Caraxor

The salty wastelands of the perchlorate deserts are not completely devoid of macroscopic life. The process by which the perchloareont microbes create oxygen also turns toxic perchlorate back into regular sodium chloride. While the brine oases inside these deserts are thus still extremely salty, they are far less toxic than the perchlorate flats that surround them. A few halophilic extremophiles can thus carve out a life inside the brine ponds. They largely consist of simple plant-life, various worms, and some antitrematans and pseudarticulates. The majority of which are barely visible with the naked eye. These salt-dwarves may tremble when the shadow of a caraxor glides over their home. It is the only large animal thriving in the northern wastes.

The Caraxor is a periostracan distantly related to the nothornithes. Whereas Nothornitha are bird-like bipeds, the ancestors of the Caraxor and its relatives, also known as the Pedicambulata, have gone down a different route. In the ancestral periostracans, the tail was exoskeletal, constructed of hardened tunicine rings, making it similar to the chitinous tails of crustaceans. In some of their descendants, many of these rings seem to have fused with each other into elongated, solid elements, until they formed a third appendage comparable to the hindlegs of some insects. The evolution of a third leg has given the older limbs of these tripods more freedom than in the bennus, allowing them to adapt to more specialized uses. Evidently, some took to flying.

With its bat-like wings, the Caraxor soars through the deserts in search of brine pools. In these, the aerial tripod wades and feeds much like an Andean flamingo. Pedicambulates have a much higher tendency towards polydonty than their nothornithe cousins, meaning that their scolecophores can bear multiple tooth-shafts. The four scolecophores of its jaw thus can thus form comb-like tight slits. With this derived jaw apparatus, it sifts the brine for small organisms, of which it is the only predator. Strong glands underneath the armpits help with excreting much of the salt, allowing it also to drink the brine. During flight and feeding, a dense pelt of white fur protects it from the harsh solar rays and the cold desert nights. Possibly, the Caraxor also has some form of tolerance to the toxic effect of perchlorates, perhaps through endosymbiosis with the same organisms that make the desert liveable.

Caraxors do not sleep or nest beside the brine pools in which they feed. Instead, they fly out towards rocky outcrops in the middle of the perchlorate wastes, where they can rest and hatch their eggs in safety above the toxic ground. The many remains of dead animals along the desert outskirts attest to the success of this strategy. Any would-be predator venturing here to feed on the Caraxor or its eggs is likely to die beforehand from the aridity and especially the toxicity.

Thus, the caraxors rule alone over the white wastes, their only company being the dry, bleached bones of fools. But to be a king in the desolation is still better than to be a pawn in death. It is a largely peaceful life, with their only enemies being disease or themselves.