You are in the floodplains of North America, 70 million years ago.

The air in the lush floodplain was thick, tasting of moss and distant rain. You were tracking a herd of Edmontosaurus through the dense ferns when you hear a noise on your right.

Something was moving through the foliage, and it wasn’t making a quiet exit. It sounded like an armored truck tearing through a greenhouse. Then, you saw it.

An Edmontonia.

It was shorter than you but immense in width, a living fortress covered in thick, dull-brown scutes. It was foraging, its blunt muzzle ripping up ground-level plants with a wet, tearing sound. Every movement was slow, deliberate, and undeniably heavy. The sheer weight of it made the ground tremble slightly, a rhythmic thudding that you felt in your ribs more than you heard it. You were close enough to see the texture of the armor—deeply pitted and incredibly thick, like the trunk of a gnarly old oak tree.

The beast pauses and turned its head, and the massive spikes at its shoulders swung towards my spot. One spike, easily three feet long, was jagged, revealing a lifetime of defending against the predators that ruled these wetlands. Its eye, a dark, intelligent orb, seemed to look right through you, not with malice, but a hint of curiosity, though cautious...