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Bestiary: Hadrosaurs I

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NEOHADROSAURIA I
Hadrosaurs ("big reptiles," after Hadrosaurus) were one of the most successful animal groups of the Cretaceous period, and one of the most diverse. Armed with dental batteries and a sophisticated social life instead of natural weapons, they spread all over the Terran continents and diversified into a myriad of forms. It is only natural that during the slew of time-rifts throughout the Cretaceous, the hadrosaurs migrated to, and rapidly colonized, the landmasses of Yonder.

Razorheads (Machetesauria)
The most successful of the hadrosaurs in the northern continents are the razorheads, forest- and plains-dwellers named for a unique adaptation unlike any other dinosaur. Evolving from the crested lambeosaurine hadrosaurs of the Cretaceous, the razorheads primarily evolved in thick forests, where their large headgear became a mixed blessing. On the one hand, a flamboyant crest could be used for signalling and noise production, ideal for communication in a crowded forest environment, but on the other hand, it proved a hiderance among the tangled maze of branches they frequently navigated. The razorheads solved this problem by turning the cross section of the cranial crest into a wedge. In addition, the keratin that covered their beaks also grew upwards to cover their crests as well, resulting in a reinforced, self-sharpening edge. This resulted in a weapon that could split and push obstacles out of the way, allowing the creature to move more quickly through the forest - the better to escape predators.
Once the razorheads perfected this adaptation, the family flourished in their forest habitat, and gave rise to numerous different species with many different types of crests. Among the forest-dwellers, the machetehead (1a), which can reach 25 feet in length, is the most common and the first discovered, but the axehead (Fig. 1b) is the largest and most powerful, at 40 feet and 5 tons, though the sawhead (Fig. 1c) comes quite close at 35 feet long. The 20-foot-long cleaverhead (Fig. 1d) and 37-foot-long saberhead (1e) are among the subfamily that have migrated into more open spaces, having evolved longer legs than their forest-living contemporaries and dental batteries that are more resistant to grass.
Razorheads are commonly imagined as docile, easy-to-kill plant-eaters, but many predators can testify that adults are notoriously difficult to bring down. They are surprisingly fast for large herbivores, and their narrow but muscular bodies allow them to weave between trees or turn rapidly on open plains. When cornered, their best weapons are their lethal crests, and few meat eaters attack them head-on, for given strategeic placement, they can slice open a tyrannosaur's belly with a single strike. Some species also have sharp osteoderms on their tails to stifle attacks from the rear. The stiff, brightly colored tail is flexible at the base, allowing the creature to turn at speed when running (Fig. 1i), prop itself up when reaching high vegetation (Fig. 1ii), and stick it into the air to warn the herd of approaching enemies (Fig. 1iii).

Tidekickers (Macropodasauridae)
When hadrosaurs were first discovered, it was believed that they were adapted for aquatic or semi-aquatic habitats, subsisting in swamps and lakes on a diet of aquatic plants. After all, their bills resembled those of ducks, and hadrosaur mummies were found to have skin on the hands that was assumed to be duck-like webbing. In time, however, discoveries of hadrosaur tracks and anatomical analysis has disproved this hypothesis, and hadrosaurs are nowadays viewed as almost-exclusive land-dwellers, more like deer and moose than ducks. Not all of hadrosaurs conform to this lifestyle, however, and one family in particular has evolved into the exact same amphibious lifestyle so ostensibly disproven by paleontological evidence.
Macropodasaurs, famously known as tidekickers, evolved when the Tempest Event flooded their subtropical habitats in the southern hemisphere. Forests and prairies turned into swamps, and for a time, terrestrial plant life was mediocre in supply. However, vegetation that grew in watery, humid areas flourished, and ancestral tidekickers found an unexploited bounty. As a result, they evolved a few adaptations to exploit it. First, they became predominantly bipedal, with larger and broader hind limbs than their land-dwelling contemporaries. Second, the body became streamlined, with smoother skin covered in smaller scales. Third, the long tail, normally used to balance the body, became flexible and muscular, with a leathery fin at the top, allowing it to propel the creature across the water.
Modern tidekickers are the dominant grazers of the southern hemisphere, surviving in savannas, marshes, estuaries, coastal forests, and marine prairies. They have retained their dental batteries, and survive by eating virtually any plant life available, both on land and in the water. They raise their young in the start of the wet season; the chicks can swim and hop from birth, unlike other hadrosaurs. With no armor or offensive weapons, tidekickers are built for speed, hopping along on their powerful hind legs; they can graze on all fours (Fig. 2i), but they walk and bound on just two (Fig. 2ii). In the water, they tuck their legs behind them, frog-kicking for bursts of speed and cruising with a sculling action from the tail (Fig. 2iii). The legs are designed as a spring-loading device, so they cannot move independently; tidekickers walk with a distinctive swaying of the hips, swinging the entire waist from side to side to move the feet forward.
Without any spikes, plates, horns, teeth, or claws, tidekickers are a popular food item among abelisaurs, crocodilians, dragons, wyverns, birds of prey, and other carnivores of all kinds. But what they lack in defensive adaptations, they more than make up for in speed, spunk, and spirit. Their bodies are comprised entirely of muscle, which is concentrated in legs and feet that can launch their owners along at up to 30 mph, covering up to 15 feet in a single bound. If, somehow, the tidekicker is cornered, it won't hesiate to demonstrate why its nickname is both evocative and well-earned. If a foe tries to get in close, it will charge straight at the enemy to ram it, administer punishing jabs with its forefeet, or swipe at it with its powerful tail. A favorite finishing move among this family is the double-kick: the animal leans back on its tail and lashes out with its clawed hind feet (Fig. 2iv), delivering blows that can shatter ribs and inflict painful and crippling gashes on an opponent's torso.
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The-Great-Stash's avatar
Love me, bro!:love: I still gotta make my Iguadont species for you to see. But im debating on whether i should draw the whole thing or just their heads. What do u think?