English
Spanish
8+ years
RPG
Trails: 3
The Last Spring at Hell Creek
Sixty-six million years ago, in the world of Tyrannosaurus rex, a mouse-sized mammal called Mesodma must cross the Hell Creek floodplain and survive the day the sky falls. Every animal and every fact is real — the same species museums display today, all from the same rocks.
What is in this deck
- 14 Collectable
- 10 Question
- 5 Enemy
- 3 Ally
- 3 Event
- 2 Checkpoint
- 2 Trap
- 1 Dice Roll
- 1 Merchant
A taste of the art
3 cards from this deck, drawn at random.
The cards
- The Burrow at Dawn Hell Creek, 66 million years ago. You are Mesodma — a mouse-sized multituberculate mammal, one of the most common mammals on this warm, humid floodplain in what will become Montana and the Dakotas. Flowering plants, palms and bald-cypress swamps stretch toward the shrinking inland sea, and every large animal here is one museums still display today. Scan the codes hidden along the trail: record the animals, answer the exhibit questions, survive the predators — then face the King.
- The Bladed Tooth Multituberculates carried a tall, ridged lower premolar shaped like a circular-saw blade — a slicing tool for seeds and hard fruit, unlike anything in a modern rodent's mouth. Time your bite on the bar to claim it. +4 attack.
- Ginkgo Seeds Ginkgo trees grew here, and their fan-shaped leaves are among the commonest Hell Creek plant fossils. The same tree still lines city streets today, almost unchanged after 66 million years. A pouchful of seeds: +2 vitality.
- Triceratops horridus The commonest large dinosaur in Hell Creek — in some field surveys, close to 40% of all dinosaur skeletons found. Its skull could reach 2.5 metres, with brow horns over a metre long, and its jaws held hundreds of teeth stacked in replaceable columns. When the first horns were found in 1887, they were mistaken for a giant bison. Record the specimen for 8 coins.
- Edmontosaurus annectens A duck-billed hadrosaur up to 12 metres long, with roughly a thousand tightly packed teeth for grinding conifers and flowering plants. Several skeletons survive as 'mummies' with fossilised skin, and one specimen carries a healed Tyrannosaurus bite on its tail — proof it was attacked while alive and got away. Record it for 6 coins.
- Closer in Time A quiz. Answer right and the card pays.
- Borealosuchus Ambush A crocodylian up to three metres long, Borealosuchus, waits in the river channel. Hell Creek's rivers were crowded with crocodile relatives — the commonest, blunt-toothed Brachychampsa, crushed turtles for a living. You are small enough to be one bite. Lose 6 coins.
- Didelphodon vorax A badger-sized relative of marsupials with, for its size, the strongest bite force of any mammal ever measured — strong enough to crack snails and small vertebrates. Skull studies suggest it hunted along the waterways like an otter. To a Mesodma it is death on four legs. Win the duel to escape.
- Cypress Hollow A hollow among bald-cypress knees in the swamp — a safe place to rest. Cypress, palm and ginkgo leaves are among the commonest Hell Creek fossils, and their shapes tell scientists the climate here was warm and humid, closer to today's Gulf Coast than to Montana. Progress banked.
- Struthiomimus, the Lookout An 'ostrich mimic' with a toothless beak, long legs built for sprinting and, like its cousin Ornithomimus, feathered arms. Ornithomimids are thought to have been among the fastest dinosaurs — perhaps 50 km/h or more. It is nervous, tall and always looking. Follow it and you get its warning. Ally: +3 defense.
- Ankylosaurus magniventris The largest armoured dinosaur — up to 8 metres long, plated in bone, with a tail club up to 60 cm long that could break bone. Named 'fused lizard' by Barnum Brown in 1908. It is one of the rarest dinosaurs here: after more than a century of digging, only three skulls are known. Record it for 10 coins.
- Pachycephalosaurus wyomingensis The largest of the dome-headed dinosaurs, up to 4.5 metres long, with a skull dome of solid bone up to 25 cm thick. Healed injuries on fossil domes match head-on collisions, so they probably did butt heads. Its front teeth were small and blade-like — some scientists think it ate meat as well as plants. Record it for 7 coins.
- The Female Tyrant A quiz. Answer right and the card pays.
- Meniscoessus, the Elder A big old multituberculate — Meniscoessus, one of the largest of your kind here, about the size of a small rabbit. Multituberculates were the longest-lived group of mammals ever, thriving for more than 120 million years, and this one trades what it knows for coins.
- Night Eyes Mesozoic mammals were mostly nocturnal — living in the dark, under the dinosaurs' feet, for more than 100 million years. Big eyes, keen whiskers and a sharp nose came out of that long night. +2 defense.
- Deep Burrow Dig deeper. Burrowing may be one reason small mammals outlived the dinosaurs: underground, they could escape the searing heat of falling debris and the bitter cold of the years after. +3 vitality.
- Acheroraptor temertyorum The last raptor. Acheroraptor was a 3-metre dromaeosaur — a close cousin of Velociraptor — named in 2013 from a jaw found in Montana; its distinctive teeth had turned up in Hell Creek for decades before anyone knew which animal they came from. Feathered, quick, and it hunts things exactly your size. Win the duel to escape.
- Shed Tooth of the King A single serrated tooth crown, as long as your whole body, lying in the mud. Tyrannosaurus shed and regrew teeth throughout its life, which is why lone teeth are by far the most common T. rex fossils found. The King is near. 12 coins.
- Tyrannosaurus rex Twelve metres long, around eight tonnes, some sixty banana-sized teeth and a bite of roughly 35,000 newtons — enough to crush bone, and fossilised dung packed with shattered bone proves it did. Its eyes faced forward for depth perception and its brain was built around smell. In its teens it gained about two kilograms a day. Sue, the most complete skeleton known, came from Hell Creek and died at around 28 years old. It lived closer in time to you than to Stegosaurus. Survive the King.
- The Sky Falls Something happens here. The score stays where it is.
- Anzu wyliei, the Chicken from Hell A 3.5-metre, feathered, toothless oviraptorosaur with a tall crest — nicknamed 'the chicken from hell' when it was named in 2014 from three partial skeletons collected in the Dakotas. Weighing 200–300 kg, it probably ate plants, small animals and eggs. Two of the three skeletons show healed injuries: a broken rib and a damaged toe. Record it for 6 coins.
- The Giant Azhdarchid A pterosaur with a wingspan approaching 10 metres — the family of Quetzalcoatlus, whose Texan bones describe an animal as tall as a giraffe when it walked on all fours. Giant azhdarchid bones have been found in Hell Creek too. Toothless, long-necked, and probably a stalker of small prey on the ground. Record it for 8 coins.
- Avisaurus, the Hunting Bird Not every bird here is one that survives. Avisaurus belonged to the enantiornithines, an ancient group of birds that vanished with the dinosaurs. Known mainly from foot bones, its toes and claws show a grip like a hawk's — built to seize and carry prey. Prey like you. Win the duel to escape.
- Thescelosaurus, the Digger A three-metre plant-eater with a strange story: its first skeleton was dug up in 1891 and left in shipping crates for over twenty years, so when it was finally named in 1913 it became Thescelosaurus neglectus — the 'neglected wonderful lizard'. CT scans of its skull suggest poor eyesight, weak hearing and a keen nose: the senses of an animal that spends time underground. Ally: +2 vitality.
- Leptoceratops gracilis Not every horned-dinosaur relative was huge. Leptoceratops was hornless, about 2 metres long, with a parrot-like beak and a short frill, and probably moved on two legs as well as four. It lived alongside Triceratops right up to the end. Record it for 4 coins.
- A Mouthful of Teeth A quiz. Answer right and the card pays.
- Where the Sky Fell A quiz. Answer right and the card pays.
- Many Cusps A quiz. Answer right and the card pays.
- Which Way Through the Swamp? The cypress swamp forks. One way is dry roots and easy seeds; the other is deep water and Champsosaurus — a long-snouted, fish-eating reptile that looks like a crocodile but isn't one. Roll: win and take 8 coins, lose and pay 8.
- The Young Tyrant A six-metre tyrannosaur — slim, long-legged, with narrow blade-like teeth instead of bone-crushers, and almost certainly faster than any adult. 'Jane', a famous Montana skeleton, died at about eleven years old. Whether animals like her are teenage T. rex or a separate, lighter species called Nanotyrannus is one of the liveliest arguments in palaeontology, reopened by a 2025 study of a remarkably complete skeleton. Either way, it hunts small, quick prey. Win the duel to escape.
- Buried Together Something happens here. The score stays where it is.
- The First Primate Something happens here. The score stays where it is.
- The Mummy's Skin A dead Edmontosaurus, skin drying tight over its bones in the sun. Most carcasses rot to nothing, but a few here dry out, get buried fast, and keep their skin as fossil — the famous 'mummies'. One found in North Dakota in 1999 by a teenager, Tyler Lyson, still wears scaly skin over much of its body, and a 2022 study found scavengers' bite marks in that skin and signs the body had dried before burial. Beetles and grubs for you: 10 coins.
- Flash Flood The rivers here flood without warning, spilling over their banks and dumping sand and mud across the floodplain. That is why Hell Creek keeps its dead so well — most big skeletons were buried in river-channel sand and flood silt. It is also why small things get swept away. Lose 8 coins.
- Basilemys, the Land Turtle Turtles are the commonest vertebrate fossils in Hell Creek — more than a dozen species — and Basilemys was the giant of the land-going ones, with a shell around a metre long. Turtles came through the extinction far better than dinosaurs did: most of the kinds living here survived into the world after. Record it for 4 coins.
- The Triceratops Nursery Three young Triceratops — pony-sized, horns still short and curving backward — moving together through the ferns. Adults are usually found alone, but a Montana bonebed holding three juveniles buried together suggests the young stuck in groups, safer from tyrannosaurs that way. Walk among them and you get the same cover. Ally: +2 defense.
- Neighbours of the King A quiz. Answer right and the card pays.
- A Living Dinosaur A quiz. Answer right and the card pays.
- The Thin Grey Line A quiz. Answer right and the card pays.
- Why 'Sue'? A quiz. Answer right and the card pays.
- One Dinosaur or Two? A quiz. Answer right and the card pays.