Animal: Thipdar
Close Surface Cousin: Pteranodon
Source: At The Earth’s Core , Chapter 6, Chapter 14
Environment: Airborn, temperate climates?
…and on either side of her waddled a huge thipdar, while behind came another score of Sagoth guardsmen.
Note: Thipdars have been mentioned once previously but always in passing and have yet to be described meaningfully here in Chapter 6 though the text mentions their present. ERB does this sort of thing kinda a lot. They are however featured on the cover of the first printing of the book; so I guess we’re supposed to just know what they look like?
Note: Here we go eight chapters later, like theyve never come up before.
And at the first glance there broke upon my horrified vision the most frightful thing I had seen even within Pellucidar. It was a giant dragon such as is pictured in the legends and fairy tales of earth folk. Its huge body must have measured forty feet in length, while the batlike wings that supported it in midair had a spread of fully thirty. Its gaping jaws were armed with long, sharp teeth, and its claw equipped with horrible talons. The hissing noise which had first attracted my attention was issuing from its throat, and seemed to be directed at something beyond and below me which I could not see. The ledge upon which I stood terminated abruptly a few paces farther on, and as I reached the end I saw the cause of the reptile’s agitation. Some time in past ages an earthquake had produced a fault at this point, so that beyond the spot where I stood the strata had slipped down a matter of twenty feet. The result was that the continuation of my ledge lay twenty feet below me, where it ended as abruptly as did the end upon which I stood.
Once more the dragon was sweeping toward us, and so rapidly that I had no time to unsling my bow. All that I could do was to snatch up a rock, and hurl it at the thing’s hideous face. Again my aim was true, and with a hiss of pain and rage the reptile wheeled once more and soared away.
“I hate you,” she said, and then, as I was about to beg for a fair hearing she pointed over my shoulder. “The thipdar comes,” she said, and I turned again to meet the reptile. So this was a thipdar. I might have known it. The cruel bloodhound of the Mahars. The long-extinct pterodactyl of the outer world.