Pseudornithopod Serilopes

Primitive Serilopes

Or, the "Pseudornithopods"

Not all serilopes are as specialized as the ornitheres; rather, there exist a variety of lineages which diverged at different points in the group's evolution. Some still closely resemble the ancestral viva, though these have become rare and isolated over the eons. A greater number of groups are morphologically intermediate between these relatively primitive forms with large beaks and very little in the way of lips to speak of, and the most derived ornitheres and trunksnouts, with the underlying anatomy of their snouts heavily obscured by mammal-like soft tissues. These "in-between" primitive serilopes show a reduction in bill size and unspecialized grinding plates on the roof of their mouths and lining their tongues, though the structures are not mineralized as in the ornitheres and some other advanced serilopes. They are able to grind their food before swallowing, but have not evolved beyond the precursor to cheeks to hold in the bolus; their mouths are lined, however, with thick fleshy lips that in some other lineages did evolve into such structures as well as into the strange trunks and fleshy snouts of their kin. The tongue, used to chew, is often partially fused to the lower jaw; the muscles of the jaw are well-developed for the purpose of chewing food and bulge outward at the cheeks, lending the skull a somewhat triangular profile.

Though more primitive than the ornitheres and trunksnouts and other fleshy-snouted vivas, the primitive serilopes are still diverse and abundant by the Thermocene. The majority of groups are medium-sized deer-like generalists of forest habitats, feeding mainly on fruit, seeds, and tender shoots but also opportunistically preying on insects and small animals. Some species retain the large feathered wings of their ancestors, but the majority of surviving species have highly reduced arms. To make up for this, they have developed exceptionally long tails for purposes of maintaining balance, tipped in a fan of vaned plumage, often the last tuft of proper feathers retained on a body otherwise covered in a fur-like coat of short, unbranched fibers. The combination of a short beak, lipped mouth, triangular skull profile, elongated tail and primitive-looking plumage lend many of these species not only a comparable place in the ecosystem but also an appearance very reminiscent of the extinct ornithopod dinosaurs of ancient Earth. More broadly, they hark back to appearance of the earliest dinosaurs which would eventually give rise to all the clade's wide diversity, almost as if after several hundred million years, the birds have finally gotten over their rebellious flying phase and returned to their roots. Unlike any other dinosaur of the past or present, however, these "neo-dinosaurs" give birth to live young - just one, as a mother can hold only a single egg at a time in her oviduct as it incubates. Because they produce relatively few offspring, all of the serilopes are excellent mothers and protect their young ones until they are fully able to fend for themselves. In this respect, at least they are more akin to deer or other ungulates than to non-avian dinosaurs. The method used to process food is of course distinct too - ornithopods using their teeth and vivas having had to circumvent the loss of their teeth by redeveloping analogous structures on their tongues - but the end result is the same. Because of the many superficial similarities, many of the serilopes which no longer quite look like proper birds but haven't developed fleshy cheeks or snouts are known as "pseudornithopods", though the term is a paraphyletic classification as it is used to refer to animals of several groups of only distant relations, whose closest relatives may not all fall under the same catch-all label.

above: Though their common name may translate to "false bird foot" and their appearance is more reminiscent of the non-avian dinosaurs of a bygone era than any modern bird, do not be fooled; the pseudornithopod serilopes are as much descendants of the canary as any other bird on their home world. Here a mother leads a very young chick through a temperate forest near Serina's north pole, just as winter has lifted and the buds and blossoms of spring begun to appear, providing abundant food just in time for the little one's arrival. Behind the pair a long-billed, poor-flying ground bird, a probing insectivore of the forest floor, is startled into flight by their appearance in the clearing.