Some players also called the location dinosaur forest or t-rex forest too. It had many names but it was just a small patch of forest located on an island in the World of Ruin. By the time you got to that point in the game, usually most of your characters would be hitting enemies for 9999 damage if you had leveled them up enough. Pyroraptor ('fire thief') didn't earn its name because it actually stole fire, or even breathed fire, in addition to the usual array of raptor weapons: the more prosaic explanation is that the only known fossil of this dinosaur was discovered in 2000, in southern France, after a forest fire.
‘This is going to be fun.’
‘It’s amazing!’ gasped Rosalie.
‘I’ve never seen anything like this before,’ I laughed indelight.
We were in a science research facility along with Rosette,Kate, Donia, Elena and Iris. The seven of us had been invited as test matterfor a new prototype.
‘This,’ said Dr. Fabien, ‘Is the place where the experimenthappens.’
We were led into a sealed room, which had walls lined withsupercomputers. Each one had numbers flashing across them at a stupefyingspeed.
‘The experiment involves sending you back in time,’ beganDr. Fabien.
‘A what now?’ interrupted Kate while the rest of us lookedconfused.
‘We have created a simulation of what we think it would belike in the Jurassic Age, when dinosaurs existed. It’s been tried and testedbut only by people who understand the scientific workings. We now need to testit on some guinea pigs with no scientific understanding. That’s where you comein.’
‘Hey!’ I cut in before Elena shushed me.
He led us to where seven chairs stood in the centre of theroom and urged us to take a seat. As we did, he connected electrodes to ourlegs, arms and heads. I raised my eyebrow at Iris in alarm.
‘This will convertyour nerve impulses into electrical ones that get fed into our computers andinto the simulation. It will be as if you are really in the past but yourbodies will remain here. So if you die,’ he said, putting his hand on a lever,‘you’ll return to your body here. However, it might hurt. We don’t know yet.
‘The object of this test is to see if this can be used inhistorical tours. You will be left inside there for an hour to see if you cansurvive. Good luck!’
And with that, he pulled the lever.
I don’t remember what exactly happened next but my nextmemory was that of coming to in a jungle, surrounded by the sounds of wild birdcalls and chirping insects. The sky was a pale yellow colour with the firsttints of pink rising on the clouds, making them looks as if they were blushing.
My friends were all standing around, looking as dazed as Ifelt.
‘So, what now?’ asked Rosette, ‘Do we just sit down and waitfor the hour to be up?’
‘No!’came a voice from the clouds, making usall jump.
Then I recognized it. ‘Dr. Fabien!’ I cried, rolling myeyes.
‘You must walk aroundfor the hour. Follow the path which is what the tour will follow. We will useyou to identify any dangers along the way.’
‘No!’ grumbled Donia. ‘I’m not going anywhere that will getme killed. I’m taking a stand right here.’
And with that, she ironically sat down on a fallen log.
‘Careful you don’t fall off,’ laughed Rosalie, knowingDonia’s track record for sitting without falling.
‘Oooh, I’m going to fall,’ mocked Donia, lifting her feet ofthe ground to show she had control. ‘I’m not that bad Rosal– ahh!’
‘Donia!’ yelled Elena, rushing to grab her hand.
But it was too late.
Donia had fallen backwards into a swamp which quicklyswallowed her before we could pull her out. We stood back in shock for a minutebefore Iris said, ‘Well, that was quick.’
‘At least she didn’t really die,’ I began.
‘And it can’t have hurt that much…’ said Kate doubtfully.
‘All the same, let’s try and be more careful,’ warned Elena,as she began going down the path.
We’d barely taken ten steps when we felt the ground shake.
‘What was that?’ asked Rosalie, her eyes opening wide interror.
‘Please don’t be a dinosaur, please don’t be a dinosaur,’ Iprayed under my breath. ‘Please don’t be…’
‘A dinosaur,’ I heard Iris whisper beside me.
From behind the trees loomed a giant, a T-Rex, taller than thetallest tree, a creature out of my worst nightmare. Everyone froze in theirtracks and we held our breaths, hoping this monster wouldn’t spot us so fardown below it.
No such luck.
A glittering red eye swiveled to the ground and saw us. Itup reared its head and roared loud enough to wake the dead.
‘Should we run?’ I asked because I was currently paralyzedwith fear.
‘No,’ whispered Rosalie. ‘Quick, lie down and play dead.’
She dropped to the ground like she’d been shot and we allfollowed suit, knowing we had no place to run to because if we ran forward,we’d meet the T-Rex and if we ran back, we’d fall into the quicksand.
The T-Rex got closer, and bent down to sniff us. I shut myeyes tight as I felt its hot breath sweeping over us and prayed it would thinkwe didn’t look like dinosaur grub.
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Again, no such luck.
I heard Rosette squeak as the T-Rex picked her sister upwith its lacerated teeth and toss her effortlessly into the air. We all watchedin horror as it then opened its mouth and Rosalie fell straight into its jawsof death.
‘We should’ve run!’ said Elena.
The T-Rex looked down at us again.
‘Um guys,’ interjected Kate. ‘I don’t think Rosalie wasenough to satisfy that guy’s appetite.’
Normally I would’ve laughed but now I leapt off the groundand sprinted into the forest. I could hear Elena and Rosette hot on my tail,jumping over the fallen branches and vines.
‘Are Kate and Iris okay?’ panted Elena, as we stopped afterrunning full tilt for about three minutes.
‘I’m here,’ gasped Kate, jogging up behind Rosette. ‘I lostIris.’
‘Yeah, she probably died,’ I said blatantly.
All three of them shot me disapproving looks.
‘What?’ I cried. ‘She went back to the real world while wehave to suffer for’ I checked my watch, ‘half an hour longer.’
‘What now?’ asked Kate.
‘Go back to the path,’came Fabien’s voice again.
‘Is the dinosaur still there?’ asked Elena nervously.
‘Doesn’t look like it,’ said Rosette.
‘I’m not going back till we know for certain,’ said Elenafirmly.
‘I’ll climb up a tree and check if you like,’ offered Kate.
Elena smiled as Kate nipped up a nearby tree and looked inthe direction we’d just come from.
‘I can see it going away from the path,’ she called down. ‘Ithink it’s safe to– ahhh!’
‘Oh no!’ cried Rosette, as our friend was whipped out of thetree in the beak of a pterodactyl. It flew upwards, wings beating strongly.Then it tossed her up in the air and opened its beak to catch her but mistimedit, resulting in Kate landing in a heap on its back.
I watched through my fingers as she gripped the skin on itsneck to steady herself and Rosette cheered her on.
‘All that horse riding came in handy, huh?’ grinned Elena.
Then she gasped. The giant bird decided to do aloop-de-loop, throwing Kate off into the air. This time it timed its descentperfectly. I groaned as Kate fell into its open mouth and prayed it didn’thurt.
‘Well, she was going to get eaten either way,’ shruggedElena. ‘At least she put on a show for us first!’
‘If I die and find out that it hurts,’ growled Rosette.‘That Fabien is in for it.’
‘Same,’ I added, through gritted teeth. ‘We should probablyhead back for the path now. Only 20 minutes left.’
Then something made us turn our heads. It was a hissingsound that made my skin crawl.
‘Not more dinosaurs,’ groaned Elena.
‘Not just any,’ I whispered. ‘They’re raptors.’
‘Climb a tree, quick!’ yelled Rosette and we all boundedapart, shinning up the easiest trees we could find.
‘Don’t climb all the way to the top or the pterodactyls willget us!’ I called out but I wasn’t sure if they heard me.
I could hear the raptors’ shrill call below me and then itdied away. After waiting a couple of minutes, I warily slid down to the groundand then nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard a twig crack behind me.
We followed her shouts till we found her, trapped in atangle of branches and woody lianas.
‘Can you help?’ she said sheepishly.
I laughed and went to move towards Elena but Rosettesuddenly pulled me back in alarm. ‘Look!’
Behind Elena, was a gigantic mutation of a Venus Fly Trap.What we’d mistaken as lianas were actually its tendrils, wrapping Elena in adeathly grasp. Then it opened its clam-like mouth and swallowed Elena as if shewas no more than an insect.
‘Don’t we have anything we can fight it with?’ I asked indespair.
Dinosaur Forest Cracked
Rosette shook her head, clearly mad. ‘How long do we haveleft?’
‘Five minutes,’ I said, checking my watch.
The ground began to shake again.
‘Really,’ said Rosette, deadpan. ‘Again?!’
The T-Rex roared, its huge foot coming down right next tous. I noticed it had giant feathers sprouting out of its leathery skin and Iyelled, ‘Grab on!’
Rosette leapt onto the foot beside me, both of us grimacingat how slimy the feathers were.
‘We only have to hold on for four minutes!’ I called as thedinosaur shook its foot in an effort to throw us off.
‘It’s like a rodeo!’ screamed Rosette. ‘Except… uh-oh.’
The monster was heading for a lake and, clearly in anattempt to drown us, strode deep into it. I opened my eyes underwater, lettinggo of the feathers to swim to the surface when I saw a school of evil lookingpiranha mutants swimming our way.
Then, in the following few seconds of blinding pain andfloundering in red water, all went black.
‘That hurt SO MUCH!’ groaned Rosette, waking up beside meback in the lab.
All our friends were gathered around us, nodding inagreement.
‘Once we died,’ said Donia, ‘we could watch you on thescreens so I saw everything that happened after I died.’
‘If you had just stuck to the path,’ shrugged Fabienemotionlessly, ‘You might have stayed alive.’
Dinosaur Forest Crack Game
I looked at Rosette.
Rosette winked and cracked her knuckles.
Then we all pounced.
‘What are you doing?!’ Dr. Fabien cried, struggling against14 arms.
‘Giving you a taste of your own medicine,’ smirked Iris asElena and Rosalie connected the electrodes to him and the rest of us held himdown.
‘Enjoy,’ said Donia, pulling the lever.
Kate sat down at a computer and began typing something.
I laughed, ‘Clever girl.’
‘What?’ asked Rosette.
‘She’s changed the algorithm so that Dr. Fabien has to staythere for a full hour, no matter how many times he dies.’ I explained.
‘Does anyone have popcorn?’ Rosalie laughed.
We all crowded around the screen, evil smiles playing at ourlips.
A mummified armored dinosaur found in present-day Canada is giving paleontologists a peak into the eating habits of herbivores that lived 110 million years ago. Fossilized plants preserved in the carcass’s belly reveal that it was dining on a fresh crop of ferns that sprung up after a fire. The soccer ball-sized mass was full of a select few varieties of ferns with traces of charcoal mixed in. Researchers surmise that the dinosaur was a choosy eater and that forest fires might have played an important role in its lifestyle.
It’s incredibly rare for a dinosaur’s last meal to be so well preserved, says Caleb Brown, a paleontologist at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta who published the findings June 2 in the journal Royal Society Open Science. “We finally have some really good, definitive evidence about what at least one particular animal was eating,” he says. “This is by far the best evidence of diet for an herbivorous dinosaur.”
The dinosaur that Brown and his colleagues examined was discovered in a mine in northern Alberta in 2011. It belonged to the nodosaur family, which in turn was part of a larger group called ankylosaurs. Like its iconic relative Ankylosaurus, this dinosaur was covered in bony plates. It also had a large spine protruding from each shoulder and trundled along slowly on short legs. “They’re very squat, round animals—basically the dinosaur equivalent of a tank,” Brown says.
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This particular specimen would have weighed at least a ton-and-a-half while alive and reached 18 feet in length. It probably lived along a coastline during the Cretaceous Period before dying suddenly and being swept out to sea. There it sank to be buried deeply in mud on the seafloor, protected from storms and scavengers. A tomb of brittle rock formed around the carcass, sealing it off from the outside world and preserving features that otherwise would have rotted away. When Brown’s colleagues excavated the remains, they found skin and keratin as well as fossilized bones. The team reported their initial description of the nodosaur, which they named Borealopelta markmitchelli, in 2017.
For the new study, the group turned their attention to the nodosaur’s stomach contents. When they examined small slices under the microscope, the researchers saw “beautifully preserved” plant fragments that included leaves, bits of stem, and charcoal from burnt wood, Brown says. Based on the maturity of the plant tissues, the team concluded that the dinosaur died in late spring to mid-summer, which would have been the middle of the growing season.
Brown and his colleagues observed that about 85 percent of the leafy fragments in the dinosaur’s belly represented several types of ferns. “What is surprising is some of the stuff that’s not there,” he says. Some common plants like horsetails were completely absent, while foliage from cycads and coniferous trees that dominated the landscape were present only in very small amounts. The nodosaur may have preferred certain kinds of ferns over others, munching on these favorites while ignoring the rest.
The remains were discovered in an ancient seabed, removed from the dinosaur’s natural habitat. However, the researchers knew which plants would probably have been most common based on fossilized vegetation from other nearby sites. This gave them a sense of which plants the nodosaur might have encountered but chose not to eat.
The presence of charcoal indicates that a forest fire had recently swept over the landscape. As vegetation began to return, the short young plants would have been easy for the squat nodosaur to reach. “The thing about that regrowth is that it’s more nutritious and easier to digest than the old, mature growth from any of these plants,” Brown says. “If you’re an ankylosaur…the best place to be is an area that’s recently been burned up by a fire where all these ferns are coming back.”
Today, many large grazing animals—including elk, deer, zebras, wildebeests, and other denizens of forests and savannas—seek out areas that have recently been scorched. “This might be the first evidence of dinosaurs taking advantage of forest fires as part of their ecology,” Brown says. “We know that forest fires were quite common during that time, but we’ve never really considered that the forest fire…might actually be a very important aspect of how they made a living.”
However, he adds, there’s only so much that scientists can infer from one carcass’s stomach contents. The food was consumed by a single dinosaur over a matter of hours and may not represent the nodosaur’s typical diet. However, if scientists find charcoal in the stomach contents of other dinosaurs that browsed close to the ground, it would lend support to the idea that these herbivores thrived in forests that were recovering from wildfires.