The springe is the most cunning of the hunting non-avian dinosaurs. Its Cretaceous ancestors were the most intelligent animals of the time, and this trait has continued through evolution. The intelligence has evolved for a simple purpose - to find food more efficiently.
The hunting strategy of the springe is one of ambush. It lies on a tidal mud bank, in an attitude of rigor mortis, with its head and tail thrown back and its hind leg pulled into a stiff pose. It inflates its belly, showing off the deathlike mottling, and emits a smell like that of putrefaction (1). This performance is irresistible to the carrion birds and scavenging pterosaurs of the swamps who flock to the site. A swift dart of the killing claw (2) and a victim is impaled.
The springe, Necrosimulacrum avilaquem, is a short-snouted, strictly carnivorous troodontine troodontid that attracts its prey by playing dead, living in the wetlands of mixed woodlands in southern North America, from The New Dinosaurs: An Alternative Evolution.
In the midst of the southern deltas of North America there lives one of the most cunning of the non-avian dinosaur hunters. A species of troodontid, descended from Troodon and related to Saurornithoides, the springe, measuring about 3 meters (10 feet) long, has a similar size and proportion to its ancestors. Its head, however, has expanded and now contains a larger brain, and the killing claw is carried on a particularly long second toe. With its naked skin mottled a deathly white and pink, and the matted, dark patterned feathers, the springe has a derelict, morbid appearance.