Dinosaur Stakeout

by Judith Silverthorne

  Both breaks seemed to coincide with those on the fossil they’d found, but there were other characteristics he needed to research before making a more positive identification. Roxanne’s fossil had been surrounded by little babies, but this one only had eggs that were beginning to crack. He couldn’t see anything wrong with her head, either, as the photos from the RSM had shown. He had no way of knowing what would happen to this one when she died or how or if she would be preserved. The Edmontosaurus that he and Mr. Pederson had found seemed to have been buried along the riverbank, which was a strong similarity but not ­conclusive.

  Daniel’s thoughts turned again to how amazingly different the creatures in this world were from his own. He couldn’t fathom how the prehistoric ones had evolved or vanished and ­present-­day animals had appeared. Yet they had, and whether wild or not, they were still living ­creatures.

  As he watched the suffering creature, Daniel wished he could do something. Maybe he could feed her? As quickly as he could, he climbed the ­embankment.

  “Where are you going, Daniel?” Mildred Roost asked a little ­anxiously.

  As he explained his mission, she nodded. “I guess I don’t need to tell you to be careful?”

  A few metres away, there was a copse of pine trees. Scouring the surroundings, Daniel hurried over to them and grabbed a handful of pine cones and twigs lying on the ground. He wasn’t sure if she would eat it, but all he could do was try. Returning to the mother dinosaur, he placed the food on the ground right by her ­mouth.

  She gave a short, snorting sniff, but didn’t have the strength to reach for the food with her enormous tongue. Daniel decided that there was no way he was going to ­hand-­feed her the way he did his horse Gypsy! Her ­flat-­beaked head was humungous, and even if he could have lifted it off the ground, he wasn’t getting that close to the hundreds of closely packed teeth in her cheeks. Herbivore or not, he was sure she could crush his hands!

  Even if he dared to feed her and she did eat something, how much would she need? And for how long? There was no way he could stay here for days on end to take care of her. Her breaks would probably never heal. The ­bird-­like carnivores circling overhead seemed to know there was not much hope for her as they gave a long screeching call, like the caw of a crow, to one ­another.

  Suddenly, Daniel noticed several tiny hatchlings partway out of their shells. No movement or noise came from any of the other dozen or so eggs. Daniel gulped back the sadness making his throat ache. He knew it would only be a short time before the Edmontosaurus died. But he tried one more time to feed her, realizing that she wasn’t going to bite ­him.

  He even tried to open up the top part of her beak to set some food inside her mouth. As he did so, she gave a slight jerk. Her head rose off the ground just long enough for Daniel to see the dried blood caked to it. So her head was injured too. One more reason to believe that maybe this was Roxanne!

  Daniel moved in closer and gently touched her tough skin. It felt like old leather, rough and thick. Feeling braver, he stroked her neck and nose the way he did his horse Gypsy. He wondered if she could even feel his hands running over her tough thick body. Her heaving breaths were intermittent and laboured. After a while, she didn’t even bother to open her ­eyes.

  Feeling fairly safe beside her, Daniel sat down and recorded his findings, making notes about her condition and the special features of her body. Mildred Roost continued to take detailed ­photographs.

  After a time, Daniel could no longer ignore the rumblings in his stomach. He realized he was getting weak from ­hunger.

  Dr. Roost came over to him. “Time for a snack?”

  “I sure could eat a sandwich right about now,” he said. “Too bad the Zapsalis ate them all!”

  “Not quite,” she said with a smile, as she unzipped her backpack and drew out a couple of ­Baggies.

  “Ham and cheese, my favourite!” said Daniel, smiling and reaching for one without a moment’s ­hes-itation.

  He gobbled a couple of sandwiches as he wrote in his journal, then swished them down with bottled water. He offered Dr. Roost an energy bar, but she declined and he wolfed two of them down ­too.

  They sat back for a few moments, lost in their own thoughts. Daniel tried to estimate the time it would take to get to the spot to get back home. What if Dr. Roost couldn’t make it? Maybe there was a shorter way, but he doubted it. Dr. Roost seemed very resourceful, maybe she could think of something. He was just about to ask her, when she ­spoke.

  “You know, Daniel, you remind me of my oldest son,” she said. “Always looking for adventure and usually finding it too.”

  “I didn’t know you had a family!”

  “Oh yes, two boys. My husband died eighteen years ago…a heart attack took him. He was a paleontologist too.”

  “Where are your sons now?” Daniel asked ­curiously.

  “Randall, my youngest, lives in Vancouver with his wife and two daughters. He’s a medical doctor,” she answered. “He decided to help those living in the present.”

  She grew quiet for a moment, then said briskly, “And Trevor, I lost him in an avalanche on his way up to do some environmental studies at the North Pole.”

  Daniel was speechless for a few ­moments.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said ­finally.

  She shrugged, although her eyes filled with sadness. “He was a good lad, doing what he loved to do. Geophysical research.”

  “How old was he? What was he doing? I mean, I know it’s none of my business, but…”

  She patted Daniel’s arm. “He was ­thirty-­four. He was part of a small group of scientists studying how climatic change at the North Pole might affect the global climate. He was particularly interested in researching how global warming is impacting on the world’s atmosphere, oceans, and land masses.”

  “Wow, that’s really important stuff!”

  Dr. Roost gave a small chuckle. “Indeed. But the irony is that neither of my sons wanted to follow in their father’s or my footsteps. Yet Trevor ended up working on almost exactly the kind of thing we’re doing right now.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “Over the years, there was growing evidence that the polar caps were actually warm during the Cretaceous Period. They’ve found fossils to prove it, like leaf fossils, mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, dinosaurs, marsupials, and champsosaurs. They actually believe there was global warming way back then.”

  Daniel turned this information over in his mind. How ­astounding.

  Dr. Roost laughed again. “I used to tease Trevor about him ending up like his folks after all, but he’d just brush me off and grin. Then he’d proceed to tell me all about the latest fossils they found.”

  “You must really miss him,” Daniel ­said.

  “Yes, I do. It was a few years ago now, but I still miss our conversations.” Mildred Roost turned to Daniel. “Like I said, you’re a lot like him.”

  “Didn’t he have any family?”

  “Yes, I have a grandson, though he’s a bit younger than you. I’m sure he’ll make a good paleontologist some day, if I have any say in his upbringing. I’d like him to meet you some day, Daniel. You’d be a good influence for him. He could learn a great deal from you.”

  Daniel smiled with pride, not knowing what to say. No one had ever given him such a generous compliment ­before.

  “Well, enough of this maudlin stuff.” Dr. Roost stood up and brushed off her pants. “Time to get some more work done.”

  Daniel and Mildred Roost simultaneously pulled out their tape ­measures.

  “Great minds think alike,” said Dr. Roost, giving Daniel a thump on the ­back.

  Gently, they measured the Edmontosaurus, including the circumference of her head, her eyes, her forearms, and her hind legs. All the while she lay docilely, almost as if they didn’t exist. The tail was the hardest to measure with its series of bumps that ran all the way up her back and neck. He wasn’t quite sure how far from the long pointed tip he ne
eded to measure up her back. He sketched the dinosaur and marked her dimensions, figuring that this duckbill was at least thirteen metres long in ­total.

  Her ­three-­toed, hoofed feet were the most interesting to measure. Daniel plucked apart her toes, keeping a wary eye on her, in case she flicked him away. He would be seriously hurt if she did. And all the while he worked, he felt how incredible it was to be here with a real dinosaur, in a world others could only dream ­of.

  Picking up the camera, Daniel took a sequence of photos showing the comparison of a small ruler to her teeth and other parts of her anatomy. While Dr. Roost lifted debris from the nest, he snapped details of the underside of the Edmontosaurus, the eggs, and her lifeless hatchlings. There would never be another opportunity like it!

  Just as he got to his knees, he saw a sudden movement out of the corner of his eye. He realized that what he thought was a fallen log a couple of metres away, wasn’t. Scrambling to his feet, he motioned to Dr. Roost and together they backed away as the ­two-­and-­a-­half-­metre, dark grey Borealosuchus slid into the water. Whew! They’d been so immersed in their research that they’d forgotten to watch out for ­predators.

  Once the Borealosuchus had drifted downstream, Daniel moved to the water’s edge and filled a vial. Water insects hovered around him. He tried scooping them into the vials, but that proved unsuccessful. He thought about catching them with his bare hands, but decided against ­it.

  Moving back to Dr. Roost, he took another compass reading and studied the landscape, noting as many details as possible. Dr. Roost was packing up her gear, and she motioned to Daniel that she was ready to leave. He quickly stored away his stuff ­too.

  As they were leaving the dying Edmontosaurus, Daniel stood over her for a few moments. A lump rose in his throat, as he gave her a farewell pat. Then they climbed up the embankment to the pine tree ­grove.

  “Well, young man,” Dr. Roost said, “this has certainly been an extraordinary experience.”

  Daniel nodded. “Now you can see why I had to come.”

  “Indeed,” she said. “Thank you for bringing me along.”

  “Too bad we have to go back now,” said ­Daniel.

  “Oh, I think we could take a couple more minutes. I’d like to collect some plant samples yet.”

  Daniel grinned. “Great!” That was exactly his thought. And although he knew that they were collecting samples for scientific study, he couldn’t forget something else about them. Each one could open a portal back to this exciting world.

  Chapter Eleven

  They took turns. One was the lookout while the other gathered specimens, storing them in Dr. Roost’s bag. When it was Daniel’s turn, he took out his Swiss Army knife, and carved off a small branch at its tip and put it into a plastic Baggie. Then he collected a leaf from an unusual looking tree and pressed it between the pages of his ­journal.

  Slowly the increased sounds of forest life penetrated Daniel’s consciousness. The sun had risen totally, casting a yellowish haze over their surroundings. It was getting later in the morning. He walked over to Dr. Roost and touched her ­shoulder.

  “We’ll have to get back home,” he said, pointing to the position of the ­sun.

  Dr. Roost sighed and pushed herself up off her ­knees.

  Daniel walked over to a stand of redwoods. He found one of the tallest ones on the edge, and climbed it to get his bearings. Pulling out his binoculars, he gulped when he saw all the different species that surrounded him as far as he could see. More creatures were now awake and ­mobile.

  Several small herds of herbivores grazed comfortably together in their chosen areas: Stegoceras, Ankylosaurus, Stygimoloch, Triceratops, and Edmontosaurus, and others Daniel didn’t recognize. Various other rodent and ­mammal-­like animals ­criss-­crossed their paths, while flying creatures and insects filled the air. The forest was alive with eerie ­sounds.

  Although he’d never been to Africa, Daniel had seen plenty of documentaries on the environment and was always amazed at the different species that fed in the same areas, oblivious to one another unless there was a predator amongst them. These creatures were doing the same thing, though they looked even stranger than those that roamed the Serengeti. Or were ­they?

  If people had lived during the Cretaceous Period and had a chance to see the earth as it was now, what would they think of hyenas, rhinoceros, gazelles, zebras, giraffes, elephants, hippos, and wildebeests? The present world was full of weird creatures like primates, penguins, kangaroos, octopuses, and armadillos. The more he thought about all the creatures on earth today, the more he realized that everyone accepted them, but they were every bit as strange as those in the world of dinosaurs. Their existence depended on their habitat and the environment, just as it did in the prehistoric ­world.

  Daniel stared through the binoculars again. The group of Edmontosaurus had moved on to another patch of trees. Daniel almost yelled as if to warn them of danger when he saw a small group of Zapsalis feeding on a rotting carcass only a few hundred metres ­away.

  Dr. Roost noticed his agitation. “What’s happening?” she ­asked.

  He explained how close the Zapsalis were to the group of ­Edmontosaurus.

  “There’s nothing you can do about the natural order of things,” she said. “What else is going on?”

  “Besides the herbivores we’ve already seen, there’s something I think is a Torosaurus.”

  “A relative of the ­Triceratops – ­known as the ‘bull lizard,’” said Dr. ­Roost.

  “The frilled neck crest is a little different, though,” Daniel reported. “The plate is enormous and long, almost oval. It has the largest skull I’ve ever seen, with two brow horns and a short nose horn.”

  “Can you get any photographs?”

  “I’ll try, but they’re kind of far away,” replied ­Daniel.

  Daniel handed over the binoculars to Dr. Roost and took the camera as the Torosaurus bit off small branches and tough vegetation with its strong beak. It stood on powerful legs that were short at the front and longer at the back, giving it a very stable ­posture.

  “I think you can maybe just see them through those trees,” he pointed the way out to ­her.

  “Incredible!” she said. “Do you know how special this is to see all of these creatures?” Dr. Roost sounded overwhelmed. The expression on her face was one of complete awe and ­reverence.

  “Oh, I think I see a herd of ­Corythosaurus-­like dino-saurs. Here, take a look.” She handed the binoculars back up to Daniel in exchange for the ­camera.

  “They’re dining on palm leaves, pine needles, fruits, and seeds.” Daniel described them for Dr. Roost. “And then there is some kind of duckbill, similar to Edmonto-saurus but smaller, heading towards the sea.”

  As he relayed the information, Mildred Roost jotted it into her special ­spiral-­bound notebook. Daniel stopped at one point and dug out his dinosaur research book. He started comparing the species he didn’t know to the descriptions in his book. Many of them weren’t mentioned. Was that because they hadn’t been discovered yet or just that he wasn’t aware of them? He soon tucked the book away in frustration, realizing that his book was ­useless.

  “Problems?” asked Dr. ­Roost.

  “Some of these creatures aren’t in the book yet.”

  Dr. Roost laughed. “That’s not a bad thing. That probably means they haven’t been discovered in the present world yet. We’re the first to see them,” she said excitedly, handing the camera back up to him. “Snap away and I’ll write as fast as I can while you describe them.”

  They saw everything from small mammals and reptiles, to insects, and rodent and ­bird-­like creatures. He hardly knew what to concentrate on first. They were all strange to his eyes and utterly fascinating in their shapes and ­colours.

  “Chop, chop!” Dr. Roost said, waving her notebook. “We don’t have much time, so start anywhere.”

  Daniel stared at the ground. Some distance away, a small ­ra
ccoon-­sized animal leapt about, chasing flying insects. An animal about the size and shape of a small pig, but with the armour of an armadillo and a short stubby tail like a Manx cat, pushed its long snout into the tuberous roots farther along a trail. Daniel had no idea what it might be, but described it as accurately as he could, while Dr. Roost made notations in her ­scribbler.

  Then he watched fascinated as a group of leathery, ­hound-­like animals ran down the trail like a pack of large wolves, sniffing at various spots. Although they ran on all fours, they were some kind of reptile with short front feet and a strong pointy tail. They stopped to rout out ­rodent-­looking animals, and with one snap swallowed them. Directly below him, a ­rat-­sized Purgatorius rummaged in the undergrowth. Other small ­mammal-­type animals darted ­about.

  “Wow! There is so much to learn about the Cretaceous Period yet,” Daniel exclaimed as he watched all the unidentified creatures. “But there’s no way we can record them all.” That would take many trips over many ­years.

  “You’re right, Daniel,” said Dr. Roost. “But we’ve already collected hundreds of times more information today than paleontologists have ever known before.”

  “Maybe we could make lists of the various categories?” suggested ­Daniel.

  Dr. Roost disagreed. “I don’t think there’s time for that. Just take photographs as quickly as you can.”

  “Okay!” Daniel called ­down.

  Dr. Roost frantically scribbled descriptive notes about each entry while Daniel captured all the creatures that he saw, thankful that they had a digital camera. He became so intent on looking downwards that he forgot to look up until a wave of air fluffed his hair and brushed his face. Fierce crimson eyes stared into his. Then with a flap of its ­three-­metre wingspread, a Pteranodon swept upwards and circled back towards him. Terror gripped Daniel, constricting his throat so he couldn’t breathe for several ­seconds.

  “Dr. Roost,” he yelled when he caught his breath. “Pteranodon! Make yourself as small as you can under that cycad.”

  As Mildred Roost scooted to obey, Daniel crammed the digital camera into his backpack and searched for a place to elude his predator. Scrambling upwards into some thicker branches, he tucked himself tightly against the trunk of the tree under a dense cover of ­leaves.