Troll_Man
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WWD: Melvius thomasi
🕑 Added 2023-08-20 06:47:40 +0000 UTCBecause I want to be comprehensive, the fish that the Quetzalcoatlus catches is included here too. If the scene were remade, the pterosaur would be catching the fish like a wading stork or heron in the shallows rather than plucking it from the water mid-flight. The fish isn't identified, probably because it was just meant to be a generic prey animal, but there was a myriad of aquatic fauna from the Hell Creek Formation, from large freshwaters turtles, various crocodilian species, freshwater sharks, champsosaurs, numerous amphibians, and even large mosasaurs (the region bordered the Western Interior Seaway after all).
Initially I thought about picking the bowfin species Kindleia fragosa as the fish, since it's by far the most common fish from the region, known from a few thousand fossils, but since a giraffe-sized animal is hunting this fish I decided instead to make it the much larger Melvius, another bowfin species. Far larger than the modern bowfin, this was a river goliath capable of reaching well over five feet in length and likely a formidable piscine hunter. The colour here is original because the fish was just a generic, barely visible, greyish blob so I made up something more distinct based on the modern bowfin.
