Serina: Grandiose Gargangup

(This lives 290 MYH)

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Located a few hundred miles off the northwestern coast of Serinaustra is the vast Anstevan Archipelago, a partly submerged branch of the continent which still spans a combined area almost as large as Australia. Because nothing lived on this portion of Serinaustra during the ice age, all its life is new, those which have, though chance and luck, managed to reach this isolated landmass during the great thaw or in subsequent arrivals as the once barren wasteland was transformed into a lush subtropical jungle. The first were sealumps, quickly establishing themselves as the dominant megafauna, as were flying sea ravens and sparrowgulls, and later were various seraphs, skuorcs, lumpuses, and murds, amongst other gradual immigrants. One of the more curious colonizers of Ansteva were the gupgops; they did not manage to reach the landmass during their initial rafting events at the end of the ice age, and only later established themselves millions of years later. The initial ancestors of the Anstevan snarks were sandlubbers, adaptable coastal gups that occasionally wash out to sea during storms, especially when younger and smaller. Just a handful, or perhaps simply one pregnant female, landing upon the neighbouring archipelago would be enough to establish a founding population.

Sandlubbers were one of the largest gups of their time, but as they grew larger, they faced a problem; their moist, permeable skin releases too much water as their skin's surface area increases, making death by desiccation far more likely. For most land snarks, this isn't much of a problem in this tropical environment, as they are usually small or have waxy secretions to resist permeability, but the sandlubber's size is much larger than all other gups. Living near the coast, constantly sprayed by the sea mist, does help, but it is not always a reliable one, and the sandlubber has evolved a structure which has helped them retain their bodily fluids. Very small overlapping plates of periostracum form a protective layer over top the skin, which prevents evaporation. And so sandlubbers independently developed the same solution to the same problem that was faced by early terrestrial amphibians some six-hundred million years ago on Earth, they had become coated in scales to withstand long periods without water. Since then, many of their descendants have wandered far inland to colonize drier habitats; on the mainland this has manifested in large species, like the armoured snurtles, with huge bony plates covering their bodies evolved from their initial scales, now modified for protection against predators. However, on the Anstevan Archipelago, the sandlubbers' path of evolution went down a different path.

Without competition from carnivorous burdles, foxtrotters, or the scroungers, they were able to expand into more terrestrial predator niches and achieve larger sizes. This has evolution resulted in the appearance of the lizard-like ambush predators known as the gorgups, capturing larger prey with blade-like mandibles rather than the predominantly insectivorous or herbivorous gups on the mainland. Most gorgups tend to be within the range of rat to dog-sized, but one species dwarfs not only all terrestrial snarks, but all terrestrial invertebrates period, and is one of the archipelago's apex predators. This is the grandiose gargangup, one of the most unique and strangest land carnivores to have ever lived on Serina; up to nine feet long and over two-hundred kilograms, with a pair of scissor-like mandibles up to sixteen inches in total length, it is a very powerful hunter capable of killing very large prey. With its scaly plate armour, it is incapable of pursuing its prey for more than a very short burst, so it waits for prey to come to it instead, staying camouflaged against the forest floor near the well-worn game trails of jungle animals, waiting for one to wander close enough. Because of its large size and ectothermic metabolism, it can stay motionless for several weeks waiting for prey.

Its blade-like jaws bite with incredible force and are designed for rapid catastrophic injury. One bite shreds deep into flesh and crushes bone, which the gup intentionally exacerbates by thrashing to worsen the injury, so even if the prey manages to get loose from the initial attack, extreme shock and blood loss make escape unlikely. Its thick armour protects it from the prey's retaliation as it lunges and latches on, while its massive weight works to bring it to the ground. The gargangup can dispatch prey considerably larger than itself through this method, preying even on adult lumps and giraffowl. After a successful kill, it can then consume half its body weight in meat in a single sitting, allowing it to go months before the next meal. Adult gargangups are territorial, but their territories are often host to numerous juveniles, which are much less sedentary than the adults, and they will often tolerate the appearance of neighbouring adults during a large kill as they help tear apart the body into more manageable pieces, and leftovers will quickly rot in the humid environment anyway, making caching impossible. Adults tend to be more passive towards the brighter banded colouration of juveniles (as the juveniles hunt much smaller prey, such as murds, lumpuses, and other gups), but as they get larger and the colouration fades, they will begin actively chasing them away or even killing them.

Adults will initially warn each other away by inflating a bright orange-red throat pouch (the heavy armour covering their bodies having sacrificed the ancestral display sacs on the back). This is also used by males for courting receptive females (which usually occurs soon after the female has fed recently and is less likely to see the male either as a threat). As with most gups, young are independent from birth; they will often scamper into trees to hide from terrestrial predators; they have bright banding which mimics the appearance of the highly venomous skuzzards, although the young gups themselves can still defend themselves with a mean bite, the precursor to the bite that will one day be able to bring down animals of over one-thousand pounds if they reach adulthood.

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To reiterate, this is a sponsored commission for a giant predatory gup.