Soom, South Africa, Ordovician era, 444 million years ago
In the hem of the Cederberg,
a "mysterious predator. . . . identified . . . only . . . by the traces it leaves behind . . . broken, crunched fragments. . . .
feeds on . . . Promissum pulchrum,
the creature of the 'beautiful promise'."*
So what else is new?
The enemies of promise have long abounded here! RISE Mzansi!**
*Thomas Halliday, Otherlands: A Journey through Earth's Extinct Worlds (New York: Random House, 2022), p. 244.