American Grazing Dinosaurs

The endless plains of the American Midwest provided a new but difficult food source for native dinosaurs. Grass is plentiful, but poor in nutrients and tough. Many evolved two or three chambered stomachs from their crops while also sticking to eating stones like their ancestors. While the Geminilophus is the most common, other dinosaurs took to the Wide West.

The Equimimus is a descendant of the Ornithimimids of the late Cretaceous, and is more common around the Sierra Madre Mountains than the plains themselves. Stockier and more robust than their ancestors, Equimimids also turned their beaks into an internal structure to begin picking and grinding their food. While they don't have teeth, per se, they do have thick plates on the lateral sides of their mouths that function much the same way. The individual pictured is a male developing his mating season plumage on his mane and tail. Aside from the almost uniform red and purple breeding colors, Equimimids come in a variety of grays, browns, and tans.

During the last twenty-million years, pachycephalosaurs began to graze as quadropeds but run from predators as bipeds. This switch-on-the-run mentality caused their hands to fuse together into symmetrical hooves, leading to the Iunctumani family. The Greater Onyx Horn retains the combat-ready bumps and ridges of its ancestors, while adding sharp horns to the mix. What it lacks in speed it makes up for in tenacity. While other Iunctumani have elaborate horns purely for decoration, the Onyx-horn's headgear make it a match for any raptor.

Predators would love to take down a slow, chubby target such as a goose, so the odd Skunk Goose uses a unique defense: chemical warfare. It often eats toxic plants, such as milkweed and belladonna, that other grazers avoid and stores the poisonous chemicals in its crop. When threatened, it can regurgitate either the horrible smell or even disgusting projectiles. The only time when they're vulnerable is when they can't find their noxious foods, or during nesting season, because the chicks' immune systems and livers aren't up to handling that cocktail. So during the nesting season, they migrate to the relatively safer Alaskan/Canadian tundra, where hopefully their distinctive colors will scare any predators away.