Red Tree Runner

The Red Tree Runners are a race of sauropod-like aliens featuring in Greg Bear's Anvil of Stars. They were one of numerous races victimized by the Killers, but managed to survive and attempted vengeance against their attackers.

Anatomy & Physiology
Red Tree Runners resemble sauropods, albeit about the size of a human. They have four pillar-like legs, a long neck, and two arms extruding from the front of the body. Despite their name, their skin is colored white, not red.

History
The Red Tree Runners were lucky enough to encounter the Benefactors before the Killers. Around 2,000 BCE, Killer probes entered their home system and attacked their planets. The Red Tree Runners were able to defeat the attack with the aid of the Benefactors; however, their planets were extensively damaged and around half their population was killed.

The Benefactors then provided the Red Tree Runners with a Ship of the Law in order to hunt down and punish the Killers. They eventually reached the Leviathan system, where the Killers originated. However, they instead encountered a species that looked and acted very similar to themselves, most likely a ruse created by the Killers. This species managed to convince the Red Tree Runners that the Killers did not live in the system, and the Red Tree Runners left to search elsewhere. At an unknown point thousands of years before Anvil of Stars, the Red Tree Runner society aboard the ship imploded, and its members succumbed to violence and starvation. Their derelict Ship of the Law was discovered by humanity's own ship millennia later.