HOME | DD

Description
Aquatic parasauropods native to a planet of panspermic quasidinos diverging from the orthodox terrestrial bauplan in several significant ways, the most notable of which is the incidence of multiple tails. Whether accidental or engineered, this trait was apparently advantageous enough to be not only retained but selected for in ancestral vertebrates, leading to a wide variety of utilitarian and display functions in the dominant megafauna.

Few other lineages exhibit such a radically innovative repurposing of this feature as in the Saurosquids, where the tails have become propulsive and manipulatory appendages analogous to the tentacles of terrestrial cephalopods. Now wholly adapted to marine existence, these animals are viviparous and have completely lost their tetrapodal limbs, severing their last connections to dry land.

Saurosquid thrive in the kelp forests of the shallow offshore temperate regions, "brachiating" through the towering submarine vegetation and surfacing only to breathe. The muscular tails are employed in their locomotory capacity when the animals are threatened by predators, at which point entire pods will flee with surprising speed into the temporary refuge of the depths.

Description
Aquatic parasauropods native to a planet of panspermic quasidinos diverging from the orthodox terrestrial bauplan in several significant ways, the most notable of which is the incidence of multiple tails. Whether accidental or engineered, this trait was apparently advantageous enough to be not only retained but selected for in ancestral vertebrates, leading to a wide variety of utilitarian and display functions in the dominant megafauna.

Few other lineages exhibit such a radically innovative repurposing of this feature as in the Saurosquids, where the tails have become propulsive and manipulatory appendages analogous to the tentacles of terrestrial cephalopods. Now wholly adapted to marine existence, these animals are viviparous and have completely lost their tetrapodal limbs, severing their last connections to dry land.

Saurosquid thrive in the kelp forests of the shallow offshore temperate regions, "brachiating" through the towering submarine vegetation and surfacing only to breathe. The muscular tails are employed in their locomotory capacity when the animals are threatened by predators, at which point entire pods will flee with surprising speed into the temporary refuge of the depths.