Dinosaur Stakeout (5 page)

She fixed piercing eyes on him, but he said no ­more.

As the two continued their conversation, Daniel felt like an intruder. “Well, I’m off,” he said, finally finding an opening in their ­conversation.

“See you later, lad,” Mr. Pederson said distractedly.

Daniel would catch up on their news later. He had other thoughts whirring around in his ­mind – ­like planning his trip to the prehistoric world. Maybe the rest of the day wouldn’t be too busy. But just as Daniel finished that thought, three more vehicles pulled into the yard, one after another. He walked over to show them where to park. Lucy appeared with papers in ­hand.

For the rest of the afternoon, Daniel, Jed, and Lucy were kept busy sorting the tourists and guiding them on the hiking trails or to the quarry, and taking them to the campsite. Jed and Lucy mostly did the quarry and hiking tours, and Daniel did the horse trails, which he found a little easier on his bruised body. Most people decided to spend the night. Dad and Doug Lindstrom assisted them in choosing spots and setting up their camping gear. In between times, the men worked on finishing the exterior of the guesthouse. Mildred Roost had gone to the quarry with Ole Pederson some time earlier, both of them chatting without any indication of stopping ­soon.

Daniel guided the Nelwins to help Mr. Pederson about ­mid-­afternoon. Dactyl seemed content to stay in the farmyard. As the trio left sight of the farm buildings, Daniel stopped and pointed to the hills across the valley where different coloured layers of earth were ­evident.

“Do you see those striation lines?” Todd and Craig ­nodded.

“Those are sedimentary layers indicating different geological formations. The further you go down, the older they are. The one that’s almost ­black – ­about ­two-­thirds of the way down the valley – is a coal seam that contains the ­K-­T boundary. In it is a white, pasty clay layer that has all the geochemical signatures of meteor impact. That layer separates the Cretaceous and Tertiary ­Periods – ­the extinction of the dinosaur world.”

“Amazing that we can actually see where the changes happened,” said ­Craig.

“Yeah, I never thought about what was below us before,” said ­Todd.

Then Craig, with a curious expression, asked, “Is that about where we were when we went back in time?”

“Yes,” said Daniel, studying the hillsides. “It’s hard to tell exactly where, because we’re talking about millions of years in time.”

“Wow.” Todd seemed mesmerized by the ­implications.

“Weird how you can actually see the past in the present,” said ­Craig.

“Wait until we get to the quarry,” Daniel said. “You’ll even see more things like that. We have some evidence of garfish skeletons.”

“But those are fish from now, aren’t they?” asked ­Todd.

Daniel said, “You’re right. They do live now in the southern United States and in South America, but they’ve existed for millions of years. They look very much the same today, except they are quite a bit smaller. They somehow made it through all the extinctions with many of the other creatures.”

“I thought everything went extinct with the dino-saurs,” said ­Craig.

“Not all creatures,” Daniel said. “Some adapted.”

“You mean everything didn’t just die off right when the meteor struck?” Todd asked in ­amazement.

“No, the extinction of some creatures took many
thousands and millions of years, and some of them evolved
over time,” Daniel ­explained.

“Aren’t birds supposed to be related to the dinosaurs?” asked ­Craig.

Daniel turned to him in surprise. “How do you know that?”

“It just makes sense because of the way they both walk.” Craig blushed when Daniel continued to stare at him. “I was looking through your dinosaur book,” he ­admitted.

Daniel grinned. Craig was getting hooked on paleontology!

As Todd and Craig discussed the point, Daniel’s mind drifted off again to all the layers of creatures that had lived at various prehistoric times several metres beneath ­them – ­in an alien world so many fathomless years in the ­past.

He pictured the prehistoric shorebirds they’d seen, wondering exactly what type of insects they ate. Were any of those insects poisonous? And what about the herbivores, would they totally ignore humans? He sure would like to go back and investigate these things in more detail. A sudden trembling swept through him at the thought of the danger he would be in and he quickly brushed the thought ­away.

They reached the last hilltop and began their descent into the quarry. Daniel couldn’t see any sign of Mr. Pederson or Mildred Roost. Where had they ­gone?

All at once, he spied Pederson lying on the ground at the edge of a narrow ledge, slightly hidden from view by an overhang. He must have found something! Daniel whistled their special code, but there was no response. He gave another piercing whistle. Nothing ­happened.

Daniel realized that Mr. Pederson was lying on his back, an unusual position when one was looking for fossils. And he wasn’t moving at all! Not even a finger, nor could Daniel detect any rise and fall of his chest! Daniel didn’t want to alarm the others, but what if something had happened to Mr. Pederson? And where was Dr. ­Roost?

Daniel hollered as loud as he could, yet held back his fear. “Mr. Pederson!” No answer. “Mr. Pederson!”

Again, there was no response. “Dr. Roost!” he hollered. “Mr. Pederson!”

Maybe he’d had a heart attack! Daniel gathered speed as he watched the prone body on the ledge below him. The others followed behind, seeming to sense something exciting, but not realizing Daniel’s ­fear.

Stumbling down the steep incline, Daniel rounded a curve and ran as fast as he could towards Mr. Pederson’s prone ­body.

Chapter Four

A
s Daniel crunched his way
over the cleared terrain of the excavation site, he kicked up clouds of dust. Breathing hard, he kept his eye on Mr. Pederson, still calling as he ­ran.

“Mr. Pederson! Mr. Pederson!”

There was no movement. Daniel leapt down to the ledge where Mr. Pederson’s inert body lay, and shouted again as he plopped down beside ­him.

Suddenly, Mr. Pederson sat up and looked at Daniel with a surprised expression on his ­face.

“What’s wrong, Daniel?” He rose to his ­feet.

“Geez, Mr. Pederson, you scared me!”

“I scared
you
? You scared the living daylights out of me by almost jumping on top of me,” Mr. Pederson ­complained.

“I thought you were dead or something. You weren’t moving.” Daniel wiped the sweat out of his eyes. His heart thumped against his ­chest.

“Of course not, I was resting,” the old man said, rubbing his ­eyes.

“Couldn’t you hear me calling?” asked ­Daniel.

Pederson stared at Daniel. “I was underneath the overhang, out of the sun. I couldn’t hear anything. It was so peaceful and quiet. And if you must know, I was having a rather pleasant dream.”

The Nelwins had arrived on the hill directly above them. Daniel waved to them. He tried to calm himself, relieved that Mr. Pederson was all ­right.

“But where’s Dr. Roost?”

Pederson waved his arm. “Off exploring somewhere. Last time I saw her, she was heading over that rise.” He pointed to a distant ­hill.

The Nelwins joined them then and Pederson gave them a genial ­welcome.

“Until I explain everything to you, please stay outside the ­tied-­off areas,” he said, rising to his feet and brushing dust off his pants. “You’ll see how tiny some of our discoveries are in a moment, and one footstep can make all the difference in destroying some prime finds.”

He guided them to a particularly rocky plateau nearby. “This is what we call a microsite and this is what we find here.”

In less than a minute, Mr. Pederson picked up several kinds of specimens, so small that they all fit into the palm of one hand. He pointed to each of them. “Small mammal teeth, ear bones, several leaf fossils and plant seeds, bits of turtle shell, crocodile armour, salamanders, tiny vertebrae from garfish, and
Triceratops
teeth.”

“Sheesh!” Craig bent over for a closer inspection. “You can tell what all of these are?”

“Yes, lad!” Pederson said with confidence. “Comes from years of practice.”

Todd crowded in for a closer look. “I can see why you don’t want us stepping all over the place!” he ­said.

Pederson ­nodded.

“Sir, how do you know where to look for these kinds of areas, and the bigger fossils too?” asked ­Craig.

“We go on ‘prospecting’ tours,” Pederson explained. “We usually do exploratory trips through the hills in teams of a couple of people so we don’t miss any spots.”

“But how can you tell dinosaur bones from rocks?”

Pederson laughed. “Actually we look for shapes, textures, and things that
don’t
look like stone. With practice you get an eye for it, don’t you Daniel?”

“That’s right, sir!” Daniel said. He’d been doing it as long as he could remember. “And by taste!”

Daniel picked up a small stone and then a piece of fossilized bone from Mr. Pederson’s hand. He demonstrated the difference between them by touching the stone to his ­tongue.

“See, the stone is solid in the centre and doesn’t stick, but…” he removed the stone from the edge of his tongue and replaced it with the fossil, which stuck fast. He tried to explain. “The bone thiks to ur tung.”

He removed the fossil. “Bones are porous, that’s why it sticks.”

“Cool,” said Craig. “Would we be able to go prospecting sometime?”

“We won’t be doing anything like that for quite a while. We have plenty to excavate right here,” Pederson answered. “Although I suppose it’s something special we could consider offering to the public too. I’m not sure we could do it this year.”

Then he saw the disappointed look on the boys’ faces. “We’re rather booked up with tours, especially for the rest of the summer, but maybe after that we could work it in somehow, if you’re still keen.”

Craig’s eyes shone with interest. Todd shrugged his shoulders, as if it didn’t matter to him one way or the ­other.

“It would be cool to discover something!” Craig said. “Would it be named after us?”

“Could be.” Pederson laughed. “And now for the macrosite where all the big fossils are located.” He turned to Daniel, his eyes twinkling in excitement. “You’ll want to take a look at this too. I uncovered something new today.”

Pederson led them over to his excavation area first, where several ribs poked out of the ground. As he explained how he had uncovered them, Daniel looked closer. There were several more bones exposed, over to the right of the ones found earlier. They were inverted and not in line with the ­rest.

“This skeleton is disarticulated, which in scientific terms means the bones are scattered,” explained Peders-on. “The skeleton is in a former riverbed and the current has washed it downstream, which caused it to come apart.”

He led them over to Daniel’s ­section.

“This lad here,” he patted Daniel’s shoulder, “uncovered these teeth, which we know are from a herbivore. These are important, because they are probably part of the skeleton from over there and that’s what helps us identify it.”

“Why do you think that?” asked ­Craig.

Pederson explained. “As the carcass of any animal rots, the teeth often come apart from the jaws. With the water velocity of the river 65 million years ago, these teeth were probably separated from the body.”

As Craig and Todd stood mesmerized, Daniel beamed
with pride at his findings. He remembered how thrilled he’d been discovering pieces from a much larger ­creature.

Pederson continued. “All we can do is hope that most of the skeleton is here in the vicinity to help us identify it more accurately.”

“Do you have enough yet to know what this one is?” Craig ­asked.

“Just those pieces are not enough to go on.” Then, with a gleam in his eyes, Pederson pulled a tarp off a section and stepped back to reveal a much larger bone partially protruding from the ground. “But this is what I found so far today.”

Daniel moved closer and stared. A partial skull! Without thinking about the others possibly following him and the restrictions they had for staying behind the ropes, he went closer to examine it. Sinking to his knees, he examined the skull more closely. He touched the dark brown contours, running his hands over the huge, rough, sunken eye sockets. If it was what he thought it was, this would be the first one found in ­Saskatchewan.