copyright 2001-2002 by Linda "Sweetwind" Tam
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The story "Plague of Allos" in the first volume of the Blood of Ten Chiefs anthologies introduces a new animal to Abode's prehistoric fauna: the allo. The creatures are also referred to as "saurians" or, derogatorily, "lizards." From the description given in the story, they are clearly recognizable as the dinosaur Allosaurus fragilis of the late Jurassic period here on Earth, as the name "allo" implies. Allosaurs are a variation of the same body plan as the more famous and larger Tyrannosaurus rex. However, here on Earth, Allosaurus became extinct around the end of the Jurassic. T. rex evolved later, in the late Cretaceous period (that's right, "Jurassic Park" was misnamed! <g>) and died out in the mass extinction that killed all the dinosaurs, and many other kinds of plants and animals as well, sixty-five million years ago. After the departure of the dinosaurs, mammals evolved to fill many of the roles that had been previously held solely by dinosaurs - giant tree-browsers, herds of grazers, carnivores large and small, solitary and pack-dwelling.
The allosaurs of Earth were typically about 10 meters (30 feet) long and weighed two tons, with the largest individuals measuring 13 meters (40 feet) long and 5 tons. Truly a formidable predator, especially to an elf standing only 1.3 meters (4 feet) tall and weighing just 27 kilograms (60 pounds)! Carnivorous, their skull bones were composed of separate modules, which made their heads somewhat flexible - scientists speculate that, as with snakes, this made it easier for them to swallow not only large pieces of meat, but also large, struggling, live prey. Their jaws contained many long, sharp teeth with serrations on the front and back, like so many two-edged steak knives. They walked and ran on two strong legs, using their long tails as a counterbalance, and their forelimbs each had three large claws with which they were able to grasp and hold their victims.
Allosaur eggs were buried in mounds of earth like crocodile eggs are. The mother would guard the nest and look after the allosaur chicks for a while after they were born, perhaps several weeks to several months. This much is reasonably known from the clutches of fossilized eggs that have been found. Other theories about Allosaurus are speculative. Based on the fossil evidence we currently have, it is impossible to be specific about how fast an allosaur could run, its feeding habits, whether it hunted in packs or singly, and so on. Even whether it and other dinosaurs were cold-blooded or warm-blooded is still debated. In "Plague of Allos," the allos are depicted as being sluggish in the cold of early morning - a sign of a cold-blooded creature. Prior to the last quarter of the twentieth century, dinosaurs were commonly thought to be cold-blooded, like reptiles. However, both before the time "Plague" was written and since, more scientists have been advocating the idea that dinosaurs were warm-blooded. After all, they're clearly related to birds as well as reptiles, and birds are warm-blooded. There is no definitive evidence as yet in the fossils we have to support either warm-bloodedness or cold-bloodedness in dinosaurs.
There is another carnivorous dinosaur species in the Elfquest canon which I will mention briefly here, but which deserves its own essay another time. The swordfeet are introduced in the second volume of Blood of Ten Chiefs, in the story "Summer Tag," which was retold in comic form in Blood of Ten Chiefs number 5, under the title "Talon."
Finally, scenes of flora and fauna shown on Abode between the time of the High Ones' accidental arrival and the Original Quest evoke the Earth of the Pleistocene epoch, including many large mammals such as giant sloths, mammoths, and saber-toothed cats. There were no dinosaurs on Earth during this time. To pose the question implied by this essay's title: Is it possible for species of dinosaurs to mix with a complex mammalian menagerie?
My answer to this is a resounding yes! Even if we assume that Abode had its own age of dinosaurs, who met with a comeuppance like those of Earth did at the end of the Cretaceous, it is very easy to imagine a species or two slipping through. As an example on Earth, the tree Ginkgo biloba is currently the only species in the order Ginkgoales. There were once many different members of this order, during the time of the dinosaurs. They all died out along with the dinosaurs - except Ginkgo biloba, which survives to this day. We could suppose that forebears of allos and swordfeet escaped Abode's great extinction event, and lived on to plague the elves in later times. Or, alternately, we might even suppose that there was no great age of dinosaurs in Abode's fossil record, and that saurians evolved alongside mammals, overshadowed but present among a largely mammalian multitude.
But we shouldn't forget that the Elfquest universe comes complete with a working time machine. There is always the possibility that some members of an extinct species were "transplanted" through time, intentionally or otherwise!
© 2002
linda_tam@alumni.hmc.edu
Last modified on April 20, 2002
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