The Gork

It is not only in the north of Serina that circuagodonts are radiating, evolving into new lineages with special adaptations. And the northern regions are not the only home of meat-eating circuagodonts, either. The southern realm has its own lineages of these largest of the molodonts, and some of them are becoming quite unusual. 

The gork is an omnivorous, water-loving wheeljaw from Serinaustra - a newly separated southern continent in the late Pangeacene, isolated from the northern Serinarcta now by a spreading seaway. This animal has learned to catch fish to supplement its diet of wetland vegetation. Spending its life in low-lying, damp areas where water pools and thickets of vegetation to hide from its enemies are always close by, the gork feeds primarily in and around ponds and streams. It grazes plants in the typical way, with unmodified jaws and teeth relative to earlier species. But how it catches the animal part of its diet is special, and nothing else has ever evolved quite like it among the tribbetheres. The gork uses its hind leg to fish, in doing so standing on its front legs alone for periods of many minutes at a time: a hint of budding bipedalism among the tripods.  Its shoulders are much more robust than its hip, reducing the strain it endures while hunting in this way, while its hind leg is very lightly built, with semi-opposing talons that can move together to hold prey, very much like the foot of a bird. Less social than most circuagodonts, it usually hunts only in pairs; any more, and it seems that its fish prey are more likely to be startled and leave, while any less, and predators may have an easier time sneaking up upon this animal which is now both predator and prey.