Species Profile: Crested Rammer

The first human casualty on the Rhynia was not caused by serrated teeth, or hooked claws, but by a torpedo-shaped creature running at the speed of a racecar. Rammers, as they would then be known, made their debut in this morbid fashion.

Anatomy and relationships

Though initially, it was thought this specimen was a highly aberrant species, one of its kind, the various research crews that would continue to explore Dome 4 for months after would find for themselves that rammers were possibly one of the most diverse predators to call Rhynia home. The original specimen would later be named the crested rammer (Maleocephalon hensoni), and placed as the holotype of its subfamily.

Though different clades of rammers specialised for different prey often look highly divergent, the feature that unifies them all is the sleek, torpedo-like body, built to minimize air resistance. Crested rammers need this particularly, as they are hypercarnivores, unable to supplement their diet with other sources of energy. Unlike many other species of related rammers, crested rammers possess three light-coloured spots on either side of their unarmoured bodies. The exact purpose of this is unknown, but some speculate that this is used for sexual selection, citing the fact that they only appear on males. As a counterbalence, rammers possess a long and stiff tail, much like those of bygone theropod dinosaurs on Earth.

Unlike many more advanced latapods, crested rammers only possess two segments in their armoured limbs. Nevertheless, they prove more than sufficient to move the creature at high speeds, approaching that of 70 km/h, just under the top speed of the Holocene ostriches. Though this barely even meets the top speed of the fasted recorded rammer, caught in the western micro-continent at an alledged 100 km/h, almost as quick as a cheetah, this speed is sufficient for the crested rammer.

One of the most unique aspects of rammer anatomy is the head. Rammers with a primary prey choice of softer pseudopods and haruspicamorphs sometimes have a sharp ram, inflicting piercing damage, while those who choose to go after harder dromaeopods possess a flat ram, inflicting blunt trauma. This niche partitioning might partially explain the high diversity of the rammers. The crested rammer inhabits the brachiophyte steppes of the southern micro-continent, where dromaeopods are plenty, and have thus adapted to the latter head strategy. What sets their rams apart from other flat-headed rammers is the possession of a crest of hair-like fibres on top of their heads, earning them their name. To avoid being concussed, rammers have fused all of their cephalic plates into one bony shield, the crested rammer is no different.

Evident from their possession of only two legs, rammers belong to a more basal position in the latapod family tree. Curiously, through genetic analysis, ir has been determined that what we oncedesignated as the singular 'rammer' group may be highly polyphyletic, with members spread all across pandromaeopoda. From the most advanced sprinters to the least derived armoured dromaeopods, if there is cursoriality, there is a rammer lodged somewhere in the group. Armoured rammers such as the crested rammer seem to be the closest relatives of pleccles of all creatures, possessing a similar armour structures and homologous 'fluff' at the end of their tails. Phylogenetic analysis, too, seems to support this conclusion. One is left to wonder how one of the most fearsome predators on the brachiophyte steppes is a cousin of a psychedelic consuming turtle analogue who lives on the other side of the dome. Perhaps at one point in the far past, the common ancestor to pleccles and armoured rammers were widespread generalists across the entirety of Dome 4, but walked divergent paths as time went on.

Somewhat surprisingly, the first Latapod fossil with a recognisable rammer-like body plan appeared in the late Carboniferous, almost 300 million years ago. If that specimen is indeed an early rammer, this would make them the earliest known carnivorous Latapod of the Rhynia, and certainly one of the most successful, considering how they have kept their bodyplan up until now. However, this theory is quite suspect, as it is unlikely for such active megafauna to have survived two mass extinctions over the course of 300 million years. A much more sane hypothesis explaining both their success and longevity is that 'rammer' is a bodyplan that separately evolved among different dromaeopod clades leading up to now, and what we now see as 'rammers' are not at all related to rammer fossils. The success of this body plan is likely based on the fundamental differences between antiarch and sarcopterygian anatomy. The awkward armoured shuffle, and inherent immobility of both predator and prey mean that once knocked over, one would not be able to easily get up again. Coupling this with the dermal skeleton of practically every latapod and the absence in durophagy, immobilising prey by ramming them onto the ground would seem a sensible solution.

Ecology and behavior

Crested rammers mainly, if not exclusively, hunt dromaeopods. Because of the specific conditions of the brachiophyte steppe, making it harder for them to conceal themselves, crested rammers are pursuit predators, and thus behave in a very different way from their ambushing relatives in the dense coastal jungles. Instead of what was presumed to be the ancestral solitary lifestyle, crested rammers hunt in packs of up to 5 individuals. In a hunt, 'forward' rammers try to strategically corner and pursue their prey into 'traps', where 'flanker' rammers emerge from to knock over their prey. After a hunt, the spoils are distributed in a hierarchy, in which the biggest individual almost always get the most food.