How can there be dinosaurs in Second Empire? Did they not die out 66 million years ago? If you don't count the birds, of cause.
The explanation is a genus of sentient being which existed 68 – 56 million years ago. (These were also responsible for the terraforming or Ahira.) I call them Gaardinnians after the planet where they evolved. The Gaardinnians was a considerably more cautious genus than humanity. For this reason, they only managed to get out of their planetary system once. They visited Earth about 100,000 years before the extinction of the dinosaurs. This planet was examined for possible colonisation, but they decided not to colonise it. By then they had grown fond of some of the planet's smartest animals. They belonged to a species of the genus Troodon which were the world's smartest dinosaurs. The Gaardinnians took a few hundred with them which the then bred systematically. The species become a popular pet which spread across many worlds.
Eventually, the Gaardinnians inevitably died out. However, on some of their worlds their pets survived them. On at least two of these worlds, animals descending from them survived into the human era. On one of these two the genus of shayas (Shaya) evolved. On the other one the genus evolved which the saurians belong to (Henriksaurus).
This page was last changed on the 7th of Mars 2023.