The news spread quickly through the forest and there was a dramatic spike in the number of dinosaurs visiting the ants. Some of them still wanted their teeth picked, but most came seeking treatment for dental ailments, because tooth decay was prevalent among carnivores and herbivores alike. On the busiest days, several hundred dinosaurs would congregate in the clearing, striding along carefully between great streams of ants. It was a bustling, prosperous scene. Accordingly, there was also a sharp increase in the number of ants who came to service the dinosaurs, and, unlike their patients, the ants, once arrived, rarely left. And so, what had started off as a normal-sized town exploded into a megalopolis of more than a million ants. It was called the Ivory Citadel and became famous as the first gathering place of ants and dinosaurs on Earth.

With the boom in business and the end of the dry season, the ants were no longer satisfied with scraps scavenged from between the dinosaurs’ teeth. Their clients began to pay for their medical services with fresh bones and meat. Since the ants of the Ivory Citadel no longer needed to forage for food, they became professional dentists. This specialisation led to rapid advances in the ants’ medical technology.

In the course of their anti-toothworm campaigns, the ants often travelled along the cavities to the roots of the dinosaurs’ teeth. At the junction of the teeth and the gums they found thick translucent pipes. When these pipes were touched, for example during combat, violent earthquakes would shake the dinosaurs’ mouths. Over time, the ants came to understand that stimulating these pipes caused the dinosaurs pain; later, they would call these structures nerves.

The ants had for a long time known of a certain two-leafed herb that could make their own limbs go numb – numb enough that they felt no pain when a leg was torn off – and that could also put them to sleep, sometimes for several days. They now applied the juice of this herb to the nerves in the roots of the dinosaurs’ teeth, and the consequence was that contact with the nerves no longer triggered earthquakes. The gums of dinosaurs with dental diseases were frequently septic, but the ants knew of another herb whose juice could promote wound healing. So they spread the juice of this herb across the ulcers on the dinosaurs’ gums, which closed up quickly.

The introduction of these two pain- and inflammation-reducing techniques not only enabled the ants to cure dinosaurs of toothworm infestations but also allowed them to treat other ailments not caused by the worms, such as toothaches and periodontitis. However, the real revolution in the ants’ medical technology was brought about by the exploration of the dinosaur body.

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