Dinosaur Hunter

by Steve White

  A dorsal fin sliced the water’s surface. Several feet behind undulated the tip of the tail. I could almost see the drone operator shrugging with an ‘I told you so’.

  But that was the closest to trouble we came and we made landfall on the island. We had trouble finding a suitable place to come ashore, the roots of the mangroves forming dense walls of buttresses and balustrades, palisades of pneumatophores that threatened to skewer the bottom of the boat. But we found a spot where the snorkel roots were small enough and thin enough, and where a stream picked its way through the dense bush, for us to land.

  Land, at this point, might have been a little too… hopeful. Land implies solid ground beneath your feet.

  This was not solid ground. This was a thick grey mud that covered me above the ankles as I struggled ashore to claim the island in the name of me. I envied the crabs that scuttled out of my way with a gazelle-like ease.

  The dense mangroves still had that strange, ethereal quiet once we finally found firmer ground and the mangroves were joined by other hardy, salt-resistant flora. We stood in the shadows for a while and listened. The pterosaur colony was noisy and smelly, and we really didn’t want to go out in the open and risk being dive-bombed by angry parents so we unloaded what we could from the skiff, without actually discussing that we would indeed be here for the night. Cheung naturally took the hide and his rifle as priority. I took food and water, torches and sleeping bags. Slung them into a backpack, but left the ghillie suits. I did remember the repellent and the hoods, though. We would be in the lee of the island, with no pleasant sea breeze to keep the biters and bloodsuckers off us.

  The mangroves defeated us. There was no way through so we risked the open heart of the island.

  We didn’t know but we were walking into a yawning hole in the drone coverage. One was watching the progress of the Spinosaur, the other was checking the waters around the Paralititans. No one was really paying attention to us; we were safely ashore and we had neglected our own safety by not having one of the operators check out the island first; we had been more concerned with the marine threat. It was a small island after all. I could have crossed it in five minutes. We’d also been lulled by the peace and tranquillity of the mangroves, and their sheer density. What could possibly have been hiding that we or the drones could not have seen, right?

  Even had the drones been watching, time was against them. They could watch but that was it. We were, after all, the ones with the guns. An elephant load from Cheung’s rifle would shatter the braincase of the largest Theropod. But his Ruger was in its snug case slung over his shoulder. His shotgun was across his chest as was mine.

  We fought our way out of the jungle and there was pandemonium. A colony of

  Siroccopteryx, giant ugly seabirds with hatchet-like beaks, burst into the air.

  I unslung my shotgun.

  Not the biggest of the Ornithocheirids by a long shot, they were big enough. I never had any intention of shooting one; they were parents after all and just defending their nests. But a shotgun does make you feel much safer and I would have something at least to jab at them.

  It’s likely that when the drone was being vectored away to check the channels we were to cross, the cheeky Rugops had been paddling in from the west and decided to stop for a breather or a drink. Perhaps it had taken a look at the chaos and carnage being wrought around the carcasses and an instinct for self-preservation dulled the hunger that had brought it here. Perhaps it was there to hunt for pterosaur eggs. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. It was unlikely to be trailing us, even though it made landfall minutes after us. Our trail was just the path of least resistance so it was only natural it came in the same way we did.

  Whatever.

  All I saw was a lot of wings. Heard a lot of noise. The pterosaurs were rolling towards me and I backed away into the security of the mangroves…

  The drone was back because I heard someone say, ‘Oh shit…’ on the comms.

  Naturally I assumed he was talking about the infernal chaos of the panicking pterosaurs.

  But he wasn’t.

  There came a crushing pressure on my left shoulder, so powerful my legs gave out. The shotgun fell from my suddenly nerveless fingers and tangled with the backpack I dropped. You see, I’d figured it was going to be a short walk, so why would I need to put that heavy thing on my back, especially in this heat? I dropped it and straps entwined. I couldn’t get my right hand free to absently feel for my left shoulder. All I could do was look.

  A scaly snout and flaring nostrils.

  And there was the awful realization that there were teeth digging into my shoulder. There was no pain as such. Just that crushing pressure and the grinding of bone that felt like someone drawing fingers across a blackboard.

  I don’t really remember very clearly what happened. Like the survivors of car wrecks or plane crashes, the mind has a way of blocking it all out and pretending it didn’t happen.

  I’ve seen the footage since, of Cheung as he turned and there I am, suddenly being lifted up into the air by the Rugops. I have to watch with the sound down; the scream in Cheung’s voice always terrifies me.

  I see him swing the shotgun up. There’s a puff of white as the gun coughs. The Rugops’ head glances. It looks as if the baton round hit the thick bone on the roof of his skull.

  Didn’t make a dent. The Theropod just looks perplexed as I thrash and flail. My mouth is wide open. I’m screaming. The first time I watched it with sound, it was more like a dog whistle. It was amazing I could produce something so high-pitched.

  White wings keep flashing through the shot. What’s not clear is if the pterosaurs are attacking or panicking. Bit of both, probably.

  There’s not much to see from the drones. Just a lot of flapping.

  On Cheung’s camera, he takes his time. Aims. The gun blasts white smoke again. You can actually see the round ricochet off the armour around the Rugops’ eye.

  That’s about the same time it shakes me and my left arm parts company with my shoulder.

  I do remember what happened next.

  I remember sky and pterosaurs and the sound of the gunship pilot’s voice. He was yelling, ‘Guns, guns, guns!’ There was almost glee. Maybe this was the first time he’d got to use his cannon.

  Made no difference to me.

  I just remember the dinosaur’s cold, dead eye as it bent down slowly and almost gently took my right leg in its mouth.

  Then he shakes me. I get swept back and forth like he’s using me to sweep away his tracks.

  I remember the snap of my shin bone. Or maybe I imagined it. There was so much noise I could not possibly have heard. The Rugops ate my leg.

  From Cheung’s camera, he gets off two more rounds and the Theropod reacts now. He gives a bellow. That I did hear. For a long time I couldn’t go on the subway because I’d hear that roar when the train pulled in.

  At this point, I think I passed out.

  I never saw the gunship. It fired a burst of five rounds. The Rugops was dead before it even knew it. It quite literally ran around like a headless chicken before collapsing and lying there, twitching.

  First time I saw the gun camera footage, I actually felt sorry for it. It was just fulfilling its biological imperative. And there I was, with more money than sense, where, according to the laws of nature, I had no right to be.

  While the Victor’s corpsmen were attending to me, the crew chief cut open the Rugops and got my leg back. I never really understood why. Made no difference to me. I wouldn’t be using it again and according to everything we’d been told about temporal mechanics, we weren’t about to add fuel to the creationist fire when some poor palaeontologist dug up a human tibia in a future fossil.

  The next thing I remember was waking up at the FOB. When you have the sort of money I have, time stands still for no catastrophic amputation and I’d already been outfitted with prosthetics. I was as good as new soon after. If not better.

  But there isn’t a day that goes by
where I don’t wonder what became of that Rugops. His carcass was airlifted back to the FOB. There was a very public dissection and he no doubt provided scope for advanced science, which we should be grateful for, but after that? I assume he was dumped somewhere and left for the scavengers.

  Cheung, meanwhile, was given a default kill and has the model head in his study. He never got his other kills and gave up hunting. Too many nightmares afterwards, especially the ones where I’m screaming. I just have an X-ray they took of me at the field hospital. There were tooth fragments in my scapula and coracoid, gone now.

  Compared to the Rugops, I got off lightly.

  Yishan Lo sold off her highly successful movie production company and retired back to her native Singapore. Much of the money she made from the sale she gave to animal charities.

  DINOSAUR PARK FORMATION

  Period: Late Cretaceous

  Age: Mid-Campanian stage (77–74 mya)

  Present location: North America

  Reserve size: approx 3,400 square miles (a little smaller than Tsavo West National Park)

  CONDITIONS

  The Dinosaur Park Formation is found on the subcontinent of Laramidia. This narrow strip of land runs along a north–south axis and is rarely wider than 350 miles. It forms what is now the west coast of the North American continent, extending from the Arctic down to Mexico. At this time, a shallow ocean, the Western Interior Seaway, covered much of the interior and split the landmass into Laramidia to the west and an eastern subcontinent, Appalachia.

  Temperatures at this time are cooler than earlier Mesozoic stages, but remain higher than modern pre-industrial times, warm enough to prevent glaciation at the poles and allowing ice to form only on the highest mountains. The general cooling was in part due to the lowering of carbon dioxide levels, to about two and a half times higher than present. This may reduce the mandatory need for use of rebreathers, but it remains strongly recommended they are deployed at all times.

  GEOGRAPHY AND ENVIRONMENT

  Dinosaur Park Reserve is situated roughly where Alberta, Canada is located. To its west is the Magmatic Arc of the early Rocky Mountain chain, at this time still relatively young and studded with a number of active volcanoes. The highest peaks are iced during the period of shorter days, which also precipitates a general cooling and the start of the wet season.

  The Rockies also cast a rain shadow over their immediate foothills and the high plains to the east. These plains are several hundred feet above sea level and slope gently eastward. Large rivers running from the mountains form major watercourses which support riverine forests that thin to open woodland and ‘fruit prairies’ of juniper-like shrubs and ferns. Smaller watercourses desiccate in the dry season leaving soda lakes and restricting greenery to permanent rivers and the forests they support.

  These woods and forests are largely angiosperms or flowering plants that have supplanted the evergreen gymnosperms of previous times. Pines, cycads and conifers are still present, but in much smaller numbers; the primary trees are the likes of sycamore, plane trees and maples. In the wet season, the profusion of fruit-bearing shrubs and fields of flowers such as the great carpets of goldfields that flower at the start of the rains, support huge herds of dinosaurs. Many of these ascend from the lowlands to breed on the high plains; huge nesting colonies of Hadrosaurs in particular can be found, formed from thousands of individuals.

  The wet season also sees the soda lakes refill and attract nesting dinosaurs and flocks of pterosaurs and birds as the seasonal rivers return, fed by rain from the west of the Rockies and by meltwater from the higher peaks.

  Beyond the rain shadow and the eastern edge of the high plains, the riverine forests thicken as the ground descends into lowlands. There is year-round rainfall and the temperature remains mild, turning the low flatlands into floodplains permeated with great fanning river deltas as the large watercourses break up into small, more numerous ones that feed the subtropical forests.

  Much of this lowlying area is punctuated with swampland, lush with lakes, ponds and domes of bald cypress. The streams and creeks here are lined with stands of bur reeds and horsetails and filled with water cabbage, water chestnut, lilies and liverwort.

  However, the dominant feature of the floodplains are the rich forests. Large conifers and giant sequoia redwoods form the canopy; as in the uplands, angiosperms dominate the understorey; common trees include katsura, boxwood, maples, willows, ginkgoes, podocarps, plane trees and sycamores. Many are covered in climbing ferns and grape vines. The forest floor is rich with coral ferns, big-leaved Gunnera and tree ferns.

  Most plants keep their leaves all year, although some in more westerly regions will drop their leaves or needles during the dry season to retain moisture. Even along the easterly coastal regions, the rains fail occasionally.

  These forests support the richest diversity of dinosaurs to be found anywhere; herds of them plunder the jungles and woods during the wet season as herds bring the new generation to the lowlands to fatten up and grow fast. They naturally bring with them an arsenal of predators, including two Tyrannosaurs and a whole host of raptors. Other dinosaur types, particularly Ceratopsians, eat their way through the forests as they head north at the end of the wet season. They migrate to nest up in the Arctic regions, making the most of the longer days that encourage a growth spurt in the higher latitudes. When the spurt is over, they migrate back south to see out the dry season in the regions of permanent water along the coastal areas.

  The damage these migrating herds do is devastating to the area but by opening up the forests, they provide light for new growth of fast-growing plants. The dinosaurs have also, naturally, left tons of manure to help feed the young plants. Similar devastation also follows the occasional forest fires that sweep the lowlands during particularly long and hot dry seasons. These fires can destroy hundreds of square miles of forest and kill large numbers of animals, especially the young and juvenile who usually stay deep in the trees and thick understorey until big enough to venture out into more open habitats. However, the thick ash left behind by these wildfires fertilizes new plant generations which in turn provide for the next generations of fauna.

  Further west the forests give way to tidal flats and marshes, the forests thinning and fans of streams and rivers feeding rich sediment into the Western Interior Seaway. Cypress and mangrove-type plants form a line of islands that protect the coastal flats and prevent the sediment being washed away. There are also long stretches of beach where many animals come to feed along the treelines. Many marine animals come into shore during the wet season, when massive shoals of small fish run into coastal waters to feed on the sediment and the microorganisms it attracts. These fish provide food for larger fish that in turn are preyed upon by a terrifying selection of marine predators, ranging from giant sharks to marine reptiles bigger than the largest terrestrial carnivore. Many marine species also breed in coastal waters. For the truly brave, MHC® does offer marine safaris from a second island-based FOB.

  Warning: Volcanic eruption is an occasional threat, but warning should be early enough for safety to be sought.

  LICENSED TARGETS

  You are licensed to hunt the following species in Dinosaur Park:

  GORGOSAURUS

  The ‘ostrich dinosaur’, Struthiomimus, flees the attentions of a young Gorgosaurus.

  Length: 25ft

  Weight: 2 tons

  The more common and lightweight of the two Dinosaur Park Tyrannosaurs, Gorgosaurus is an adaptable generalist predator. It’s rather gracile compared to its heavier-set contemporary, Daspletosaurus; its build is more elegant with longer, more graceful legs and a short trunk, complete with one of the Tyrannosaurs’ most distinguishable features; the stubby but well-muscled arms and their two clawed fingers. The long tail counterbalances the large head, which although long has a lightly constructed skull (certainly when compared to the massive bones of a T-rex skull); the jaws support the usual array of Tyrannosaurid teeth, with the small
D-cross-sectioned premaxilla teeth giving way to longer teeth, serrated on both sides, that extend the length of the jaw line. Gorgosaurus is also distinguishable from Daspletosaurus by the lacrimal horn that grows above its eye.

  Gorgosaurs are found across Dinosaur Park, ranging from the foothills of the Magmatic Arc to the high plains and down to the forests and swamps of the coastal floodplains. Their primary prey is the various species of Hadrosaurs that gather in huge numbers throughout the park reserve, but they have few restrictions to their list of prey animals; the one exception appears to be adult Ceratopsians, although even one of these will be taken if it is old or sick. Generally, however, they restrict their hunting of horned dinosaurs to the young and juvenile.

  Gorgosaurus is usually solitary but breeding pairs will sometimes stay together following the breeding season. Upland communities use the more open spaces of the high plains to pursue prey; their gracile build makes them faster than most of their prey, especially the heavy-set Hadrosaurs. They will charge herds to make them disperse so they can pick out a sub-adult or juvenile. However, during the dry season, they will risk attacking adults, usually delivering a series of slashing bites to weaken the victim. Under these circumstances, they will also show superficial pack-hunting behaviour. This is a rather informal arrangement; following an attack by a single Gorgosaur on a Hadrosaur, the attacker shadows the victim and will on occasion be joined by one or more – sometimes up to half a dozen – others, who will even deliver their own attacks. Once the prey is sufficiently weakened, a process often accelerated by the presence of more than one Gorgosaur, the pack will jointly attack and dispatch the prey. At this point, fights invariably occur to establish seniority at the kill, the subordinates – even the initial attacker if etiquette dictates – waiting their turn to feed. Interestingly, they will often defend the kill from interlopers, be they other Gorgosaurs or Daspletosaurs looking for an easy meal. This can lead to some brutal fighting. Similarly, the higher-ranking individuals will stay after feeding their fill to see off any potential scavengers, their sheer number perhaps providing as much of a deterrent as more aggressive actions.