Thornsaber

The thornsaber is an extremely unusual branch of the thorngrazer family tree which has evolved from the soghogs by 290 million years PE in Serinarcta's savannah woodlands. While earlier thorngrazers were super-omnivores and not above eating meat when they came across it, and predatory lineages have now also arisen in the very distantly related unicorns, thornsabers are the first exclusively carnivorous species, with much simplified stomachs that can no longer break down plant matter into nutrition, and which do not eat any plants at all. They are small, only the size of a large dog, and are faster runners than earlier forms, though less so than crested thorngrazers. They now sport just two tusks, which now angle downward on either side of the upper jaw, forming killing fangs much like those of the kelpie and nightmare but even larger, to cut deep into hip and shoulder muscle and cause deadly blood loss. The face is long and the gape very wide to bite prey. The upper tooth - unlike the narrow, blade-like one of the carnivore unicorns - is fairly unchanged. It still serves to grind up meat and bone all together, rolling like a wheel to do so, and so has changed little, but the lower tooth is uniquely hooked to compensate, forming an upside-down equivalent to the beak of a predatory bird. Thornsabers thus use their lower jaws alone to cut and tear flesh from carcasses, the only animal to feed in this way.

These thorngrazers' primary prey is their own relatives; fast-running and agile crested thorngrazers are hunted in groups, similarly to the competing sawjaws, which target sickly or otherwise weak individuals, pick them off, and quickly subdue them with catastrophically damaging bites. These groups are strictly hierarchal packs led by the females, with males smaller, always low-ranking, and transient; they often move between packs without longterm social bonds. This system is an extension of the ancestral herd structure where males were peripheral to more organized female herds, and serves to keep groups genetically diverse. Thornsabers stay competitive alongside sawjaws by eating much faster; they quickly rend everything of the carcass - bones, hair, organs and muscle - to a paste in just a few minutes, and leave nothing at all for others to try and take. Indeed, these now-hunters have ancestry in specialist scavengers that did this for a living. Fierce in their own right, but relatively small, they gobble up their fill and flee before larger and more dangerous enemies get scent of food on the wind and chase them off.