Now of the second son of Amnios hear—
Great Sauros who would father all the scale
That shimmered through the forest every year
And gave the world its dragons in their tale.
Where Synaps turned his extra bones toward heat
And warmth within, great Sauros chose the way
Of armor, scale, and claw to meet
Whatever challenges would come his way.
He hollowed out his skull with window-vaults—
Two openings behind each eye so clear
That made his bite more powerful—no faults
Could slow the jaw of one with nothing to fear.
These Temporal Fenestrae, windows bright
Behind the eyes, would mark his every son:
Whichever children carried two in sight
Were Diapsids—to the dragon's run
The lineage that leads to claw and wing
And scaled skin cold against the morning air,
To everything that makes the forest ring
With ancient sound of those who scale and snare.
But first his elder son Paraps held close
The older style of solid, sealed-in skull—
No windows in his cranium; of those
Who sought security complete and full.
From Paraps would come the patient ones
Who built their shells around them like a home:
The Turtlos line, the armor-bearing sons
Who'd carry fortress-houses as they'd roam.
A shell above, a shell below the ribs
That fused into a carapace and plate—
No armor in the world more strong than this:
A house the turtle carries to his fate.
The younger son Eureps chose to own
The windows—two behind each eye so wide—
And from him would grow kingdoms still unknown
To any creature walking at his side.
For from Eureps came the great divide
In two great lines that split beneath the trees:
Great Squamos, whose descendants multiply
Through every form of lizard, snake, and these
Who hold the oldest lineage of all—
The tuatara in his island fastness,
Last of a line that heard the ancient call
Of Sauros' children in their Carboniferous vastness.
His children bear the scale of lizard-kind
From mountain height to tidal rocky shore,
And snakes who shed their skin and leave behind
The worn-out form to start themselves once more.
From Eureps also came great Archon who
Would build toward something no one yet had dreamed:
A lineage of rulers coming through
The ages in a dynasty that seemed
Impossible from where they started here
In hollow log among the coal-swamp floor—
But Archon's children would in time appear
As crocodilians by the river's shore,
As flying wonders riding storm and cloud,
As tyrants terrible in tooth and claw—
But that is yet a telling not yet vowed,
A chapter we must reach in patient awe.
For Hylonomus found the hollow log
And laid his sealed eggs in the dry wood's keep,
Through all the seasons, summer rain, and fog
His dynasty would multiply from sleep.
In Joggins' ancient cliffs in later years
His bones would find their tomb of stone revealed—
The earliest known sauropsid appears,
Whose scales in coal-swamp amber were thus sealed.
Great Sauros teaches us a deeper truth:
That sometimes what protects us serves us best
When worn upon the outside—armored youth
That scales and plates the body for each test.
And sometimes what protects us is the gap—
The window in the solid wall of bone
That makes us faster, stronger, sets the trap
Of evolution in our favor known.
From windows in the skull to wings one day,
From hollow log to sky-commanding flight,
The dragon-kindred found their destined way
Through darkness of the coal swamp into light.
So honor those who sealed their young in shells
And wore their armor proudly on their back,
Who made their home in hollow ancient wells
And never heard the old sea calling back.