Chapter 96: The huge beast

The huge creature was lying on its stomach, its head slightly raised thanks to a rock. The sail soared towards the canopies of the trees and the legs were slightly tucked under the body. Sarah couldn't believe what she was looking at. She took off her sunglasses with shaking hands, making sure she wasn't hallucinating. That dinosaur was too big! A tyrannosaurus measured up to 13 meters. A megalodon could reach 16 meters, or even 18. The basilosaurus even reached 20. But this animal surpassed them all by far! At first glance, it was about the size of a blue whale! "This is beyond any known conception" Eddie whispered beside her. The man had recovered faster. Behind them, Nick were starting to take pictures. Ian, for his part, didn't seem calm at all. "We have to get out of here" he whispered. "If it wakes up we're screwed!" But no one was listening to him. Even the Neanderthals had remained motionless and seemed unable to move. The sight before them was something so impactful that it caught everyone's attention. Neytiri was trying to recover, but it was impossible for her. Every inch of her body screamed in terror at the sight of the huge being, but her mind instead glowed with wonder. She knew what she was looking at. The Great King of the Forest was far more majestic than she ever imagined! It was immense, superb, and insurmountable in every respect. Her mind was unable to imprint all the details; every time she looked at it she found new ones. There was only one word to describe it: absolute! "This is truly a big shot" Roland murmured looking first at the dinosaur, then at the rifle in his hands. Even though he had one of the most powerful weapons at his disposal, he was afraid. He didn't know why, but his instincts told him that there was something terribly wrong with this creature, something dangerous for him and for all of them. "The structure of the legs and body is perfectly designed for lifting and running. Its limbs are well proportioned and its torso is slender..." Sarah had started talking to herself. "I guess it doesn't weigh very much, otherwise the footprints would have been much deeper. It is truly amazing. I wonder what internal bone structure it has to lighten in this way..." Based on how an animal was structured, then it could be more or less heavy. For example, a tyrannosaurus was as big as some small sauropods, yet it managed to run nimbly thanks to its body studied and designed to balance the weight. Or, some pterosaurs like the quetzalcoatlus were as big as planes, but thanks to their shape they could take off despite weighing nearly two hundred pounds. It was therefore not strange that a carnivore as large as a whale was able to move on the ground without problems thanks to a particular weight balancing mechanism. To find out which one, however, Sarah would have to have at least the skeleton of the animal. For Sarah, this was a moment of victory. She had come to the forest to study a semi-unknown species, but instead she had found herself faced with a sensational discovery: she had just found the largest predator ever seen! By comparison, all previous records paled! Many biologists had hypothesized that the enormous size of sauropods served to defend themselves from predators, and that once adults they lacked natural enemies. However, this made the existence of whip tails meaningless. In addition, some sauropods possessed other defenses: for example, magyarosaurus had plates on its back, while amargasaur had a neck covered with spines, and spinophorosaurus had bony spikes on its tail. What good were those defenses if their size already protected them from any predator? Some biologists had therefore hypothesized the existence of a gigantic predator, larger than any known, that hunted sauropods daily. This theory was not strongly supported, since such a predator had never been found; however, Sarah now had proof that the hypothesis was true. An animal as large as the one in front of her could only sustain itself by eating sauropods, or by hunting dozens of medium-sized dinosaurs a day. The group stood motionless watching the giant animal for several minutes. Roland studied what he knew from his experience were weaknesses, Nick took several photos and Eddie tried to imprint every detail of the majestic dinosaur in his mind. Suddenly, however, Ian whispered in a breathless voice: "Sarah! No! No!" The rest of the group barely saw a silhouette with blonde hair running forward before realizing that Sarah was no longer beside them. Immediately all the awe and wonder vanished from their minds: now they had a much bigger problem to think about. "Stay there!" the woman whispered as she ran towards the animal. Ian tried in vain to call her back, but he knew that when his girlfriend got something into her head, nothing would have stopped her. In such cases, even her life became of secondary importance in her eyes. "Get the tranquilizer guns ready" Roland told his men. He didn't want to risk killing the creature: it was too precious to him. However, he couldn't even jeopardize the woman's safety. He had to be ready for the worst-case scenario. Sarah walked up to one meter from the animal's head. The huge teeth and the more than half a meter long claws would have made anyone give up, but not her. Sometimes Sarah could be more unconscious than Ian. "Sarah! Sarah!" the professor Malcolm was trying in vain to call her back. "She's too close! Too much, too much close..." Sarah started taking some photos, then moved to take different angles. Each time the animal let out a stronger breath, she turned pale, but the creature didn't give any sign of wanting to wake up, so she didn't move away. At one point, she even reached out and touched the animal's skin. Unlike that of many theropod dinosaurs, which were covered with feathers, this one was bare and scaly, a clear sign of its origin as a piscivorous dinosaur and therefore suitable for the aquatic environment. It seemed that they had been right: the animal had probably evolved from a spinosaurus or some other aquatic dinosaur. Both Roland and Ian wanted to scream against Sarah when they saw her touch the creature. Getting close to a wild animal was always dangerous, let alone touching it. If they also considered that that animal was a predator more or less the size of a whale, then only a madman would have dared to touch it. "Look, she has to touch it" Ian whispered through gritted teeth. "I mean, when she sees something new she has to touch it. Why does she have to touch it, damn it?" Suddenly the creature moved. Roland grabbed the rifle immediately, ready to fire. Sarah was completely taken aback and for a moment her heart stopped, but fortunately the animal simply moved its paws in its sleep. However, the woman knew that it was only a matter of time before the dinosaur woke up: moving in sleep was almost always a sign of half-sleep and therefore of imminent awakening. She started to back away. But she hadn't even taken three steps before the animal moved again. It slid its head off the rock it was resting on and placed it on the ground a few feet away from her. Sarah not dared to move a muscle until the creature was still. The animal's breath had deepened. It was clear that it was sensing her scent and that its brain was reacting to wake up. She had to get out of there right now. But again the creature moved and put one of its paws in front of her, effectively cutting her escape route. Indeed, the woman was forced to retreat until she was practically next to the animal's head, since the colossus had moved its paw to scratch the tip of the muzzle. Now Sarah was in real trouble. If she couldn't break free quickly it would end badly for her. But she had no escape... unless she stepped over the paw. Which meant having to touch the animal again, but with much force this time; and considering that it was already almost awake, that might have awakened it completely. She took a deep breath and then tried to get on the paw. But evidently her movements didn't please the creature, which fidgeted causing her to tumble back to the ground, and with it her back hit right on its muzzle. The animal emitted a guttural sound and then its eyelid began to move. Sarah could clearly see a huge yellow eye open wide and her image reflected inside the pupil. A roar tore through the stillness of the forest.