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This is one of the "Great Lords" of Gondori from a Burroughs style Pellucidar type story I am writing. Burroughs had the Mahars a species of super-intelligent rhamphoryncoid pterosaurs, as the dominant species in the the center of the earth. A number of other works posit sentient dinosaurs, as they are the dominant group that would have persisted had not a catasclysmic meteor struck the earth sixty-five million years ago. Harry Harrison's West of Eden series has the Yilane' a species of dinosuaroid descended from mosasaurs---which would mean that they technically weren't dinosaurs but relatives of lizards, which given their cold-blooedness, and aquatic existence that much more unlikely to develop large brains. Bird ancestors are much better bet. But I ultimately decided on a family that also died out at the same time as dinosaurs or pterosaurs or marine reptiles, namely the coil-shelled ammonites. Could something like this have replaced us had the meteor not struck, rather than dinosaurs? The cephalopod family have huge brains for mollusks, and octopi are known to use tools. If they came on land (or perhaps even if they remained stuck in the water) they and not dinosaurs or pterosaurs, could have been the most intelligent life-form on earth. I based them slightly on the gigantic omnivorous "mega-squid" from the Furtue is Wild TV special by Dougal Dixon, on they are the descendents of cretaceous ammonnites and have huge brains. At least one tentacle (I was going to have two, actually) have evolved finger like appendages with which to grasp things, like tools, weapons, or charcoal for writing. Communication among the ammonoids is done not through written or spoken language, but by means flashes and patterns of color in their skin, which is much more highly evolved than in "lower" cephalopods. Writing on tablets, however is useful in communicating with sentient primates, such as the Homo erectus and Homo Sapiens which serve them. While formidable enough to take on a tylosaurus with practice, at last, ammonoids tend to be slow of reflex, rather like the sentient giant crabs of Robert E. Howard's People of the Black Coast, so that a human with sufficient strength and cunning can kill one with a spear in an ambush. The ammonoids are the dominant species in the lost world of Gandori.

Description
This is one of the "Great Lords" of Gondori from a Burroughs style Pellucidar type story I am writing. Burroughs had the Mahars a species of super-intelligent rhamphoryncoid pterosaurs, as the dominant species in the the center of the earth. A number of other works posit sentient dinosaurs, as they are the dominant group that would have persisted had not a catasclysmic meteor struck the earth sixty-five million years ago. Harry Harrison's West of Eden series has the Yilane' a species of dinosuaroid descended from mosasaurs---which would mean that they technically weren't dinosaurs but relatives of lizards, which given their cold-blooedness, and aquatic existence that much more unlikely to develop large brains. Bird ancestors are much better bet. But I ultimately decided on a family that also died out at the same time as dinosaurs or pterosaurs or marine reptiles, namely the coil-shelled ammonites. Could something like this have replaced us had the meteor not struck, rather than dinosaurs? The cephalopod family have huge brains for mollusks, and octopi are known to use tools. If they came on land (or perhaps even if they remained stuck in the water) they and not dinosaurs or pterosaurs, could have been the most intelligent life-form on earth. I based them slightly on the gigantic omnivorous "mega-squid" from the Furtue is Wild TV special by Dougal Dixon, on they are the descendents of cretaceous ammonnites and have huge brains. At least one tentacle (I was going to have two, actually) have evolved finger like appendages with which to grasp things, like tools, weapons, or charcoal for writing. Communication among the ammonoids is done not through written or spoken language, but by means flashes and patterns of color in their skin, which is much more highly evolved than in "lower" cephalopods. Writing on tablets, however is useful in communicating with sentient primates, such as the Homo erectus and Homo Sapiens which serve them. While formidable enough to take on a tylosaurus with practice, at last, ammonoids tend to be slow of reflex, rather like the sentient giant crabs of Robert E. Howard's People of the Black Coast, so that a human with sufficient strength and cunning can kill one with a spear in an ambush. The ammonoids are the dominant species in the lost world of Gandori.