierce irizima)
Range: Forests of Guinea
A smaller cousin to the mokele, the irizima is a varanid that has not yet abandoned its carnivorous roots; it is a massive omnivore of Guinea, feeding on virtually anything that it comes across. Considerably smaller than a mokele at 30 feet long, the irizima is also much slimmer and more lightly built than its cousin, with legs held directly underneath its body. Unlike the mokele, the irizima has three digits on each foot; the hind feet have thicker, blunter toe claws, while the claws on the hands are massive, sharp, and hooked, each one measuring over 18 inches in length and perfect for its role in slicing through flesh and hide. The tail is thinner than the mokele's, and the neck is shorter and thicker; it has to be, in order to support the monster's head. Quite a bit larger than that of a mokele, the irizima's skull looks almost like that of a theropod dinosaur mixed with a prosauropod's, with jaws lined with blade-like teeth and eyes set underneath bony ridges in a permanent glare.
Colored a deep emerald green striped with black, irizima are omnipedal creatures, equally capable of moving on four legs as they are walking partially upright on two feet, tail dragging behind them for support and balance. Preying on equally massive creatures like mokele, mbielu, and large mammals as well as on vegetation, these immense varanids hunt both on land and in the water, wrestling their prey to the ground and tearing it apart with their immense talons and blade-like teeth; when attacking in water, they hold their prey underneath the surface to drown it. They're solitary to the extreme and extremely territorial, battling nearly to the death whenever they cross paths with another one of their kind except during mating season, and even then both parties will likely walk away with several bite marks in them. Young hatch from eggs that are laid in rows of about two dozen in thick beds of ferns, then abandoned by their mother; in the inverse of mokele, irizima hatchlings are herbivores and gradually work their way up to eating meat.
Mbielu
Mbielusaurus mbielu (Plank-backed lizard)
Range: Rivers and swamplands of the Guinea Land Bridge
A smaller, more aquatic cousin to the mokele, the mbielu is considerably smaller than its browsing cousin, ‘only’ measuring about 18 feet in length. It’s also much more adapted to aquatic life than the mokele is, with a longer, sleeker body that’s set lower to the ground, shorter legs set in a sort of half-sprawl, and eyes and nostrils set near the top of its snout. The toes are connected to one another with webs of skin, and the lungs are large and compact to allow the animal to hold its breath for longer periods of time. The neck is fairly long, but not nearly as much as the mokele’s, and is set in a horizontal stance; the head is also narrower than the mokele’s, almost like that of the stegosaurs of the Jurassic in shape. And also like a stegosaur, the mbielu sports several row of bony plates running down its spine, each one shaped somewhat like an upright plank of wood with rounded edges. Five rows of these plates grow from the mbielu’s back, one running directly down the spine from the back of the head to three-quarters of the way down the tail and two more rows going from above the shoulders to halfway down the tail, one set above the other. Essentially, the mbielu looks like the now-defunct species of ankylosaur known as Acanthopholis, but somewhat sleeker and lower to the ground, and with plates on its back instead of bony armor.
Unlike mokele, mbielu are solitary animals and purely herbivorous, slowly swimming through the rivers of Guinea with their plated backs exposed and grazing on water plants and browsing upon low-hanging fruits and leaves. It’s not uncommon for the backs of these enormous lizards to become covered in green algae, making the animals look like moving rocky islands.
Mbielu rarely come up onto dry land, but they can and will do it, usually to forage for plant matter higher up on the riverbank, but they also need to do it to lay their eggs, which are deposited in clutches of up to two dozen and buried underneath several inches of soil, then left alone - the mother will stay in the immediate area to chase off would-be egg thieves, but she does not actively incubate the nest. When the offspring hatch, they immediately make a break for the water, followed by their mother, who will be trailed by her offspring until they are big enough to fend for themselves at age five - it’s not uncommon for juvenile mbielu to move in small herds until they’ve reached sexual maturity at age eight.
Muhuru
Muhuru geodermis (Stone-backed muhuru)
Range: Forests of northern Australia
Another cousin to the mokele, the muhuru is a close relative to the mbielu, but is more adapted for terrestrial living. It's a bit stockier than the mbielu, with a bulkier body and stouter legs, and is a bit bigger at roughly twenty feet long. Its feet lack webbing, and its tail isn't deepened - in fact, the muhuru's tail is quite a bit longer in proportion to its body than the mbielu's is, and is tipped with a roughly oval-shaped bony club about the size of a football. Its neck is a bit longer than the mbielu's as well, with a slightly broader skull for eating a wider range of plant matter, but the true feature that sets it apart from its cousin is the armor plating covering its back. Thousands of osteoderms stud the muhuru's hide, with the largest taking the shape of broad sharp-tipped spikes each measuring half a meter in length, positioned roughly where the plates would be on a mbielu; there's even more osteoderms underneath the surface of its skin, as well as on the underside of its throat, similarly to the iconic dinosaur Stegosaurus.
Solitary rainforest-dwellers, muhuru are fairly generalistic herbivores, feeding on virtually anything that they can reach, including carrion, fungi, insects, and smaller animals whenever the varanids get the chance. Their armor and clubbed tails prove to be powerful defenses against most mammalian and reptilian predators, but low-slung creatures can still attack its relatively soft, unprotected underbelly. To protect against this, the muhuru usually crouches down as low to the ground as possible when faced with a predator, exposing as little unarmored flesh as it possibly can and swinging its tail around to ward off and potentially attack would-be predators.
Eggs are laid in clutches of half a dozen and then abandoned; the young stick together in herds until their armor grows in completely at age three, upon which they will disperse and essentially act like a combination of the Holocene's armadillos and pigs, rooting around through the underbrush and using their armor to avoid predation.
Wingdrakes (Family: Dracopteridae)
Draco lizards were extremely widespread reptiles during the Holocene, living across dozens of Southeast Asian islands and enjoying a very large population. As the millions of years went by, the little gliders continued to improve their namesake 'wings,' strengthening them and elongating them until they gave rise to something entirely new.
Nowadays, the wingdrakes are quite common creatures found all throughout the Guinea Land Bridge, as well as mainland Asia and the forests of northern Australia, making a name for themselves in being a group of squamates that has managed to develop true flight. The ribs that formed the gliding apparatus of their long-dead ancestors (Which have gone have lengthened and strengthened to form triangle-shaped 'wings'; the first rib piece in each 'wing' is the longest, with the other pieces behind it gradually getting smaller and smaller. Unlike the rib struts of their ancestors, however, there is a joint halfway down the length of each wingdrakes' wing struts that is analogous to an elbow joint on a human's arm, and the longest pair has a second 'wrist' joint halfway down again. Combined with ball-and-socket joints that attach the struts to the body, these pseudo-wings essentially allow wingdrakes to do what has only been done three other times in the history of vertebrates: attain true powered flight, flying in a way that's an equal mix of pterosaur-like gliding, and occasionally flapping the wings in a sort of 'rippling' motion.
Over one hundred and twenty species of wingdrakes exist, most of them being insect-eaters; two stranger species are outlined below.
Imperial wingdrake: One of the largest species of wingdrake, the imperial wingdrake (Atroxopteryx ferox) is a seven-foot-long arboreal predator with a nine-foot wingspan, semi-sprawled legs with grasping hands and curved razor-sharp claws, a diamond-shaped vein on skin on the tip of its tail, and a mouthful of razor-sharp fangs, colored a deep emerald green on top and pale yellow below with blood-red wing membranes. Lurking high up in the Guinea canopy, imperial wingdrakes are hypercarnivores, flying after birds, bats, lizards, and other wingdrakes with all the speed and agility of a Holocene forest eagle. Smaller prey is simply eaten on the wing, but bigger animals are harried with claw slashes and great bloody chunks bitten out of them until they finally keel over, or are knocked from their arboreal perches to fall to their deaths upon the ground far beneath them. Males are notably bigger than females are, and they sport a pair of fleshy brow horns over their eyes and brilliant yellow mouths; to compete for mates, two males will perch upon a branch to face one another, puff themselves up, gape as wide as they can, and hiss loudly, making mock charges with said 'horns'.
Great sea wingdrake: Largest of all wingdrakes, the great sea wingdrake (Hydropteryx inexpectatus) is an immense creature, measuring almost 13 feet long and with a wingspan of more than 18 feet across, that, ironically, actually can't fly very well at all; instead, it is fully aquatic, living very much like a Holocene manta ray. The hind legs are totally absent, and the tail has been flattened for use in steering; the front legs have webbed hands and are also used to steer, while the head is extremely wide, almost like that of a toad, with nostrils placed in between the eyes and almost microscopic teeth lining its jaws. Living in coastal waters all along the eastern shores of the Guinea Land Bridge, the great sea wingdrake is a filter feeder, opening its mouth wide to inhale large amounts of krill and small microorganisms and forcing out the water with its wide, flattened tongue before swallowing and opening its mouth once more, sucking in another mouthful of food. Colored a dark grey-blue on top and a pale white on the bottom, these immense lizards aren't hunted by many predators, but they are sometimes targeted by civwhales, crocodiles, and sharks. To escape, the the great sea wingdrake speeds towards the surface and leaps out of the water like an unholy reptilian cross between a manta ray and a flying fish, gliding for immense distances before diving back into the surf. Eggs are laid within the body in ones and twos, with the offspring following closely behind their mother; females are usually larger than males, the latter of which is also distinguishable from females by their darker upper bodies, an almost sapphire blue, and the silvery flecks running down their sides, from just behind the lower jaw to the tip of the tail.
jormungandrlaelapsmegalosaurusmidgardserpentrauisuchianworldserpentmokelembembequinkanaxenocenecryptidhunterskaprosuchuslivingdinosaursmbielumbielumbieluslurpasaurmuhuruinaccuratedinosaurscrystalpalacemegalosaurusaustraliabunyipcrocodilecryptozoologygiantsnakejormungandmegalanianewguineanorsemythologypristichampsuscryptidsvaranidwonambiburrunjortrilophosuchusirizimaspeculativeevolutionspeculativebiologydracolizardkasairexretrosaurscrystalpalacedinosaursartrellia
It took me a hell of a long time to finish this, but I finally put together my entry for 
's monthly contest: convergent evolution! I felt like we needed some more stuff for Australia/the Guinea Land Bridge, so I went ahead and kinda sorta accidentally made half a dozen or so new clades.
Writer's Notes:
The burrunjor and kasai are based both on Ornithosuchus of the Triassic and on older reconstructions of dinosaurs; the burrunjor is based off of 'Laelaps' and the kasai is based on older reconstructions of Tyrannosaurus rex. Their names come from two cryptids rumored to be living dinosaurs.
And speaking of cryptids, the mbielu, muhuru, mokele, and irizima are all named after various cryptids from Africa, all also proclaimed to be living dinosaurs. They're also based on inaccurate dinosaur portrayals, too: the mbielu on the Crystal Palace Hylaeosaurus, the muhuru on Burian's Pinacosaurus, the mokele on oldschool sauropods, and the irizima on the belief that prosauropods were carnivores, as well as
's piece Cryptid Hunters: One and Two.
The world serpent I just based off of the quintessential 'giant snake,' as well as the Pleistocene Australian snake known as Wonambi; the name comes from the Norse monster of the same name.
The horseodile is basically an expy of Pristichampsus taken to the extreme; likewise, the ammut is an exaggeration of Kaprosuchus, the pantheridile is an exaggerated Quinkana, and the drop-croc is modelled off of Trilophosuchus. The ravager could be explained as a rauisuchian analogue, but it's more of a homage to the insanely innacurate Megalosaurus of the Crystal Palace, one of the first reconstructions of dinosaurs ever to be made.
The bunyip is mostly based off of the Weird N Wild Creatures version of the monster, as that's basically what I always pictured the 'real' one to be like.
The devil dragon is based off of a nickname given to alleged sightings of Megalania in the Australian outback, as well as on 'slurpasaurs' - lizards with dinosaur features taped onto them for old, cheap, black-and-white monster movies when the budget wasn't big enough for any other practical effects. The mountain and forest dragons, on the other hand, were based on :rodrigo-vega:'s Green and Black Dragons, The Alchemists Grimoire; the forest dragon I partially based off of a crocodile as well, while the mountain dragon took some inspiration from the artrellia, a cryptid from New Guinea that was later found to be a giant monitor lizard.
The wingdrakes I came up with on my own; basically, I took the already-present gliding membrane in draco lizards, then took it to the logical extreme. Their wing structure is partially based on that of metallic dragons from the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons. The great sea wingdrake, our new manta ray analogue, came out of the blue.
's monthly contest: convergent evolution! I felt like we needed some more stuff for Australia/the Guinea Land Bridge, so I went ahead and kinda sorta accidentally made half a dozen or so new clades.Writer's Notes:
The burrunjor and kasai are based both on Ornithosuchus of the Triassic and on older reconstructions of dinosaurs; the burrunjor is based off of 'Laelaps' and the kasai is based on older reconstructions of Tyrannosaurus rex. Their names come from two cryptids rumored to be living dinosaurs.
And speaking of cryptids, the mbielu, muhuru, mokele, and irizima are all named after various cryptids from Africa, all also proclaimed to be living dinosaurs. They're also based on inaccurate dinosaur portrayals, too: the mbielu on the Crystal Palace Hylaeosaurus, the muhuru on Burian's Pinacosaurus, the mokele on oldschool sauropods, and the irizima on the belief that prosauropods were carnivores, as well as
's piece Cryptid Hunters: One and Two.The world serpent I just based off of the quintessential 'giant snake,' as well as the Pleistocene Australian snake known as Wonambi; the name comes from the Norse monster of the same name.
The horseodile is basically an expy of Pristichampsus taken to the extreme; likewise, the ammut is an exaggeration of Kaprosuchus, the pantheridile is an exaggerated Quinkana, and the drop-croc is modelled off of Trilophosuchus. The ravager could be explained as a rauisuchian analogue, but it's more of a homage to the insanely innacurate Megalosaurus of the Crystal Palace, one of the first reconstructions of dinosaurs ever to be made.
The bunyip is mostly based off of the Weird N Wild Creatures version of the monster, as that's basically what I always pictured the 'real' one to be like.
The devil dragon is based off of a nickname given to alleged sightings of Megalania in the Australian outback, as well as on 'slurpasaurs' - lizards with dinosaur features taped onto them for old, cheap, black-and-white monster movies when the budget wasn't big enough for any other practical effects. The mountain and forest dragons, on the other hand, were based on :rodrigo-vega:'s Green and Black Dragons, The Alchemists Grimoire; the forest dragon I partially based off of a crocodile as well, while the mountain dragon took some inspiration from the artrellia, a cryptid from New Guinea that was later found to be a giant monitor lizard.
The wingdrakes I came up with on my own; basically, I took the already-present gliding membrane in draco lizards, then took it to the logical extreme. Their wing structure is partially based on that of metallic dragons from the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons. The great sea wingdrake, our new manta ray analogue, came out of the blue.
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So cool