You are in the oceans of New Zealand, 70 million years ago.

The water was a freezing shade of deep indigo. Your submarine was designed to handle the high-pressure depth, but the silence down here was heavy. You were roughly 200 meters down, off the coast of what would one day be the Shag Point area of New Zealand.

You were searching for juvenile plesiosaur behavior, expecting to see a small Mauisaurus. What you got was completely unexpected. Through the reinforced viewport, you spotted it. It didn’t look like the long-necked predators that dominated popular imagination. It was sleek, maybe 4 meters long, with an impossibly small head and massive, dark eyes that caught the faint luminescence of deep-sea squid.

It was a Kaiwhekea.

You held your breath as it swam into range of your external floodlights. Its swimming style was not merely maneuvering with flippers; it was actively hunting. Kaiwhekea didn’t have the long, crushing jaws of a pliosaur. Its head was small, designed for speed and precision, and filled with a "needle-trap" of dozens of tiny, slender teeth.

It was suspended, perfectly still, before accelerating rapidly. It didn’t chase; it snapped. Its neck, while moderately long, was flexible enough to dart into a swarm of luminous, small fish and crustaceans.

Then, the plesiosaur turned toward the sub. For a moment, those dark, enormous eyes looked straight into yours. It felt less like looking at a reptile, and more like looking at a Cretaceous equivalent of a seal—an agile, intelligent marine carnivore.