Dinotopia: The World Beneath

***Dinotopia: The World Beneath*** is the second book in the Dinotopia series. It was published in 1995

Plot Synopsis:

A quest is undertaken to discover the lost World Beneath focuses mainly on Arthur Denison's return expedition to the World Beneath and opens with Will fly testing an invention of his father, the Dragoncopter – a steam engine ornithopter modeled on the dragonfly. The Dragoncopter fails and Will is narrowly saved by Cirrus, his Skybax mount, before the Dragoncopter plummets into a waterfall. After returning from his first expedition in A Land Apart From Time, Arthur presents two items he discovered – a sunstone and half of a key – to the council at Waterfall City in an attempt to get a second expedition into the World Beneath. A musician named Oriana Nascava comes forward with the missing half of Arthur's key, claiming it to be a family heirloom. She is only willing to give it up if she is allowed to accompany Arthur in his expedition, a term that he reluctantly accepts. Together with Bix as a guide and the scandalous Lee Crabb, the group travels to the shady Pliosaur Canal where they board a submersible in order to take an underwater route to the World Beneath. Meanwhile, Will and Sylvia have been assigned to accompany a sauropod caravan through the Rainy Basin and keep a watch for predatory Tyrannosaurus. However, Cirrus flies Will to ancient ruins in the jungle of which the Tyrannosaurus are strangely protective. Arthur, Oriana, Bix, and Lee continue to explore the caverns underneath Dinotopia where they come across instantly germinating fern spores, uncut sunstones that appear to store ancestral memory, and mechanical limbs that twitch when the sunstone is brought near. Eventually, they reach an enormous man-made chamber filled with abandoned walking vehicles modelled after prehistoric animals, left behind by the ancient civilization of Poseidos, which they nickname "Strutters". Arthur, Oriana, and Bix commandeer a ceratopsian strutter while Crabb takes a strutter modeled after a sea scorpion and they both climb out of the World Beneath, ending up in the Rainy Basin. They join the sauropod convoy, but are attacked by a pack of tyrannosaurs and Allosaurus, during which Crabb escapes in his strutter and the head of the ceratopsian strutter is ripped off. After escaping the carnivores, Arthur realizes that the Tyrannosaurus at the ruins may have been guarding the mythical ruby sunstone, and takes his strutter back into the Rainy Basin with Oriana and Bix to discover it. Along the way, they come across a trapped juvenile Giganotosaurus and free it. The grateful father, named Stinktooth, protects Arthur and his companions from the tyrannosaurs and allows them passage into the ruins. Inside the temple, Bix reveals that in the past, people have escaped the island and brought with them culture from Dinotopian civilizations, influencing ancient Egyptian and Greek civilizations. However, they are too late, as Crabb has arrived first and taken the ruby sunstone. Vowing to escape Dinotopia and bring back an army of strutters to plunder the island, he destroys Arthur's strutter with his sea scorpion and escapes. Riding on top of Stinktooth, Arthur chases Lee into the sea and pulls the sunstone out of the power socket in the strutter before Lee can escape. During this chase, Arthur's journal is lost to the ocean where it will be discovered by Philippine sailors and eventually make its way to the library where James Gurney discovers it. At the end, the ruby sunstone is lost, a new romance is suggested between Arthur and Oriana, and Crabb is placed under guard by a pair of Stygimoloch.