North America, 67 million years ago
The sunrise’s golden glow drifted across the rolling sea of treetops. It descended through the canopy’s tangle of leaves, branches, and vines in scattered beams until it reached the forest understory. Within this maze of trees and tropical underbrush slept a giant.
A hide of black and dark green scales camouflaged his nine-ton bulk amidst the shadowed foliage until he cracked his flaming yellow eyes open. With the help of short yet brawny double-clawed arms, he propped himself off the forest floor onto even stronger hind legs, with his thick long tail hovering behind. He shook his head, stretching his neck muscles, and took in a great yawn with jaws lined with ivory spikes. Inside his cavernous stomach grumbled hollow.
He was Tyrannosaurus rex, tyrant lord of the jungle, and he had awoken hungry.
He craned his head up to scan his surroundings. Six monsoons had passed since he had carved his territory out after leaving his mother’s brood, and he had since mapped out its every tree, bush, and stone in his memory. He recognized that the ancient kapok tree he had rested underneath last night stood a few hours’ walking north of a river fed by waterfall, where game would gather to cool off once the heat reached its noontime peak. Between then and daybreak, they would browse the jungle glades for their morning meals.
And the tyrannosaur would make his own breakfast out of them.
He engaged all his senses as he headed southward through the jungle. He placed every step with silent care on the spongy earth, nudging away with his toes any logs and fallen branches that might snap underfoot. Whenever he paused for another survey of his habitat, he never glanced past a branch or leaf without examining it a second time. He noted every bird and butterfly that fluttered over him with a vibrant splash of color on its wings; every snake, lizard, and spider that crept on the vines and tree trunks; every frog that croaked and licked up every insect; and every furry mammal that clambered and scurried on the boughs. At the same time, he shifted his sense of hearing through the medley of jungle songs, searching for the deeper cries of potential game.
Deep within the musty odor of rotting life that floated throughout the forest, the tyrannosaur caught a pungent whiff of scat.
He traced the scent to a greenish ball of dung slathered with white uric acid on the ground. Mixed in it were shreds of leaves, splinters of woody vegetation, and shards of fruit husks. Past the dung went a trail of trampled vegetation and the impressions of broad blunt-toed feet in the dirt. They were the kind of tracks left behind by the mighty three-horned Torosaurus latus, among the tyrannosaur’s favorite prey.
The prints still had crisp edges without wear, and the dung still felt warm and soft against his snout. They were fresh, so the torosaurs could not be far ahead. Between the regular jungle noises there echoed deep, distant bellows.
The tyrannosaur lowered his posture closer to the jungle floor and stalked alongside the trail. As he advanced the undergrowth thickened, and he took great care to brush through it as little as possible. He reached a curtain of vines that draped from the trees to mark the edge of a sunlit glade. Here he stopped to crouch in the bushes with flawless stillness and watch.
In the meadow there ambled the torosaurs. Most were females that browsed on the carpet of herbage while their young chased and playfully butted one another in the middle, but there was one bull that stood watch from the glade’s opposite side. With a blazing red frill stretching over his neck like a shield and great spear-like horns, he appeared a formidable specimen whose mass would have rivaled if not exceeded the tyrannosaur’s own. An adversary like him would be too difficult even for the tyrant lord to bring down. No, he needed a more manageable target, something he could dispatch with one bite.
Closer to his hiding place, one of the plump young cows had lumbered away from her sisters to nibble at some vines. That one would do nicely.
Bursting from cover, the tyrannosaur stormed towards the young torosaur with jaws wide agape. She stood paralyzed with shock, without even a yelp, in his path. This would be an effortless kill beyond belief. Too effortless.
He had almost closed the distance to his target when her sisters galloped over to cut him off. They merged their heads together to form a wall of waving horns and neck frills before their attacker. The ground quaked as the female torosaurs stamped their feet with hollering bellows.
The tyrannosaur would not let their defiant threats drive him off. He answered by blasting a roar of scalding air into the torosaurs’ faces. The force of his voice sent one of the ceratopsians buckling and stepping back, opening a gap in the wall of horns. Emboldened by her show of broken resolve, the tyrannosaur chased her through this breach until he clamped down on her frill. Before he could bite it off, a sharp pain ran up his flank and forced him to let go.
It was the bull torosaur. The cows of the herd had taken to flight with their calves into the jungle, but he stayed put. He brandished his crimson-frilled head and snorted out a gust of breath from flared nostrils, clawing the ground with his foreleg. This was the moment the tyrannosaur had dreaded, the one he had sought to avoid. This time, he had no choice.
The two titans exchanged taunting roars and hammered the earth underfoot with savage fury. Birds flocked out of the treetops squawking in terror. Yet neither of the beasts backed down in the slightest. After each had hollered one last battle cry, they charged into each other.
Blood and scraps of flesh were flung about the glade as the torosaur gashed and stabbed the tyrannosaur with his horns, and the carnivore retaliated with slashes of his claws. Bones cracked when the combatants shoved and rammed into one other with their bulk. The storm of their violence tore plants out of the earth and smeared it with mud and gore.
The tyrannosaur’s wounds bled away his strength with every trickle, but not his courage. This was a battle not only for food but for his very survival. Even if the bull torosaur was an enemy every bit his equal in might, he would never let himself admit defeat. He was Tyrannosaurus rex, tyrant lord of the jungle, and he would sooner die than surrender.
He chomped into the ceratopsian’s neck. His teeth thrust deep through hide, flesh, and windpipe as the force of his jaws crunched the bones underneath into grit. The bull torosaur wriggled with furious desperation to tear himself free, but the tyrannosaur simply tightened his choking bite until his prey could not even wail in distress. With only a wheeze of death, the torosaur fell limp and crashed onto the undergrowth with an earth-shaking bounce
The tyrannosaur had made his kill. The struggle had scarred his hide and slicked it with streams of blood, but he had vanquished one of the most dangerous plant-eaters in his jungle domain. Throwing his head up to face the ascendant sun, he let out his loudest, most thunderous roar in announcement of his triumph. He was Tyrannosaurus rex, tyrant lord of the jungle, and he was ready to feast.