ed: god damn I lost my progress on this post. [hider=Marine Reptiles] In order to provide sustenance for Regulus's griffins, Mater Lei increased the vitality of the oceans, especially around the Island Turtle. Her first creation was a diverse array of complex plankton, most microscopic, many of edible size. These included salps, jellyfish, ctenophores, siphonophores, and small crustacea such as amphipods. With them came some algae that grew on the back and flanks of the Turtle, such as sargassum. Feeding on these are a variety of marine reptiles, from little water-lizards and grazing iguanas to slender sea krait that distend their jaws to sieve food from the brine. Larger reptiles feed on these foragers in turn. Plesiosaurs sway their necks to snatch food on the current, and tanystrophs do the same thing on 'shore'. In the waters, mosasaurs and icthyosaurs swim at a lively pace. Most do not outgrow large dogs, but in time, competition will raise titans out of these two tribes. [/hider] [hider=The Prairie and Forest Horses] Noticing that the horses created by Faliir, while noble, would not thrive in the dense woods and swamps surrounding her citadel, Mater Lei made some improvements. Send out with the first horses were enough grass species to swiftly colonise a grassland beyond her domain. She did want to keep some horses around, though. A few equines were retained in the forest and made into slower, more suitable forms. These included the chalicotheres, huge knuckle-walking foragers horse-like in face but otherwise much like ground sloths or gorillas, and dawn-horses, little creatures that scurried through the undergrowth and low branches seeking berries and tubers. The former resides predominantly in the swamp and the latter in the woods, but both are found in either. Much like the original horses, they can still be tamed. [/hider]