“I used to keep Mexican walking fish when I was a kid; looks like the daddy of one of those,” said Monica.

“I think it’s a dinosaur. Man, oh man, it was a real live dinosaur!” Matt was beside himself.

“Close, very close, but not reptilian or saurian. Long scaleless amphibious morphology, shovel-shaped head, short but muscular legs; I think it’s a labyrinthodont.” Aimee moved to the head and lifted the mouth to display an upper and lower jaw that when brought together made the teeth slide past each other like scissor blades. The surface of the palate was covered by tiny raised denticles, similar to shark skin. By looking at the mouth and teeth, once the creature got something into that maw, there was little hope of it escaping. In fact, Tank was right; it did look exactly like a shark’s mouth.

“Wow, welcome back, big guy.” Matt ran his hands down the slimy body. “Once we started finding life, we should have expected something like this.”

Aimee nodded. “Monica was close about walking fish. These are the grand-daddies of today’s salamanders and newts and last lived right here in the Antarctic. Everywhere else they were out-competed by the crocodiles, but it was way too cold for crocs down here and the labryinthodonts once thrived. Of course, this was over a hundred million years ago. But one thing no one would have expected—it’s black,” said Aimee.

“I know, deadly but beautiful, isn’t it.” Matt responded, still looking lovingly at the dead creature.

“No, I don’t mean that as a fashion statement. I mean it shouldn’t be; it shouldn’t be any colour. We’re miles under the surface in total darkness. All the creatures we’ve seen so far have displayed all the expected troglomorphies associated with their adaptation to a subterranean life. Things like loss of pigment, loss of eyes, longer legs and other enlarged sensory organs. This thing is an ambush specialist; it hunts using sight.”

They all looked at the fist-sized black eye on the side of the large head—it jerked. Matt and the others leaped back and the HAWCs raised their guns. The creature started to move slowly back into the water, tentatively at first then with a rapid jerking. It wasn’t moving under its own strength. It was being dragged back into the depths by something else unseen.

“It’s the blood, seems to be a very attractive commodity down here. I think we better go now.” Alex instructed them to double-time it for a few minutes to clear the feeding frenzy zone. The cold light from the cavern was extinguished as the loud sounds of thrashing and ripping could be heard from where the small group had just been—nothing would be wasted down here.