Hornsnap

The Hornsnap split from its ancestor and returned to the ground, becoming a small ground-dwelling predator. It has lost the ability to glide. With its poorly-placed center of gravity, it supports itself on bent lateral limbs and a curled anal hand, effectively making it a pentaped. As a notable result, it resembles the Prosubigosaurus of another time and place. It is named for its dentition: rather than having fairly uniform osteoderm-teeth, the ones towards the center of the mouth are smaller than the ones closer to the lips, and of those the ones in the front are larger than those in the back. This grants it rather long horn-like fangs at the front of its mouth, which it uses to kill prey with the snap of its jaws. Its lower pair of nostrils has moved further back to prevent blood from entering them. It is able to kill prey much larger than itself, and will do so opportunistically, but it generally prefers to eat smaller prey. It generally uses its lateral mandibles to snatch prey and hold it in place before biting down.

The Hornsnap’s reproduction is altered. Living on the ground and being small and vulnerable to predation itself, despite its features allowing for larger babies than most spardis, it has gone full-on r-strategy and it gives birth to tiny, fetal offspring. In fact, its offspring are so undeveloped that they are truly radial at birth--they have no bilateral features at all, even internally. Too small and helpless to leave the hand-pouch, they are nourished by what is effectively a yolk sac which they hug to themselves with their unossified limbs until they have developed more. They barely qualify as “live”, as all that separates them from something in an egg is that there isn’t an egg. They are kept moist using specialized glands inside the hand-pouch, and while carrying young the hand-pouch is held closed through the hand being curled into a fist. Males retain the pouch for carrying older young, but this has become a less frequent behavior.

For better leverage, the Hornsnap’s lateral limbs--now effectively forelimbs--have had their joint positions shifted. These legs now have only 3 externally distinct segments, but the joints between them and with the foot bear the remaining 3 segments. This makes these limbs very flexible compared to similarly-shaped tetrapod legs. The left and right “legs” of the anal hand are comparatively less flexible and are moved almost entirely with tendons, being derived from digits. The “tail” of the anal hand is also mostly tendon, though it has far more segments than the other two digits, as it does not have prior history of being used for locomotion in the Hornsnap’s recent ancestors.

With the transition back to the ground, the Hornsnap has settled on a single mating method. By process of elimination, mounting--where one climbs on top of the other and curls its anal hand under their partner--has won out, despite the conflict with survival instincts. In order to overcome this issue, the skin surrounding the cloaca is significantly more sensitive, causing the sensation of mating to literally overpower the instinctive fear of being attacked from above.