The Dinosaur Hunter(23)

“They do seem to know what they’re doing,” I admitted.

He grinned. “Wait until you see how fast they dig up that big old Trike!”

I changed course. “Pick, when you came out here that first day, did you see that dead bull?”

He squinted thoughtfully, then said, “I saw it but I just kept going.”

“Did you see anybody else?”

He hesitated a tick, then said, “No.”

“You told Jeanette you have a BLM permit. Do you mind if I see it? We could get in big trouble with the government if you aren’t supposed to be here.”

“It’s in my truck. I’ll show you.”

Pick started off in the wrong direction. I turned him around and then led him along the curve in the hill, crossed a small grassy patch, jumped over a narrow crack, then went along another hill. I looked over my shoulder and saw Pick had stopped and was looking up the hill. “What is it?” I asked.

He didn’t answer. Instead, he climbed up the slope, mostly on his hands and knees because of its steepness and the loose rock that covered it. Finally, he reached a small ledge, picked up what he was after, then scrambled back down, pebbles and dirt in a little landslide around his boots. He held up his find, a curved brown rock about the six inches wide. When he turned it over, I could see by its striations that it was probably bone. He confirmed it, saying “This is the frontoparietal dome of a Pachycephalosaurus. A very nice one, indeed.”

Before I could ask him what a Packy-whatever was, Pick said, “They were wonderful creatures, like a dinosaur kangaroo with a football helmet. This bone was the top part of the helmet.”

“Did they hop?”

Pick blinked at my question. “Hop?”

“You said they were like a kangaroo.”

“No, I don’t think they hopped. I just meant they looked kangaroo-like. They had large eyes, short front limbs, and muscular hind limbs. Their manus were well-padded but also excellently adapted with a finger-like agility. Their pes had three phalanges, well equipped with ungual phalanxes…”

I interrupted him. “I do believe you’ve lost me.”

He took a moment to rethink what he just said, then cleared things up. “Manus are hands, pes are feet, phalanges are fingers, and ungual phalanxes are claws. We paleontologists have our own language.”

“So do ranchers. You ought to hear Jeanette and the other owners when they get going talking about things like the estimated breeding value of a bull and the most probable producing capability of a cow. Most folks wouldn’t have a clue what they were talking about.”

Pick politely mulled this over, then asked, “Do you want to hear more about Pachycephalosaurus?”

“Sure.”

“They were odd, even by dinosaur standards. By their size and strength and by those big domes on their heads, you’d think they’d be aggressive but all they had were tiny leaf-shaped teeth, suitable for not much more than chewing on ferns. Their domes were surrounded by pebble-like bumps and prominent osteoderms along the sides of the squamosal that gave them a dragon-like appearance.”

“Ostie what on squamie huh?” I asked.

“They had spikes and bony structures covering their snouts and along their mouths. They were also ornithischians, that is to say they had bird-like hips like the Trikes and duckbills. The meat-eaters, by the way, had lizard-like hips, making them saurischians, even though they’re much more closely related to birds then lizards. That is a quirk of evolution. Although lay people often think it’s confusing, we paleontologists divide dinosaurs into two main groups based on their hip structures.”

I let that one ride and Pick went on. “I believe Packys liked to roam in family groups, were cooperative, and ate well. I also think their domes were mostly for sexual display. Some say they used them to butt like mountain goats for sexual dominance but I doubt it. There’s nothing in their design otherwise to absorb the shock of using their heads as battering rams. Maybe they weren’t particularly good to eat and therefore didn’t have to fight very much. Or maybe they had stink glands like skunks. Or even quills like porcupines.”

I asked, “Is there more of the Packy-seffy-thing up there?”

“No. The domes were especially suited to survive over the ages but its other bones weren’t. This tells us their skeletons were probably not particularly robust. In fact, we’ve never found a complete skeleton, only ones of similar animals. In China, for instance.”

“So you’re not sure what they looked like.”

He peered at me, like he was pitying my ignorance. Finally, he said, “I have faith in my vision of the Pachycephalosaurus.”