You are in the badlands of New Mexico, 212 million years ago.

The sun beat down on the red siltstone, making the air shimmer. You knelt, brush in hand, clearing sediment from what I hoped was a phytosaur vertebra. A sound—low, vibrating, like air passing through a hollow pipe—stopped my breath.

You looked up. Standing atop the ridgeline, barely twenty feet away, was not a reptile you recognized. It was a theropod, but massive for the Triassic, robust but long and slender. Its skin was a mottled, charcoal-grey, contrasting with the vibrant red rock around it. But it was the eyes that froze you: a piercing, amber slit staring directly at you, devoid of fear. It shifted, its serrated teeth slightly visible as it exhaled, a sharp, hissing sound, as it evaluates you.

You realized you were currently in the hunting territory of a Gojirasaurus…