Tyrannosaurus Wrecks

by Stuart Gibbs

  Dr. Chen had invited Summer, Sage, and me to see what was being done with Minerva, and our parents had eagerly tagged along. Before we had come to the lab, she had given us a tour of the facility, which was primarily used to store ancient bones. According to Dr. Chen, only about 1 percent of any natural history museum’s bone collection was on display; the rest was inevitably stockpiled away. The storage area was surprisingly low-tech: the smaller bones were housed in cabinets, while the bigger ones were merely on shelves in the basement. There were a startling number of artifacts: The building was almost as big as Jerk-ee’s, and it was chock-full. Dr. Chen had shown us mastodon tusks, the plates from a stegosaur’s back, the club from the tip of an ankylosaur’s tail, and even the only known bones from a Quetzalcoatlus, the largest animal that had ever flown. It was bigger than a Cessna airplane.

  To my surprise, many of the bones were still wrapped in their original plaster casts, and some had been there for decades. “It’s easier to excavate the bones and wrap them up than it is to unwrap them again and determine what they are,” Dr. Chen had explained. “And it’s easier to get volunteers to help with the digging, since it’s a lot more exciting. Sadly, we don’t have the funds or the manpower to handle the backlog. To examine all these bones properly would take years.”

  Eventually, we had made our way to the fossil lab, which seemed more like a workshop; it had a cement floor, lots of tools, and white walls that were bare save for a few dinosaur movie posters. Bones in the process of being extracted from their plaster casts were laid on white tables around the edges of the room, although they had all been forgotten in the excitement over Minerva. Now all five lab employees were working on different parts of the skull at once, using fine tools like scalpels and dental picks to carefully remove the plaster.

  “Generally, removing the bones from the cast is painstaking work,” Dr. Chen said. “When the bones are wrapped in the field, they come with a lot of debris as well, which we call matrix, and we want to analyze that carefully, as it can contain all sorts of important microfossils. Plus, we want to make sure that we don’t damage the fossil itself. Unfortunately, Minerva got bounced around a lot, so any matrix inside the skull has probably been compromised, and the skull was banged up a bit too.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Oh!” Dr. Chen exclaimed. “I wasn’t upset with you, Teddy. If it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t even have Minerva. You did what you had to do to save her.” She gave me a reassuring smile. Her appearance was somewhat similar to the fake Dr. Chen, which made sense, as they had turned out to be second cousins.

  The fake Dr. Chen, whose real name was Alice Soon, had plotted for years to use their family resemblance to her own advantage. As I had suspected, she had paid off the receptionist at the lab, waiting for exactly the right circumstances to present themselves—although even Alice had never dreamed that would lead her to a tyrannosaur. She had been expecting a much less glamorous set of fossils, like a set of dinosaur tracks, which were relatively common in central Texas. But when the discovery of a lifetime had presented itself, she had jumped at the chance.

  The receptionist, Darnell Scroggs, had been arrested on the day of the Jerk-ee’s chaos. Following my instructions, Sheriff Esquivel and his officers had found Darnell and the five thieves from the minivan still stranded on the lonely road where I had abandoned them. As I had hoped, due to the lack of cellular service, they had been unable to call anyone to pick them up. Mom, Dad, and the Bonottos had left the remaining three thieves hog-tied back by the ranch. Darnell and the thieves had all proclaimed their innocence until Alice Soon implicated them in an attempt to reduce her own jail sentence. They were all going to do time.

  Meanwhile, Tommy Lopez and his team had arrested Rick from Snakes Alive and Bill the reptile smuggler, although Tommy still wasn’t satisfied. “These were the lowest guys on the totem pole,” he had told me a few days afterward. “They’re just pawns in the game. Same goes with the guys who steal these animals in the wild, or the poor schlubs who try to smuggle animals into the country. They take all the risks and get paid a pittance. The real guys we’re after are the kingpins who control it all.” Unfortunately, he suspected that many of those kingpins were based in other countries, where he had no jurisdiction. The best he could hope for was to put a case together and bring a foreign law enforcement agency in on it, although he didn’t seem very hopeful that would happen.

  Still, the pipeline of illegal animals to our area had been shut off. Without Rick, fewer people like the Barksdales would be able to get their hands on exotic reptiles and would hopefully get normal pets instead. J.J. had made good on paying the Barksdales a hundred dollars each for putting down their weapons at Jerk-ee’s, and they had promised to spend it on adopting a cat to replace Griselda for their mother.

  Vance Jessup was being sent to a juvenile detention camp for the rest of the summer; repeatedly threatening me with bodily harm had violated the terms of his release. I was pleased to hear it was located several hours away from me, in an area known to have an abundance of wild snakes.

  Snakes Alive was under investigation for being complicit in the trade of illegally obtained animals, seeing as Rick had conducted his sales there. However, the owners claimed that Rick had lied to them about the nature of his business—and that they had acquired all their display animals legally. Tommy was sure the owners were lying about Rick, but he doubted he could prove it. Chances were, Snakes Alive would be able to continue operating.

  There was better news where the zebra spankers were concerned. The fad already seemed to have peaked, partly due to increased zoo security (at FunJungle, Marge O’Malley had tackled two potential camel whackers) and partly due to a rash of zebra-spanking copycats getting seriously wounded in the process (four people had been bitten, three had received concussions from kicks to the head, and one had broken a leg simply by falling into an exhibit). But the real change in popularity was due to Summer. She had over three million followers on social media, and she had started a campaign to declare animal harassment at zoos uncool. It had quickly caught on as more famous people spoke out, and soon, anyone who harassed a zoo animal stood to be chastised online, rather than praised. Videos of the morons who still attempted stunts started to get only a few hundred hits, rather than millions. “Sometimes there’s an upside to being famous,” Summer had told me.

  In the lab, one of the assistants cautiously removed a large section of the cast, revealing one of Minerva’s eye sockets. Suddenly, the skull looked less like a rock that had been encased in plaster and more like a part of a living being. We all gasped in delight, although no one looked more pleased than Dr. Chen.

  “I’ve already noted some distinct differences between this skull and the ones that have been found in Montana,” she told us. “They’re subtle, but important.”

  “What does that mean?” Sage asked.

  “That this is another subspecies of tyrannosaur,” Dr. Chen replied excitedly. “One that is entirely new to science.”

  J.J. McCracken was the only one who didn’t seem excited by this. “So, when we put Minerva here on display, we can’t call her a Tyrannosaurus rex?”

  It turned out that even before the theft, J.J. McCracken, Harper Weems, and the Bonotto parents had been working on a top-secret deal for Minerva. That was what Harper had been hiding from us. The ultimate plan was that J.J. and Harper would collectively pay seven million dollars in a preemptive bid to take Minerva off the market. But instead of splitting the bones, they would donate them to the University of Texas, which would get to display the originals at the Texas Memorial Museum on campus. In return for their investment, J.J. and Harper would each get copies of the skeleton. Harper was donating a revolutionary supersize 3-D printer to the paleontology department to make the bones. It would be years before the excavation and scanning were complete, but eventually J.J. would have one dinosaur replica for FunJungle and Harper Weems would have another for herself. The university could sell sk
eletons to other museums, but J.J. and Harper would be the only private owners. Harper hadn’t announced what she would do with her skeleton, but she was leaning toward keeping it in her rocket factory. She was so excited about the deal, she was thinking of naming her new rocket lines after dinosaur species: T. rex, Carnotaur, Raptor, and so on.

  The deal would also allow the Bonottos to keep their ranch going, which was a great relief to the entire family. The fake Dr. Chen had known about the deal, and had played along, though she was plotting to steal Minerva the whole time. Now the real Dr. Chen was thrilled to have not only a new tyrannosaur, but also a deal to finance its presentation in place.

  “You’ll still be able to call it a tyrannosaur,” she informed J.J. “It just won’t be a ‘rex.’ As a brand-new species, it will have a different name.”

  “Who gets to name it?” Mr. Bonotto asked.

  Dr. Chen said, “Normally, it would be the person who describes the dinosaur for science.”

  “Which would be you,” Mom observed.

  “Officially,” Dr. Chen replied. “But that’s not a hard and fast rule. There is a lot of precedent for other people naming new species. Sometimes the rights are auctioned off at charity. Sometimes a friend simply comes up with a great name. To be honest, there’s no absolutely correct way to do it, as long as it sounds remotely scientific.”

  “So it could be called Tyrannosaurus funjungleus?” J.J. asked.

  “Er… yes,” Dr. Chen replied, looking a bit queasy at the thought.

  “Or Tyrannosaurus bonotto?” Sage suggested.

  “Or…,” I began, fully intending to suggest Tyrannosaurus mccracken. Only Summer slapped a hand over my mouth before I could.

  “Tyrannosaurus theodorus,” she suggested. “Because no one would even know this species existed if it wasn’t for Teddy.”

  Everyone smiled at the thought of that, even Dr. Chen.

  “Tyrant Lizard Theodore,” Dad translated, looking at me. “Seems fitting.”

  Summer whispered in my ear, “You’ve already named a rhino and a nature preserve after me. It’s your turn to be famous for once.”

  “You’re all okay with that?” I asked the room.

  My parents and the Bonottos and the McCrackens and Dr. Chen and the lab staff all nodded agreement. I found myself feeling overwhelmed by their support and respect.

  I looked into the vacant eyes of the dinosaur skull. Part of the upper jaw was exposed, and in a weird way, it looked like Minerva was giving me a 65-million-year-old smile. I smiled back. “Tyrannosaurus theodorus,” I said proudly. “Sounds good to me.”

  The Reptiles in This Book Are Not the Only Ones in Danger!

  Animal trafficking is an enormous problem. By many estimates, it is the second-biggest criminal enterprise on Earth after the drug trade.

  So what can you do to stop it? Plenty.

  The first thing is, be very cautious about purchasing exotic pets—especially reptiles—to make sure that they were captive-bred and not caught in the wild. I had expected that the people I interviewed at the World Wildlife Fund and various zoos would recommend that people not buy reptiles as pets at all—but to my surprise, most of them were okay with this, as long as buyers do their research first. First of all, don’t take the purchase of an exotic animal lightly. Know what the care of this animal will involve. Know how big it will grow and what it will need to eat. Know which animals do well in captivity and which don’t. And no matter how cool a venomous snake might seem, it’s probably in your best interests not to own one.

  Then, learn which animals are guaranteed to be captive bred or sustainably harvested. (Examples include leopard geckos, ball pythons, and bearded dragons.) Third, look for legitimate merchants. Petco and PetSmart both have reptile sales systems that have been vetted by the WWF. Be extremely cautious about reptiles purchased at reptile shows. As I pointed out in this book, if an animal has wounds or parasites or doesn’t look like it has been pampered, there’s a decent chance it was stolen from the wild and smuggled, or bred in an illegal facility. An animal that looks like it has been well taken care of its whole life was probably born and raised in captivity.

  Here’s something that really surprised me: Many experts suggested that you purchase a designer reptile—one that has been captive-bred for its looks. At first, this sounded bizarre to me, but then I realized that this is what dog owners have been doing for centuries. We all know that a labradoodle or a mutt from the pound isn’t a wolf that has been stolen from the wild. The same thing applies to designer snakes. If a snake has a pattern that doesn’t exist in nature, then it wasn’t stolen from the wild. (And to be honest, some of the patterns on these designer snakes are amazingly beautiful.)

  Of course, it’s not only reptiles that are victims of the illegal wildlife trade, so what I’ve said here certainly applies to exotic birds, fish, and mammals as well. Getting a pet isn’t something to be taken lightly. Do your research—and remember, while an exotic pet might seem really cool and unusual, there are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of dogs and cats in your community in need of adoption. They might not be unusual—but they’ll be loving and devoted. So it couldn’t hurt to drop by your local animal shelter, right?

  Acknowledgments

  One of the most amazing things about writing this series is the amazing people I have been able to meet—and the amazing places I have been able to visit—while doing research.

  For example: Alan Zdinak, preparator of vertebrate paleontology at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, was kind enough to spend hours showing me—and my son—around the labs and answering all our questions. Deborah Wagner, the paleontology laboratory manager at the John A. and Katherine G. Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin, was also incredibly helpful, and even took the time to give me a spur-of-the-moment tour of the university’s amazing collections. (For the record, the lab really is located on the J. J. Pickle Research Campus. I didn’t make up that name.)

  Giavanna Grein and her cohorts at the animal crimes division of the World Wildlife Fund first tipped me off to how serious the issue of trafficking illegal animals is. Robin Sawyer and Julia Criscuolo at the WWF discussed the details of reptile laundering with me. At the Los Angeles Zoo, Candace Sclimenti; Mike Maxcy, curator of birds; and Ian Recchio, curator of reptiles, gave me more of the scoop on trafficking and how zoos can be overwhelmed with requests to take exotic pets. (Plus, Candace really did once bust a passenger for smuggling a monkey on a passenger plane.) At the Maryland Zoo, Lori Finklestein, VP of education, interpretation, and volunteer programs, and Sharon Bower, education manager, gave me a tour of their facilities and discussed how important it is for everyone to understand the difference between zoos that are AZA certified (like your municipal zoo, most likely) and ones that aren’t (like Snakes Alive). Also, thanks are due to Jeanne Brodsky, the office manager of Strictly Reptiles in Florida, and Jay Brewer, owner of Reptile Zoo in Fountain Valley, California, who gave me a tour of his facilities and his designer anaconda breeding operation.

  My amazing intern, Kelly Heinzerling, located all these fascinating people and took incredible notes. And my dear friend Lennlee Keep joined me on an investigative expedition along Interstate 35 in Texas, where we visited a certain place (that will remain unnamed) that served as the inspiration for Snakes Alive.

  I should also point out that Bonotto Ranch in the book is closely based on my experiences on the ranch of my childhood friend Paul Dague, whom I reconnected with when his kids ended up reading my books. So thanks to Paul and his family for all the great fun I had on their ranch when I was a kid. (For the record, Paul really did have a car he used to go up and down the driveway.)

  As usual, I need to thank my entire team at Simon & Schuster: Liz Kossnar, Justin Chanda, Anne Zafian, Lucy Cummins, Milena Giunco, Audrey Gibbons, Lisa Moraleda, Jenica Nasworthy, Chrissy Noh, Anna Jarzab, Nicole Benevento, Devin MacDonald, Christina Pecorale, Victor Iannone, Emily Hutton, Caitl
in Nalven, and Theresa Pang. And as usual, I must give massive props to my incredible agent, Jennifer Joel, for making all this possible.

  Plus, huge thanks to my ever-supportive community of writers: James Ponti, Sarah Mlynowski, Christina Soontornvat, Julie Buxbaum, Leslie Margolis, Karina Yan Glaser, Elizabeth Eulberg, Ally Carter, Varian Johnson, Julia Devillers, Adele Griffin, Michael Buckley, Chris Grabenstein, AJ Jacobs, Rose Brock, and Maggie Stiefvater (who first taught me about fainting goats and told me “this is going to change your life” before showing me videos of them). Thanks to all the school librarians and parent associations who have arranged for me to visit, all the bookstore owners and employees who have shilled my books, and all the amazingly tireless festival organizers and volunteers who have invited me to participate. On the home front, thanks to the Sterns, the Reismans, the Heisens, the Rotkos, the Delmans, the Berloffiluses, the Kuklinskis, the Bosnaks, the Steinbergs, the Johnsons, the Middlemans, the Lyons, and the Heys.

  Finally, thanks to my team who helps get me through every day—and makes sure I can still travel around to do research, visit schools, and meet excited readers at festivals: Ronald and Jane Gibbs; Darragh, Suz, and Ciara Howard; Barry, Carole, and Alan Patmore and Sarah Cradeur; Andrea Lee Gomez; and Georgia Simon.

  Last but certainly not least, thanks to my children, the real Dashiell and Violet, who are now old enough to come with me on the occasional research trip (and to ask better questions than I do) and to help edit my books with me. I love you both to the moon and back.

  More from this Series

  Lion Down

  Panda-monium

  Big Game

  Poached