Primordia 2: Return to the Lost World

AUTHORS NOTES & THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR

Many readers ask me about the background of my novels — is the science real or fiction? Where do I get the situations, equipment, characters or their expertise from, and just how much of any element has a basis in fact?

In the case of the hidden plateau in the Amazon jungle, the novel, The Lost World, was my blueprint. However, all of the creatures I talk about in my story actually existed — see my notes below on some of the new creatures featured in this book.

As for the sightings of these monsters from our primordial past existing today, well, there are myths and legends of just that occurring all over the world. But none has so much credence as the ones emanating from our deep oceans or deep jungles — like the Amazon.

In his lagoon, Ben was attacked by an oversized octopus. It was exciting, but was that likely? Well, the problem with soft-bodied creatures from our past was that they don’t fossilize very well, but they could well have existed.

There are massive cephalopods still living today. The giant Pacific octopus is a powerful creature and the largest specimen found (to date) was 30 feet across and weighed over 600 pounds. There is also the colossal squid living in the sunless depths that can attain a length of 46 feet and weigh in at nearly 1,700 pounds. Big, but were there even bigger cephalopods in our prehistoric past? Maybe. Probably.

In a presentation made at a meeting of the Geological Society of America, evidence was presented for a monstrous-sized creature that may have even been the basis for the legendary Kraken. It was a theory derived from some strange ‘scoring’ scars found on the bones of nine 45-foot ichthyosaurs from the Triassic Period.

How these huge ichthyosaurs died had always been a mystery. In the 1950s, it was hypothesized that the ichthyosaurs had fallen victim to a toxic plankton bloom as water temperatures changed. But recent work on the rocks surrounding the fossils seem to suggest that many of the creatures died in deep water… very deep water. Strange, because these prehistoric fish inhabited shallower water.

However, when the fossil evidence was examined, and the vertebrae of some ichthyosaurs were organized, there was revealed some tell-tale patterning — scars on the bones that resembled gigantic sucker marks like those from a giant cephalopod’s tentacle.

A new theory was presented that suggested the ichthyosaurs had been snared by a massive cephalopod and then dragged back to its underwater lair.

These creatures would have been smart and aggressive, and would have lured their prey with many self-learned baiting tricks — not unlike my octopus that tried to lure Ben into deeper water with gifts of seashells!

In another scene from my story, I had Juan attacked by giant worms burrowing up from the soil to feast on his flesh. Sand worms (blood worms) on our shoreline do this to fish and animal carcasses today — I’ve seen them!

The present-day bloodworms are long, but usually no thicker than pasta ribbons. However, they weren’t always so small. Jaw fossils recently found in the Devonian sedimentary layers in Canada show that giant carnivorous worms did once exist on Earth.

Websteroprion armstrongi is a new species of giant bristle worm described based on partial jaw fossils. Despite being soft-bodied, and therefore rarely fossilizing well, bristle worms have a decent record due to their numbers. They have been around since the earliest of evolutionary ages (Paleozoic, 541–251 million years ago).

Only the hard pincer-like jaws of the bristle worm remained to be fossilized, but the jaws themselves measured just under half an inch (12–15mm), and though this doesn’t sound all that awe-inspiring, in the subterranean world of worms, these guys were giants, considering that most fossil polychaete jaws only come to about 0.1–0.2mm.

By using this ancient jaw size and doing an extrapolation, specialists estimate that Websteroprion armstrongi could have been seven feet in length and nearly as thick as a soda can. In addition, the jaw fragments indicate that the animal was an adult but not fully grown, so the worms could have attained even greater sizes.

Gigantism was a trait common in prehistoric reptiles, dinosaurs, and, later, the mammals. It also manifested in mollusks, crustaceans, and cephalopods. Now we also know that even the creatures burrowing beneath the ancient soil were giants and presented danger to the unwary.

The largest scorpion living today is the Heterometrus swammerdami, coming in nose to tail at an impressive nine inches. But during the Carboniferous Period — some call the age of insects—there was a monster that was an armor-plated hunter that seemed straight out of science-fiction.

The Pulmonoscorpius was over three feet in length, armed with powerful and sharp claws, and also had a venomous sting. We can’t determine from fossil records just how powerfully toxic the venom was, but considering the scorpion’s size, the amount it could inject would be certainly overwhelming. Also, in all scorpions living today (1,750 species), their venom is a mixture of compounds that are neurotoxins, enzyme inhibitors, or corrosive chemicals designed to stun and then speed up the liquefaction of flesh.

The giant Pulmonoscorpius scorpion was a predator and roamed the swampy forests of the Carboniferous. Its prey would have been anything it could catch, but more than likely, the giant scorpion lived on giant bugs like cockroaches the size of dogs, Meganeura dragonflies as big as a model airplane, and even the huge Arthropleura centipede that was nine feet in length.

The skies in a prehistoric world didn’t stay empty for long. Flying creatures evolved called pterosaurs that were prehistoric archosaurian reptiles closely related to dinosaurs, but not dinosaurs. They flit from tree to tree, skimmed lakes, or soared majestically on updrafts.

Many of the pterosaur species were small, but the largest of their kind had wingspans of more than 43 feet and weighed in at around 600 pounds. To give an idea of size comparison, the modern bird with the largest wingspan today is the wandering albatross, which has a tip-to-tip wingspan spread of 11 feet (and in fact, the average-sized single-propeller plane wingspan averages about 36 feet).

It has often been debated about why they grew so large. Factors such as the warmer climate of the Mesozoic Era, or maybe higher levels of oxygen in the atmosphere, have been suggested. But the fact is, they had millions of years to command an environmental niche, and with no competitors, they simply became dominant, and only needed to compete with each other, so only flying distance, size, and strength mattered.

The pterosaurs filled many types of environments, ranging from ocean, to swamp, and to forest. And they were global. The smallest known pterosaur was Nemicolopterus with a wingspan of only 10 inches. Below is a top-three list of the largest pterosaurs known.

1. Arambourgiania philadelphiae — 23 to 43 feet (7–13 m)

2. Hatzegopteryx thambema — 33 to 36 feet (10–11 m)

3. Quetzalcoatlus northropi — 33 to 36 feet (10–11 m)

The Giganotosaurus was a genus of massive shark-toothed dinosaurs that lived on the South American continent during the Late Cretaceous Period (100–97 million years ago).

The powerful theropod was up to 45 feet long, 12 feet in height, and weighed in at around 13 tons. It walked on two large and powerful hind legs, had a small brain, and enormously powerful jaws, with 10-inch, backward-curving serrated teeth in a six-foot-long skull. Like most of the giant carnivore theropods, its forelimbs were much smaller, ending in three-fingered, clawed hands.

Giganotosaurus was also thought to have been fast and agile, thanks to its thin, pointed tail, which may have provided balance and the ability to make quick turns while running. Another advantage the huge dinosaur possessed was that it was thought to have been homoeothermic (warm-blooded), with a metabolism between that of a mammal and a reptile, which would have enabled rapid growth.

And though the huge beast was powerful, it was also fast with a maximum running speed of 31 miles per hour. It would have been capable of closing its jaws quickly, capturing, and bringing down prey by delivering cutting or crushing bites.

The Giganotosaurus was an undisputed alpha-apex predator of its habitat, and would more than likely have fed on the plant-eating sauropods, as well as other carnivorous theropod dinosaurs.

In PRIMORDIA II, Ben’s time at the coast is ruined by the appearance of a giant sea-going crocodile. Though the sea-going variety never attained the size of some of the freshwater estuary types, they were still monstrously huge, powerful, and would have made a formidable predator.

The world’s biggest ocean-dwelling crocodile was twice the size of any crocodile living today. It was named Machimosaurus rex and would have weighed in at least 6,600 pounds and been up to 34 feet in length.

Crocodiles aren’t much fun for evolutionists as they remained nearly unchanged for hundreds of millions of years. For the Machimosaurus rex, it would have looked like a modern-day crocodile except for a slightly narrower snout, which was better designed for speed when going after prey in the open ocean.

The skull of this crocodile alone would have been nearly seven feet in length, and the ocean lagoons where it lived would have been filled with sharks, huge fish, and turtles — all favorite prey of the prehistoric sea hunter.

Many of the giant crocodiles died out during the mass extinction event that is believed to have happened between the Jurassic and Cretaceous Period about 150 million years ago. However, the Machimosaurus lived for tens of millions of years beyond this cataclysmic event, suggesting the mass extinction was not as widespread as some paleontologists first thought.

The Machimosaurus rex was an enormous beast, but he was still dwarfed by even bigger crocodiles that lived on land. Species, such as the world’s largest freshwater crocodile, the Sarcosuchus imperator, lived around 110 million years ago, grew to 42 feet, and would have tipped the scales at an astonishing 17,500 pounds (8,000kg), nearly triple the weight of the Machimosaurus.

I admit, I’m a little like Andy Martin in my story, where I would love to see these mighty creatures, if only for a moment. But the cryptozoologist’s spirit in me is encouraged whenever I read about some fantastic creature being discovered to have lived through its supposed extinction event. It is yet more evidence that points to some of the massive creatures of our prehistory confounding those who tell us they no longer exist.

One day, in a jungle, on a mountaintop, frozen land, or in the depths of a deep, dark ocean, we’ll meet one. Until that day, I’ll just have to go there and see them in my stories.