Prehistoria is a series of short stories by Jack Blackburn that take place millions of years ago during the time of ancient animals. It intends to place emphasis on our modern understanding of prehistoric life, with a special section at the end of each book almost as long as the stories that goes into great detail about the author's researching.
The first story, The Raptor's Tail, takes place during the Late Cretaceous period in Mongolia. It follows the life of an Adasaurus named Ruby trying to raise a new family in a land dominated by dinosaurs many times her size.
The Raptor's Tail provides examples of:
- Behemoth Battle:
- From Ruby's point of view, the fight between the Therizinosaurus and the Deinocheirus is like getting caught in-between a tussle between two kaiju.
- To a lesser extent, the fight between one huge Tyrannosaur vs. three slightly smaller Tyrannosaurs.
- Big Bad: For The Raptor's Tail, the Alioramus pack.
- Big Damn Heroes: Khan the Tarbosaurus trounces the Alioramus pack raiding Ruby's nest after hearing her cry for help.
- Chekhov's Gun: The large footprint in the glade is revealed to be that of the local Tarbosaurus.
- Likewise, Ruby's ability to mimic a Tarbosaurus call is utilized to its full extent during the Alioramus confrontation.
- Conservation of Ninjutsu: Three able-bodied Alioramus vs. one Tarbosaurus. The latter barely even gets scratched.
- Cool vs. Awesome: Therizinosaurus and Deinocheirus, two of the most unique dinosaurs ever discovered, fight when the latter assaults the former in a musth-driven fury.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Khan utterly demolishes the Alioramus pack, nearly killing them before they retreat.
- The Darkness Gazes Back: The Alioramus have an eerie yellow eyeshine when stalking about the forest at night.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Ruby comes close to certain death during her time as Khan's nestkeeper, but in the end, she gets to raise both his and her own children by his side. It's also implied that her whole family line will live on for generations to come.
- Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: All of the dinosaurs have behaviors modeled after modern animals woven between indications in the real-life fossils.
- Adasaurus has a gestalt of a dikkop bird, secretary bird, and jackal behaviors.
- Alioramus takes cues from wolves as social nocturnal predators.
- Deinocheirus acts like a territorial elephant, hippo, and mockingbird.
- Therizinosaurus is a reactive but otherwise aloof herbivore in a manner like gorillas and giraffes.
- Tarbosaurus behaves similarly to tigers and even has a vaguely stripe-like pattern.
- Feathered Fiend: Every major dinosaur has feathers to varying degrees. And almost all of them are very dangerous in their own way.
- Foreshadowing: Several.
- The nest was already built when Ruby was driven from the forest and is built with sturdy timbers seemingly too big for her to move. Because she wasn't the one who built it.
- Ruby and the intruding female Adasaurus aren't alarmed by the giant theropod track in the glade. It's a Tarbosaurus print, a species which is symbiotic to theirs and no threat to them.
- When the adult male Tarbosaurus shows up, his first major action upon attacking the Alioramus pack is to put himself between them and Ruby and the nest. It's not on accident, he's protecting them.
- Herbivores Are Friendly: Averted and played with in regards to the Deinocheirus and Therizinosaurus respectively. The former is in a hormonal surge like musth in elephants and therefore attacks everything in sight, while the latter is passive to most creatures around it, and only registers the mad Deinocheirus as a threat.
- Imperiled in Pregnancy: Ruby, already in labor, has it even more exacerbated as the Alioramus pack bears down on her nest.
- Interspecies Adoption: The epilogue of The Raptor's Tail has Ruby bond with Khan's kids, who see her as a surrogate mother/nanny.
- Interspecies Friendship: Ruby (an Adasaurus) and Khan (a Tarbosaurus) are in a symbiotic relationship mostly based off that of the Nile crocodile and the water dikkop bird. Ruby looks after the Tyranosaur's eggs while he provides food and protection if need be.
- Mama Bear: When faced with protecting her eggs or self-preservation, Ruby always chooses the former. Even if her instincts for the latter urge her to flee, she resists and protects the nest with everything she's got.
- Noble Bird of Prey: Ruby, an Adasaurus, resembles a rusty red colored secretary bird.
- Papa Wolf: Male Tarbosaurus with young are portrayed as dutiful fathers, modeled after cassowaries and eagles. Khan drops everything he's doing when it becomes clear that both his nest and Ruby are in danger. The Alioramus pack is crippled immensely once he shows up.
- Platonic Life-Partners: Ruby and Khan.
- Predators Are Mean: Downplayed in The Raptor's Tail. The Adasaurus is our protagonist, and is only a threat to small creatures, and the Tarbosaurus turns out to be the hero of the hour in the end.
- The Alioramus are the antagonists, but it's established that they're not evil, just doing what animals do.
- Raptor Attack: Averted hard. The Adasaurus is as accurate as it can be with what is known. In fact, there's an entire expose at the end of The Raptor's Tail detailing the history of how raptors have been understood and portrayed in media and paleontology. Key points made are that the Dromaeosauridae family was extremely long lived and diverse, and even if some species were potentially pack hunting social predators, it is likely plenty of them were not.
- The Reveal: When Ruby lays an egg in her nest, it's completely different from the rest. Once Khan shows up, it becomes clear that Ruby's been guarding a Tarbosaurus nest this whole time in a symbiotic relationship.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: Baby Tarbosaurus are adorable, downy little things as hatchlings.
- Shark Fin of Doom: The first sign of the Deinocheirus being present is when Ruby spots his back hump sticking up out of the river it's wading in, at first mistaking it for a small hill as the rest of obscured by water and reeds.
- Shout-Out: Ruby is, in some ways, very similar to Raptor Red, being a raptor who lost her mate and has to raise children mostly alone.
- The battle between the Therizinosaurus and the Deinocheirus is meant to be a nod to Kaiju fights in general.
- The illustration of the Tarbosaurus Khan pulverizing the lead Alioramus is appropriately titled "The Wrath of Khan".
- Shown Their Work: Speculative features that fit within the margins of what is known aside, the dinosaurs designs are accurate at least as far as everything known by early 2023 is concerned. There's even a whole section of the book that demonstrates the science and history behind everything.
- One major example in The Raptor's Tail is how the dromaeosaur protagonist of a story taking place in the Maastrichtian stage of the Late Cretaceous isn't a Velociraptor but a close descendant, something even Prehistoric Planet didn't get right.
- Speculative Biology: A lot of speculative behaviors are utilized, most based on both the fossil record as well as parallels in modern animals. Blackburn is transparent such behaviors are often impossible to prove, so their use should be taken with a grain of salt even with the back-half of the book going into great detail about how the behaviors were grounded in reality.
- Summon Bigger Fish: Ruby gets the attention of Khan the Tarbosaurus to fend off Alioramus pack.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: The fight between the Therizinosaurus and the Deinocheirus is violent, yes, but it doesn't end with one or the other dead like it would in most pop culture fights. Instead, they have their tussle, and then instantly calm down and retreat when it becomes clear that a Tarbosaurus isn't far away.
- Terrifying Tyrannosaur: Alioramus and Tarbosaurus both feature.
- That's No Moon: The little island in the middle of the water isn't an island, but the hump of a Deinocheirus poking out.
- Tough Armored Dinosaur: Defied. Tarchia, a large ankylosaur, appears... as a corpse.
- Voice Changeling: A major skill of the Adasaurus is the ability to mimic a Tarbosaurus vocalizations, on top of having tail markings resembling one's eyes. It's incremental to summoning Khan to help Ruby.
- Xenofiction: Everything is from the animals' point of view. To compound this, the author states again and again that they have no concept of things like good and evil or anything related to our morality. Everything is based on instinct and what it takes to survive.
