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The Dinosaur Hunter(6)

By:Homer Hickam


I did as I was told and silently handed the young scientist a mug of hot joe along with the sugar bowl and some pouches of fake cream Jeanette had carried out of a diner in Miles City. He spooned in a couple dollops of sugar and used all the ersatz cream. Even cut, Ray’s coffee was a spine stiffener and when Pick took a sip, he kind of shuddered. I allowed myself a chuckle.

Jeanette returned with a battered old cardboard box with the misspelled word FOSILS hand-printed on its side. She placed it on the table and I moved to look over Pick’s shoulder as he reached into the box to pick up a smooth, curiously shaped object that I thought looked like the end of a leg bone. I was disappointed when he said, “This is a sandstone concretion. Not a bone.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“I have a PhD in paleontology and a master’s degree in geology, Mike. I know bones and rocks.”

Pick rooted around some more in the box and brought out a quarter-sized fragment of yellow rock. “Bone,” he said. He plucked out three other such pieces, all about the same size, then put one against his tongue. “A field test,” he explained. “If it’s sticky to the tongue, it’s probably bone. These little pieces are what we call float, a generic term for indistinct bone fragments falling down a hill from an unknown fossil horizon. Your husband has a good eye to find them, Mrs. Coulter.”

“I’m a widow,” Jeanette replied. “What kind of dinosaur is it?”

“Too small to tell,” Pick said, then picked up another fragment about the size of a shot glass “This is the vertebra of a Champsosaur. Notice the hour-glass configuration along the dorsal edge of the centrum? That’s the tell-tale clue. Not a dinosaur but a small crocodile-like reptile. This area was mostly floodplain and lake systems during the Cretaceous. Lots of swampy areas. Perfect for crocs.”

Jeanette arched an eyebrow. “Sometimes when it rains around here for a few days, it’s still a swamp.”

Pick gave that some thought, or pretended to, then picked up a chunk of rounded rock about three inches long and two inches in diameter. “This is a portion of a Triceratops horn, likely one of two orbital horns that grew out of its skull above its eyes.”

“What’s it worth?” Jeanette asked.

“I don’t buy or sell fossils, Mrs. Coulter,” Pick said, “but I guess maybe twenty dollars at a rock show.”

“Is that all?”

“It’s not in very good shape. I’m sorry.”

She nodded. “How about those bones you called float? Worth anything?”

“Some people make jewelry out of little pieces of dinosaur bone. Earrings, that kind of thing, but I’m against that.”

Jeanette narrowed her eyes, always a dangerous sign. “What are you for, Dr. Pickford?”

“Truth through science.”

This earned him a mirthless chuckle. “Does truth through science pay your bills?”

Pick thought that over, then said, “I don’t need much, Mrs. Coulter. Give me a little food, water, and a place to look for bones and I’m happy.”

He took two more pieces of whatever from the box and separated them from the others. “These belonged to a theropod. Theropods were meat-eating dinosaurs.”

“They look like chicken bones,” I said.

Pick nodded. “We think theropods were distantly related to chickens, only usually a lot bigger and with more brain power. Tyrannosaurus rex is an example of a theropod. You’re familiar with T. rex, I’m sure.”

“I saw Jurassic Park,” Jeanette volunteered. Her tone had gone dry. I figured she was about five minutes away from kicking me and our pony-tailed paleontologist out of her kitchen.

“Actually,” he said, “T. rex lived during the late Cretaceous, well after the Jurassic. They were one of the last dinosaurs that ever lived. The Triceratops was probably the source of much of its diet. Duckbills, too.” When he saw Jeanette’s questioning look, he said, “Hadrosaurs, big dinosaurs with long, flat jaws that gave them a duck-like appearance. They were herbivores. Vegetarians.”

“Like Mike,” Jeanette said, giving away one of my peculiarities.

The scientist looked at me in surprise. “I used to live in California,” I said by way of explanation.

“Finish up, Dr. Pickford,” Jeanette said before Pick and I could get into a discussion of either vegetarianism or California.

Pick next withdrew from the box a cylindrical rock that was about two inches long and the diameter of a pencil. “This is an ossified tendon from a Hadrosaur. Tendons are like lines in a pulley from muscles to bones. The muscles twitch and the tendons are pulled, thus moving the bones. Ossified means this tendon has turned from collagen to bone. This propensity isn’t unique to dinosaurs. Some modern birds like turkeys have ossified tendons.”