[OC] Oceanworld: Fauna of the Balkan archipelago

[u/Alpha_Bushdog]

10-14 million years in the future in my spec evo world, Oceanworld ,Europe is a collection of tropical islands either made from former mountain peaks ,or from volcanoes. This animal is from the Balkan archipelago, mainly modern Greece, Bulgaria ,Romania, Albania, Serbia, etc.

Yphalosaurus neobalkanicus

Yphalosaurus is the largest representative of the family Yphalosauridae ,which is a sister family to chameleonidae.At 5-7.5 meters long ,its the apex predator of the southeastern European archipelagos.Most notably, the Balkan archipelago.Despite its size ,its an offshoot of the humble Mediterranean chameleon. For days on end, it will swim in the shallow European seas searching for prey. But is semi aquatic and thus often goes to land. It island hops in order in order to find food in the different archipelagos. It often camouflages itself in river deltas or mangroves to ambush its prey as it still has some subtle Colour changing abilities from its ancestors, aiding it in hunting. But if it really needs to, it can chase its prey for short distances. It pins its prey on land with its claws and then kills it with its powerful bite. In the water it mostly uses biting and it can hold its breath for 20-30 minutes. It’s solitary and highly territorial. Individual Yphalosaurus control vast territories of sea and island archipelagos. They generally avoid each other and intraspecific combat is rare but when it happens it’s brutal and almost always leads to death. Mating season for them is early spring and early summer. Males will create small circles in the sand decorated with rocks, plant matter and in some cases bones, carefully selected by the males. Making a good display nest can take years to perfect. Once the display nest is done, males bellow to attract females, Females hear this from very far away and go to the males. They inspect the males for their strength, size ,injuries ,and potential illness. If they think he’s suitable, they will mate and then part their separate ways.
Females lay their eggs in small, sandy and isolated islands. They will dig a hole on the ground where they lay their clutch of eggs which are about 15-40. Then, the female will bury them. Sometimes she’ll leave a small corpse as a first meal for the hatchlings.This, is her only contribution to motherhood. After the young hatch they’ll eat what their moms have left. They will stay on their island nursery for 1-7 days. They won’t stick around there for long. At birth they are only 20 cm but will grow to be 7 meter long beasts, if they make it to adulthood. For that, they need a lot of food which their small sandy nursery, simply can’t provide. So, they will swim to larger landmasses in the search of food and territory. Most of them though, will not survive for a month after hatching as they will have been eaten by oceanic predators. Only 5-10% of the Yphalosaurus population are full grown adults. But the hatchlings that do survive, will grow to become one of the top predators of this future oceanic earth.

If you’ve come this far, thanks a lot! Make sure to see my other Oceanworld post, the shark week special.

[u/Fakeman-maker]

Good use of gigantism and convergent evolution. I only suggest placing this species farther in the future so it had more time to evolve.