Chapter 102: A unique living being

That night wasn't very pleasant: around two o'clock of morning a deafening noise had woken the entire ship. The dinosaur had awakened and started fidgeting like a madman in its cage. Many attempts to calm it down had been unsuccessful and eventually Roland had drugged it again. That event clearly didn't help morale on board. Not only did Nick, Sarah, Ian and Eddie become even more hostile to the idea of taking the animal away, but Roland himself became worried: if he couldn't find a way to calm the dinosaur he couldn't feed it, which meant risking its death. For this he had accelerated operations to the maximum. The next day the camp was completely dismantled and the ship began its return voyage. The situation didn't improve in the following days: every time the dinosaur woke up it would shake like a madman and desperately try to break the cage. Roland had been forced to sedate it continuously. Fortunately, after three days, probably due to the constant narcotics and the absence of food, the animal had begun to calm down. It was still hostile and fidgeted if anyone got too close to the cage or dared to touch it, but at least now it was possible to feed it. To satiate the appetite of such a giant Roland knew that the provisions on board would not be enough, so he had contacted a supplier of the Odaria colony. When the ship arrived near the colony it would stop in a port and take a few tons of meat there. Roland wasn't afraid to spend money. He had already contacted the most influential billionaires and started an auction. Obviously, public opinion was still in the dark: the buyers didn't want to miss the opportunity to organize a big event to show the animal to the public, which would have earned them millions. Sarah, for her part, had continued to study the animal. In particular, she had asked Eddie to prepare an X-ray scanner to see the inside of the dinosaur's body. When Eddie had completed the scan, he looked like he was under the influence of ecstasy. "This is incredible! I have never seen such a perfect body structure" he said. "Look at the slab. The skeleton is hollow, much more than that of other dinosaurs and birds, but it is structured to be light and strong at the same time. It has a massive heart that pumps blood at an extraordinary rate delivering large amounts of oxygen-rich blood to the muscles. The lungs are connected to enormous air sacks which guarantee further lightness" Sarah sighed. "But it's still too heavy" Eddie's enthusiasm died away. "Yes... yes, that's right. According to footprints' estimates it shouldn't weigh more than 14 tons, maybe 15 at maximum, but with such a body mass it should exceed 60. Even with all these adjustments to lighten the body it should reach 40 tons" "Questions after questions" Sarah grumbled, looking back at the scanner. "What are these marks on the legs?" "Oh, those? They are muscles. They are very similar to those of tyrannosaurs, but they are even stronger thanks to the more blood they get thanks to the bigger heart. At a guess, this creature could stand against a running t-rex, or maybe even outrun it" "Everything portends an extremely active predator, and therefore necessarily also light. But how can it become so light?" "I... I have no idea" Eddie admitted. Sarah looked to the scanner very carefully. Until suddenly she noticed something that was barely noticeable. "What is this strange sack?" she asked pointed to an organ in the back of the animal. "Uh? I think it's just another aerial sack..." "No, it's not. It's too far from the lungs. Could you improve the image?" "I don't know. I can try" "Good, do it" Sarah replied, but suddenly she noticed something else. "Wait... can you zoom to the head?" "Of course" Eddie answered. In an istant a complete radiography of the dinosaur's head, with all the muscles and bones, was beyond their eyes. Sarah trembled while she saw it. "That has no sense..." "What has no sense, honey?" Ian Malcolm's voice suddenly asked. He was just arrive in the room, but his girlfriend didn't seem care about it. "The muscles!" Sarah screamed. "Look. Those that control the opening of the jaws are extremely developed and the bones are connected with elastic tendons that offer greater bite force, like those of the t-rex... but then there are these ones" She pointed to the muscles above the maxilla and under the mandible. "They are super powerful! I have never seen chewing muscles so perfect. They are made to speed up the consumption of food as much as possible! Why would an animal need such muscles? They would be useless since it cannot eat large quantities of food without ripping its own stomach" "Maybe... it has to eat quickly?" Ian tried to answer. "Why? Such a creature has no natural enemies and it doesn't have to worry about having to defend its food. What's the point of consuming a prey so quickly? I want to have a better look" Sarah replied, than she took a jack and approached the dinosaur. Ian didn't like that scene. "I'm afraid to ask you, but what do you have in mind?" "Don't you see? I want to inspect its mouth" "Do you want to enter in the mouth of a giant predator dinosaur?" "We sedate it for the experiments. It's sleeping" Ian was ready to reply that it wasn't a good idea, but Sarah had already insert the jack in the mouth of the dinosaur and she had started to open it. When the mouth was fully opened, she turned on a flashlight and went inside. The animal's mouth was so large that she could easily lie down on its tongue. She didn't resist to touch the enormous teeth. They were bigger than her fist and razor sharp. "Well, it's surely a formidable predator. An incredible and dangerous meat-eater..." she said, but then she stop. "Wait... what?" Nearly to the end of the mouth there were other teeth, but they weren't the teeth of a predator: they were molars! "What good can morals do to a predator?" "Isn't that obvious?" Ian asked. "Assuming this animal needs to eat fast, the flattened shape of the morals is perfect for shattering the hardest bones. And since they are placed so far back, they aren't likely to be an impediment to killing the prey, as the sharp front teeth can do that" Sarah nooded. "But the question remains. Why it had to eat so fast?". If that dinosaur was so adapted to eat quickly, there must be a reason, and it certainly wasn't the danger of other predators. Then she noticed another thing. "In the end of the mouth there is something... a false palate" she said. The false palate was a typical body structure of aquatic animals, such as crocodiles; it served to prevent water from entering the gorge. "It must be a relic of the past. We were right, this animal probably evolved from acquatic dinosaurs". Curious, she touched it. But that was a mistake. Sobek, of course, was actually still awake, and the instant he felt the base of his throat touched he couldn't suppress a retch. Ian grabbed Sarah just in time to drag her away before a mass of stomach fluids was spat out of the throat. "Fuck!" Sarah screamed, but then she froze. The instant they hit the floor, the gastric fluids began to corrode it at an astonishing rate. Within seconds, the floor was so worn that the frame underneath could be seen. Sarah was even more confused. No creature in the world had such corrosive gastric juice! No, it wasn't gastric juice: it was literally acid! It was probably a further adaptation: now it was explained how the animal could eat so quickly. Such a corrosive liquid would have digested anything at breakneck speed. Yet, the question continued to remain: why? It made no sense, such fast digestion meant an extremely accelerated metabolism, which would have forced the animal to search enormous amounts of food to satiate itself. In terms of survival it was counterproductive, if not harmful. Then an idea crossed her mind as an arrow. "Wait... Eddie, can you show me the gut?" "Uh? Of course" the man replied, don't understanding what she wanted. With the scanner he isolated the gut. "There it is and... what!? What the hell is this stuff?" The dinosaur's gut was something never seen before: several small tubes connected to it and they all went towards... "The mysterious sack!" Sarah exclaimed. "That explains everything! We have solved two mysteries at once! The key to this animal's lightness... is eating!" Seeing the astonished faces of the other two, the woman tried to explain herself better. "Come on! Hydrogen and methane! Two gases much lighter than the air that can be produced by the bacteria in the gut. This is what that sack is for: to store the hydrogen and the methane that the bacteria produce, which allows the dinosaur to lighten just as much which is enough to weigh only 14 tons! But to produce such a quantity of hydrogen and methane it takes an enormous amount of bacteria that must be constantly fed, so the animal has adapted to eat as much as possible. In practice, the more it eats, the more gases its bacteria's gut produce" "This is unbelievable!" Eddie exclaimed. "No creature on the planet uses gas in this way! Using hydrogen and methane to make itself lighter than air... this is really beyond anyone's expectations. This monster is a unique living being" "And that also explains the huge heart and such an efficient circulatory system" Sarah continued. "In addition to gases, bacteria also produce an infinity of other substances that guarantee an immense amount of energy. The cells are practically supercharged like batteries! Such a metabolism must guarantee this creature extraordinary strength, agility and endurance... the perfect keys to obtain an enormous amount of preys, which in turn keep this cycle active. I wonder what other ways it could use so much energy... it wouldn't surprise me if it didn't need to sleep for weeks" Ian sighed. "I don't understand you. The more you study that animal, the more you understand how dangerous it is, but instead be afraid you are happy" Sarah was about to reply, but Eddie suddenly murmured: "Ehm... guys? You should see this" Ian and Sarah looked at the scanner, that now showed the end of the gut. Behind it there were two other big organs. "These are the testicles" Eddie explained. "They are very similar to the ones of other acquatic dinosaurs. However... they are immature" Sarah and Ian needed a moment to understand. "Wait... is it a juvenile?" she asked. Eddie shook his head. "It is a baby" Ian seemed to have bit his tongue. "A baby!?" he exclaimed while he looked the giant beast behind him. "There is no doubts" Eddie answered. "Testicles of this size are typical of very young dinosaurs. It must be just one year and some months old. In any case, not more than two years old" Sarah gulped. At that age, predatory dinosaurs weren't usually more than one or two meters long! This one was almost 30 meters long! The common thought was just one for everyone there: "If this is a baby... how big could be the adult ones?"