Saucebow

The Saucebow has split from its ancestor, further specializing as a cursorial pack hunter. The most critical adaptation to their immediate survival was it's increased heat sensitivity in the nerves around the nostrils, turning them into heat sensing pits. To be able to better distinguish the environmental heat of the desert sun from specific heat sources, they have moved their feather crest to shade their nostril pits to help cool them off. While quite useful, the heat vision is by no means a high resolution image, providing a nondescript directional compass of heat sources that requires smell and echolocation to form a complete picture. It is enough to compete for food, but not outright survive a violent encounter with an argusraptors, which still prevents them from any attempt to try and expand back into their ancestral habitats.

Through a cycle of pushing itself as a cursorial hunter and adapting to weather the consequences such as dislocation and injury, It was able to expand on the pillar erect posture common to all saucebacks, elongating the hip socket into a railing held by a wide web of ligaments just under the sauce, expanding the thigh to encompass the shifting of the femur along its internal rail. As it runs, it shifts the front most leg to the front of the rail, placing the thigh just underneath the edge of the sauce. The edges of the sauce itself intersect just over the railing, allowing the sauce to act as a spring and transfer the energy from the landing at the end of one step to the lift off at the beginning of the next, which in turn shifts the body forward along the railing.



They hunt in brigades of about a dozen members each. Their curled tusks have shifted sideways, which they will use to hook onto the side of their prey and isolate individuals from the herd. When they can't find an opening around the herd, they will try to leap onto the back of prey, biting with their long externalized teeth and using their sharp down facing tail flukes as anchors to try and stabilize themselves mid stampede. Once caught, they will use their tusks as crowbars against any armor pieces, tearing large chunks of flesh with their teeth, often without bothering to kill their prey first. They are rather egalitarian, sharing the meat among themselves and collecting chunks to bring back to their brigadier - their communal nest - where they share responsibility for their larva, elderly and injured, as well as adopting the offspring's of pack members who died in battle, a key to the near suicidal behavior of leaping over a stampede for the benefit of feeding the pack as a whole.

In rest, they will shift both their legs to the back end of the railing and let their body weight slouch down, appearing clumsy for the untrained eyestrill. They are otherwise similar in proportions to their ancestor, with a slightly taller "breathing fan" and a thicker muscular base for their tail. They reproduce sexually like their ancestors, producing hard shell eggs that hatch into larva.