[ A PROTOCERATOPS FIGHTING AGAINST A VELOCIRAPTOR ]
...This is a famous scene on which many illustrations had been created.
...A Velociraptor, being bitten by a Protoceratops on the right arm, hooks its left arm on the opponent's jaw and attacks with claws on the left leg to slit up the enemy's flank. A blowing sandstorm is about to swallow the two animals engaged in a life-and-death struggle.
...This illustration was inspired by a pair of fossils that are very well known as they record one actual incident occurred in Central Asia about 83 million years ago (the Late Cretaceous). The fossils demonstrate the event vividly as if the fight itself has been preserved in a time capsule to become "Fossils of the Time".
...These fossils remind me of the work by late Tokumitsu Iwago, an animal photographer, on the nature of Spitsbergen Island.
...The shot captured the bones of two reindeers that had died during a fight and remained in the field. Their locked horns did not loosen even after their death, as if they were showing off the hardship of wildlife that requires continuous fight beyond life. Mr. Iwago wrote, "I was struck by the cruelty" to see the remains (in his photograph collection "Wildlife" published by Shogakukan, 1976).
...What had happened to the two dinosaurs? The bones of two reindeers will eventually stop fighting as they are gradually decomposed in the weather of cold desert, tundra. On the contrary, the two dinosaurs still continue fighting in a museum of human era, ---- even today when more than 80 million years have passed since they had become stones.
< Original source: "Dinosaurs: Keiji Terakoshi's World" (2007); ....translated by Miwako Iwamoto for this site >
