#that ending bit is a teaser for the next entry and also my reworked head shape for Rodan⏤the skull being shortened and thickened

[guthrie-odonto]

Biola: Monster Genesis: Rodan

The year is 2023. A particularly heavy swarm of Meganulon emerges from the earth in response to mining activity. If that wasn’t enough for Typhon to deal with (Meganulon and Meganlon larva, Meganula for short, have already been encountered by the organization in 1956, so they have experience with the insect), there were two other ancient megapredators that awoke alongside them. This pair giant “birds” would be given this name by Typhon: Rodan.

Despite appearing like the more innacurate depictions of pterosaurs, closer morphological and genetic study has found that Rodans are a highly derived pachycephalosaur, evolving from ancestors that were arboreal and with neotenic in their heads, eventually gaining flight and growing massive in convergence with large pterosaurs, with wing membranes only stretching to the hips as a fan of protofeathers from their shorter tails providing lift to the posterior end. In a radical extension of the pachycephalosaurid’s head butting behavior (which is retained in their combat, both on ground and through falcon-like, high speed impacts), these dinosaurs also show a heavy convergence with woodpeckers. With some help from their wing spurs (also used in combat and to search for hidden prey like an aye-aye tapping its finger), they use their robust beaks to chisel into the mountains and cliffs containing Meganulon, their prey, before consuming them with their long, spear tipped tongues that also wrap around their brain case like a woodpecker's.

Initially, the Rodans, a larger, brightly colored male and a dull, burgundy female, stuck to their natural food source. Both snatching individuals in the air like bee-eaters, digging within the nest, and picking off stragglers on the ground⏤then, when the swarms made their way into cities and the bugs got more inconspicuous, they started to supplement their diets with the tiny, bony things that were smaller than Meganulon, but also weren't as innately defended...

Eventually, like the real world's 56 film, their nesting site at Mt. Aso is discovered and incinerated with a controlled eruption, with the Rodans perishing in the explosion...

... about 66% of the Rodans, that is...