Meg: Origins by Steve Alten Read Free Book Online

stalked its quarry, moving parallel to the swarm.
    Sensing the predator, the cuttlefish increased their speed while simultaneously illuminating their hides in phosphorescent greens and blues. The color pattern was a method of communication among the school as well as a warning to stay away.
    The Megalodon ’s spine arched, forcing her pectoral fins to curl downward. Flushed in full attack mode, the juvenile killer was about to swoop in upon the moving mass of squid when she detected another presence lurking close by—a challenger.
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    At thirty-three feet in length, the pliosaur is nearly as long as the Megalodon ; at thirty-six thousand pounds it is nowhere near the shark’s girth. The creature’s head, nearly a third its length, sports a crocodilian jaw overloaded with ten-inch dagger sharp teeth. Its skull sits atop a thick neck and stocky trunk, tapering back to a short tail. Snakelike movements are powered by four oversized flippers that propel its streamlined body through the water.
    A survivor of the Middle Cretaceous, Kronosaurus began its existence as a reptile. For more than 50 million years its ancestors dominated the seas—until 65 million years ago when an asteroid struck the Earth. The celestial impact filled the planet’s atmosphere with debris which blocked out the sun, causing an Ice Age.
    Reptiles are cold blooded animals, their body temperatures dependent on the warmth generated by their environment. As the oceans rapidly cooled, the plesiosaur order quickly died off, unable to generate enough body heat to survive. Inhabiting the seas off Australia, Kronosaurus were the only species of plesiosaur in proximity to one of the few warm spots on the planet that remained unaffected by the glaciation period.
    Much as an alligator spends its days basking in the sun, members of the Kronosaurus species took to diving down to the hydrothermally heated depths of the Mariana Trench in order to survive. Over thousands of generations, this particular pliosaur group adapted to these extended dives by developing gills—an evolutionary feature that allowed them to permanently inhabit the warm abyss. Their presence in the submarine canyon was the bait that would ultimately lure Megalodon to share their temperate oasis.
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    The male Kronosaurus glided silently through a vent field that spewed pockets of clear near-boiling water, the brackish sulfuric backwash causing acres of tube worms to dance. If Megalodon were the lions of this deepwater Serengeti then the Kronosaurus was its leopard. Though wary of the presence of a superior hunter, it too had to feed.
    Pumping its powerful fore-fins, the pliosaur banked sharply around a black smoker, placing it on a direct intercept course with the river of cephalopods racing through the canyon like a six-story-high train more than three football fields long.
    Detecting the charging Kronosaurus , the cuttlefish engaged their photochromic skin, igniting green and blue neon sparks of light in both directions in a flashing fast-changing pattern that appeared like the denticles of a massive sea snake.
    The intimidated Kronosaurus veered away, its survival instincts momentarily overriding the need to feed.
    And then, without warning, the formation suddenly burst—ten thousand phosphorescent bodies flushing red as they dispersed in a cascading explosion of brilliant blinding color—
    —the stampede ignited by 54,000 pounds of rampaging shark. The Megalodon bulldozed its way through the center of the herd, the female’s hyperextended jaws clamping down upon a mouthful of squirming cephalopod, its serrated teeth shredding tentacles into ribbons as its senses searched the chaos for the Kronosaurus .
    The startled challenger darted away, twisting and turning, scorching its belly in the super-heated outflow of a vent as it was swept away in a frenzy of fleeing squid.
    The Megalodon swallowed a succulent thousand-pound bite of cuttlefish even as the squid circled back,