You are in the deep oceans of Germany, 80 million years ago.

The salt spray stung your eyes as you leaned over the edge of your small survey boat, your underwater drone drone feeding live, grainy footage to the tablet in your hands. The Cretaceous sea was hazy, but that’s when you saw it—a large shadow but far too small to be a mosasaur, suspended in the deep blue.

It wasn’t a predator's silhouette; it was a wheel. A giant ammonite.

You pushed the thrusters forward, and the image on your screen zoomed in. Its shell easily double the height of a man, likely over 2.5 meters in diameter. Its surface was covered in a complex, brownish-orange ribbing, looking less like a living creature and more like a massive, organic sculpture of a nautilus. As you hovered closer, the immense, intelligent eyes of the creature tracked the drone. The sheer scale was terrifying—it was the size of a tractor tire—yet it moved with a haunting, slow elegance, its massive, fleshy tentacles drifting behind the shell.