Well, here we are, 17 days away from the release of Narmer and the God Beast, and we’re gonna just keep marching along doing posts about what went into this short story (although more realistically, even though the short story is what’s complete, all of this really set up the larger universe which hopefully a novel will be set in!).
Next up on the docket? The God-Beast itself, Paralititan Stromeri!
Hah! No. That’s a paradiddle and a stromboli.
Sorry, bad joke (for any drummers out there looking for actually funny jokes, I recommend Jens Hannemann (Fred Armisen)’s Complicated drumming. I pretty much die every time I watch Just in Time.)
Anyway, Paralititan Stromeri, meaning “Stromer’s Tidal Giant” is the second star of the show. Now you may be wondering why I picked this dinosaur to play beside Narmer when there are so many others I could have chosen.
And this is a great question. One that has several answers:
- It’s huge!!! The latest estimates say that these creatures would have come in at 88 ft. long, and weighed 30 tonnes (from the wikipedia page). These are monument sized animals. When it was discovered in 2001, “Its 1.69-meter-long [about 66.5 inches] humerus [was] longer than any known Cretaceous sauropod.” (Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt, pg. 5). When asked how the creature might compare to an elephant, Matt Lamanna — a grad student on the team who discovered this beastly animal — responded: “This animal is as big as an entire herd of elephants.” (LDoE, pg. 6)
Needless to say . . . it’s a big boi. - It’s Egyptian!! Well kinda. Mostly it’s bones were found in the Bahariya Formation, which is located in the Bahariya Oasis in Egypt. Assumedly, back in the days of this majestic creature, the land looked very different, and it’s my understanding that things get pushed around quite a bit because of plate tectonics etc. but for my purposes, this thing is Egyptian. Other dinosaurs found in the area (and with which Paralititan would have lived) like Aegyptosaurus, and Spinosaurus Aegyptiacus have Egypt in the name so . . . I’m counting it.
- It just seemed to fit. I’ve often heard about the “Boy and His Dragon” trope, in which a young boy finds a dragon’s egg, or something similar and it hatches, blah blah blah. Well one of the original conceptions of this particular story (though not the universe) was “What if I told a ‘Boy and His Dragon’ story, but the boy was Narmer, first Pharaoh of Egypt, and the Dragon was a 30 ton dinosaur?” The rest was history . . .
Like Narmer, there is not much left behind by these surely amazing creatures. From what I can tell, only three types of bones have been found by which to identify them (Kenneth J. Lacovara identified them. I’ve written about him before in my review of his book: Why Dinosaurs Matter).
This ended up being perfect, because it meant that I could weave this creature’s story however I needed to in order to tell the story I wanted to tell.
So what story was that?
Well, imagine the rippling emerald water of the River Nile as it rushes toward the Mediterranean Sea. Imagine the warmth of a golden sun, and the relief of a young Paralititan as it dips its head into those cool depths for a drink. Imagine its whip-like tail splashing as it plays . . .
Imagine the crocodile as it slips silently into the water, hungry for its prey . . .
And that’s it for now. Another 17 days and you can read the rest. You can check below the separator for details.
In the meantime though, what is your favorite dinosaur? What setting would you love to see it in? Answer in the comments!
Still here? Awesome. I hope you enjoyed Paralititan Stromeri: The Tidal Giant. As mentioned at the beginning of this post, this was a major influence on my own story, Narmer and the God Beast. I revealed the story’s amazing cover art and blurb a few weeks ago, illustrated for me by Lee Eschliman and I’ll continue to be putting out posts about my influences for this story all month until the story’s official launch on October 4th. If you like anything you’ve seen so far, you can head over to Amazon and preorder it now.
If you want more of my writing, please check out my fiction page, or consider signing up for my newsletter at https://jdweber.news/EgyptAndDinos. It will give you access to exclusive fiction, special offers, and just my general life and nonsense (here’s a sample newsletter). Just for signing up I’ll send you an email with the very first story I ever wrote about a Warlock Doctor.
Thanks for your time, and I hope to see you around here more!
alligators and aneurysms! 