The Dinosaur Hunter(88)

“I already told you,” Pick replied. “Love.”

“A nest,” Amelia said. “She was protecting her nest. And her babies.”

Pick nodded his head vigorously. “Or his babies. And mate.”

Tanya said, “Then the little skeleton we found was probably a chick that got stepped on during the battle.” Tears began to streak down her dirty cheeks. “That poor little thing. It was just trying to get out of the way.”

“I think you’re right,” Pick said.

I looked around. There were lots of tears. Even Jeanette’s eyes were wet. Ray looked away until Amelia’s hand found his and held it tight. Tanya was too far from me to take her hand but I wanted to. Laura was writing in her journal, stopping to wipe her nose with the back of her hand. The two brothers of Green Planet were openly sobbing. Me? Well, I felt sorry for the little tyke but it had been a long, long time ago. Pick soon reminded us of that fact.

“The way I read the dirt,” he said, “I think this happened in the late Cretaceous, around sixty-five or seventy million years ago. So the question is why have we found them so well preserved?”

“You’re already told us,” Laura said. “They were covered with mud.”

“That’s how,” Pick replied. “But my question is why?”

“I don’t understand,” Laura said.

“OK, let me put in a different way. Why are we finding these creatures now? Why was deep time flipped on its head to bring them to the surface at this moment?” When Laura shrugged and the rest of us reacted with querulous frowns, Pick said, “I believe it is because the time has come that we—meaning our civilization—learned the lessons these bones can teach us.”

This was too much for Laura. “That’s crazy, Pick! You’re talking like there’s a big God in the sky who left us a note by arranging these bones this way. I totally reject your hypothesis. Why are these bones here and so well preserved? It’s simply the random result of millions of years and the death of millions of animals. This is just what happens to be. The result of a cosmic roll of the dice.”

“Einstein said God does not play dice with the universe,” Pick replied.

“He later refuted that,” Laura growled. “You’re going too far.”

“If you’re right, Pick, what is the lesson?” Jeanette asked, cutting to the chase.

“I don’t yet know,” Pick answered. “But we’re getting close.” He pointed at the unexcavated dirt. “The answer lies there.”

We crept forward—our shovels, our ice picks, our trowels at the ready. “No you don’t,” Laura said. “We pedestal and jacket the rest of these bones before we move a teaspoon of any more dirt.”

“That will take days!” Tanya protested.

“It will take what it takes,” Laura said as Pick regally climbed back on his perch.





28




We were up at first light and, as soon as we got some coffee and breakfast under our collective belts, went back to work. As we pedestaled and jacketed and moved the bones down the hill, I kept marveling over the crushed skull of the big T. rex that lay atop the smaller one. Stuck in it was a tooth over a foot long. Whatever animal had planted that tooth through three inches of solid bone had attacked with enormous force, energy, and passion. But why? Self-defense was my instinctive answer but Pick was hinting it was more. The answer, as always in paleontology, was in the dirt.

Blackie Butte was more than the pyramidal peak we had taken down to a stump but actually several connected outcrops, smaller hills, and peninsulas. When we eased up for lunch, Tanya asked me to meet her on a narrow dirt bridge which had several small cedars perched on it. I agreed, making a detour by my tent for something I wanted her to have. Well, two things. I settled beneath one of the cedars on the earthen outcrop and enjoyed the view until she arrived with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and sports drinks, the latter to replenish the lost salts caused by our labor. She also had a salt shaker and suggested that I sprinkle some on my hand and lick it off. Of course, I would have preferred to lick it off her hand, as I’d seen Pick do once, but I did as I was told. We sat there quietly, enjoying our meal. When we were finished, she put her hand on my knee. “Thank you for our night together, Mike,” she said. I thought it was me who should thank her and was about to say that very thing when she said, “That night Toby was murdered, I am ready to tell you about that now.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” I said, even though I was eager to hear it.