You are in the forests of Asia, 90 million years ago.

The air in the Late Cretaceous forest was thick, humid, and smelled of wet earth and ancient ferns. You kept your movement slow, crouching behind the mossy trunk of a cycad. Your mission was to observe, not to provoke.

A crunching sound came from the dense foliage just a few meters ahead. Through the broad, tropical leaves, you saw it—an Erlikosaurus.

It was roughly 11 feet long, covered in a mottled, feather-like coat that helped it blend into the dappled sunlight. Its body was bulky, with a deep belly, but it was the head and arms that held your focus. Its snout was long, ending in a keratinous, parrot-like beak, which it used with surprising precision to strip foliage from a high branch.

Then, it turned its head toward you, its eyes narrow and sharp. It didn’t look intelligent in a human way, but rather intense—a master of its territory. As it stepped forward to reach a higher branch, its absurdly long, dagger-like claws on its hands brushed against the tree bark. It didn’t use them for hunting; it used them like a sloth’s hook to pull down the canopy, allowing it to feed.

You held your breath as it made a low, humming sound, vibrating in its thick chest. It realized something was near. It didn’t threaten; it simply assessed.