#scutosaurus

Permian Swamp in the Volga Basin, Konstantin Konstantinovich Flerov

Under the canopy of the trees, the smell of the bogs and ponds lingers and fills the nose with a peaty funk that crowds out any other scents. Because of this, the herbivores don’t catch the predator’s odors until it is almost upon them. Then begins a frantic waddle across the mud as the hunter’s breath pounds against their ears. One of the scutosaurs, stomach already upset by injesting too much of a certain weed, vomits out of terror. Choking on the stuff, it plows into a little pond and swims, huffing and puffing and coughing, to the other side. It never looks back, and when death does not come, it stupidly resumes life as before, gnawing on the sweet greens that give it gas. It never sees that the predator stopped to sniff its puke and turned away in revulsion, it sour odor out-stinking the perfume of the bog.