Time travel had been depicted in a multitude of ways over the years by Hollywood, but when it finally happened, it seemed so anticlimactic. No fancy spinning machines, no nuclear powered DeLoreans. The unit itself was a small trailer loaded with apparatus and towed behind an SUV. The project was kept secret.

Under the cover of darkness, the research crew, a combined effort of The California Institute of Technology, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and The Corporation For Advanced Research transported the apparatus to a flat area in central North Dakota. It was time for the ultimate test. They had some limited facility for testing the devices by remote control, but only for transport of a few moments, at best a couple minutes. To test any further, actual human passengers would have to occupy this machine. Making matters even more challenging, the machine had a severe limitation. It could only go backwards in time, and after that, only forward to the point it left.

The two who were chosen were a pair of scientists from the University from Wisconsin. Dr. Walt Johnson had only earned his Ph.D. in Geology a year before. He was only thirty one years old. His expertise was the sedimentary deposits of the early Tertiary, some sixty million years ago. His partner in this mission, Dr. Sarah Hillingsworth, a Palaeobotanist and palaeoclimatologist who was ten years older.

Why these two were chosen to take this adventure, one could only wonder. The two did not get along…

“When you get back there, take note of what you see,” said one of the technicians. “We think we’ve got the exact date down to within about ten thousand years. That’s not much in geologic time, but that’s a pretty broad stretch in our own timeframes. Take some samples, take some pictures, and then come back. Only stay as long as you feel safe, then fire it up and come back.”

“This might not be the best place to do this,” said Dr. Johnson. “This area’s dry right now, but it was most likely a wooded marshland back then.”

“And that means?”

“We’re going to be driving this thing at nearly fifty miles an hour,” he said. “That’s okay on this terrain, but in an instant, we’re going to be in a muddy forest with tree trunks and stumps and logs.”

“That’s why we have these heavy deer guards on the vehicle. Should be alright.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“We’ll be aiming for a drier time of the year, so that should be no problem,” said Sarah. “It’s set to go back to about August seventeenth.”

“The seasons, even the days are going to be a little different,” said the young geologist. “Our calendar will be significantly off.”

“I’m the expert on weather and climate…”

“Whatever,” he said. “But when we get up to our axles in a mud hole…”

“We chose this site because I determined it would be…” she started.

“During the early Tertiary, this place was a temperate to semi-tropical forest and floodplain, with an winter monsoon season,” said the young geologist. “Considering the fact that our orbit has shifted, and that this area was a bit farther south during that time, we’d be landing right in the beginning of it.”

“And again, I am the climate expert here…”

“Ten minutes,” said one of the technicians. “Ready?”

“As we’ll ever be,” said the young geologist as he got behind the wheel of the retrofitted Ford Explorer. “I’ll drive!”

“Yeah, a woman driver will get us wrapped around a Brontosaurus penis or something stupid, right?” said Sarah as she climbed into the passengers side and slammed the door.

The ’Chronometric Displacement Apparatus,’ or ’CDA’ as the technicians called it was engaged and charged. It rode in a trailer towed behind the SUV, and when fully activated, it would create a field that would encompass the vehicle and the trailer. In order for the device to work and not cause major temporal or electrical disturbances, it was necessary that the device be moving at a relatively high speed.

“Just keep in mind,” said the geologist. “Whatever speed we leave the Holocene will be the same speed we enter the Cretaceous. Tree trunks are hard to avoid at fifty miles an hour!”

“If it makes you feel better, our wonderful Rocket Scientists wanted to do this down in Florida!”

“Florida didn’t exist at the end of the Cretaceous!” he said.

“Then be happy you’re just going to dodge tree trunks.”

“Okay, lets get this over with,” he said as he started the engine.

“Full charge in three minutes,” said one of the technicians.

“Let’s just hope you’re right about this being on land sixty three and a half million years ago,” said Sarah.

“Let’s hope everyone’s right about a whole lot of things,” said Walt.

The CDA began to hum and an eerie blue glow emitted from its surfaces. Dr. Johnson put the Ford in drive and stepped on the throttle. Sarah recited The Lord’s Prayer as they began to accelerate.

“I had no idea you were…”

“Catholic?” she said. “Still have belief in the same ways, although most wouldn’t agree about what I do for a living.”

“They say that in battle there are no atheists in the foxhole.”

“I’m sure you’re scared shitless, too!”

“I am,” he said as he held one hand on the wheel and reached for the Star of David hanging from a chain on his neck. “I brought my protection too.”

Within seconds they had attained the necessary speed, and engaged the mechanism in the apparatus being towed behind them. A brief blue flash was seen, and then they were there. No swirling tunnels of light, no queasy sensation, just a flash, and the open grassland turned instantaneously to a forest not much different than that near San Francisco or Monterey. Walt struggled to get the vehicle under control as it decelerated rapidly through the soft soil and underbrush.

“That was anticlimactic,” said Sarah. “I was expecting a light show, you know, like the ‘Back to the Future’ movies.”

“This ain’t no DeLorean,” he said.

“Now to see if it really worked,” she said. “Or if this is one hell of a parlor trick!”

“We were riding on dry grass and sagebrush ten seconds ago, now we’re in a dense forest. I think that’s sign that SOMETHING worked!”

“Let’s just find a good spot to park this thing!” she said.

“I see a clearing or a meadow or something off there to the right,” he said as he drove over the rotting logs and dense bushes. “I’ll head for it.”

A minute later, they were in an open meadow, where he stopped the vehicle and they opened the doors.

“This doesn’t look like a meadow,” she said as she looked at the low lying fern like groundcover. She reached down to examine one of the small white rose like blossoms.

“Chameabateia Foliosa,” he said. “Common in the California Mountains where I come from. We call it Mountain Misery.”

“Actually, it resembles Chameabateia Bentha,” she said. “Remember, I’m the Botanist.”

“Foliosa, Bentha, whatever, it stinks just the same!” he said. “Just watch where you’re putting your hands. Rattlesnakes love to hide in that shit!”

“Rattlesnakes haven’t even been invented yet,” she said. “I know what I’m doing!”

Not far from where she was reaching he saw something moving in the stems and leaves. Quickly he grabbed a shovel from behind the driver’s seat and smacked it. He lifted the shovel to drag out a long narrow reptile with an oblong head, dark eyes and four small stubby legs.

“Well, this might have been the great great great granddaddy of a lot of the rattlesnakes in the West. I doubt if the vipers are the first to discover this hiding place.”

“Not quite the grassy meadows I was expecting,” she said.

“Not all the species of grasses have evolved yet,” he said. “Chameabateia is occupying that niche.”

“Okay, now how can we tell we’ve made it to the late Cretaceous?”

“Here’s your proof,” he said as he flicked the body of his recent kill her direction, making her shriek and jump back.,

“Okay, I think you made your fucking point!” she said franticly.

“Just trying to help!”

They got back into the vehicle and drove toward the edge of the meadow. For a moment, they argued about a place to park, and when they begrudgingly agreed on a location along the north end near a broken swath in the trees, he turned the engine off.

“We’ll camp out here, then fire it back up in a few days and we’ll have ample room to get up to speed to take off for the trip back.”

“Look at these trees,” she said. “It’s not a good idea!”

“Looks like they’ve been broken.”

“As if they’ve been trampled,” she said. “By something awfully damn big!”

Soon, the mystery of the broken forest was solved. A large creature emerged from the forest along this track. It was huge, nearly seventy feet long, with strange scales and a long neck. It stopped briefly and lowered it’s long oblong head to investigate the strange new feature to it’s environment.

“Stay in here,” she said. “Be careful…”

“I ain’t going out there with something that big!” he said.

“I’m the plant scientist,” she said. “You tell me what that monster is!”

“Apatosaurus sturgii,” he said. “Found a few of these in the Badlands here in South Dakota and Alberta.”

“Looks like the Brontosaurus from the Flinstones cartoons.”

“Apatosaurus is what we’ve been calling these damn things for the last ten years or so,” he said. “They’re herbivores, so I don’t think he’s going to bother us.”

The creature began licking the windshield of the SUV.

“Herbivore my ass! He can swallow us whole!”

“I doubt if he’ll want to eat something made of metal.”

“How can you tell if it’s a HE?”

Through the smudged up window, he pointed to the obvious evidence of the creature’s male gender.

“That’s one big set of testicles!” she said.

The creature reached its head over toward the driver’s side window. He rolled the window down to touch the creatures nose and take a closer look at the spindly scales.

“He’s got pin feathers,” he said. “Like a young bird!”

“That’s nice,” she said. “Will you quit fucking around with that thing and get us out of here?”

He patted it on its bare nose. Gently, the massive creature tapped its head against the side of the vehicle.

“I think he likes me!”

“Wonderful,” she said. “Now roll the damn window up and get us out of here!”

The creature proudly lifted its head and continued on past the rig.

“It’s going now,” he said. “Happy?”

“That’s just a little too close!”

“He’s just like us,” he said. “He’s curious! Curiosity’s a sign of intelligence.”

“Nice,” she said. “Now why is it stopping?”

He looked out to observe that they were right alongside one of the creature’s hind legs. Then, the unthinkable. The creature lifted his large leg and exposed its eight foot long pointed penis. He then directed a massive pressurized flow of yellow fluid onto the vehicle. Unfortunately, Walt had not managed to roll the window up! The salty water drenched them and everything in the front seats. Once the creature had relieved his bladder, he lumbered onward.

“I think he told us what he thinks of us!” he said nonchalantly.

“That fucking thing just URINATED on us!” she said angrily.

“Well, that’s the first time I’ve ever seen someone be pissed on AND pissed off, simultaneously!”

“You think this is FUNNY?”

“It’s not like we’re going out anywhere!” he said. “We’ll find a creek and rinse this off. No biggie. By the way, did you see the size of the dick on that thing?”

“You don’t understand,” she said. “I work in an office in the back of a museum, with computers and charts and stuff, and wait for idiots like you to bring in dirty bags of rocks and stuff. I’m not into these Field hazards!”

“Hey, it’s a first for me, too!” he said. “But we both knew we were going to have new experiences when we signed on for this little adventure! Hey, this stuff smells like cat pee!”

“I’m glad you’re amused.”

“Just an observation.”

Less than a half mile away, they found a large creek to rinse the pungent urine off their bodies and clothing. After cleaning up, they went back to the Ford and found some food in the back that had managed to stay out of reach of the pungent stream of the animal’s wastewater.

“I guess I can stand a few days of this freeze dried crap,” she said.

“It’s all in the interest of science,” he said as he stirred the contents of the foil wrapped MRE into a small pan.

“This one says it’s Turkey Soup, but I can hardly taste the turkey,” she said. “In fact, I can hardly taste anything…”

“That’s why they pack these things with that little bottle of Tabasco Sauce.”

“You seem to be enjoying yours.”

“It’s called Chili Delight,” he said as he read the dark printing on the empty pouch. “Beans, Pinto, with ground beef.”

“Uh, no thanks,” she said. “I’ll just hold until we get to a real restaurant.”

“Yeah, there’s a good Steak and Shake in Mitchell.”

“After this, I’ll be looking for something a little better than Steak and Shake.”

“Denny’s?”

“If that’s the best you aspire to, you HAVE been in the field too long.”

“If you want fresh, I can arrange that!” he said as he reached into the small cooler and pulled out the dead reptile he clobbered earlier.

“You kept that thing?”

“Science, remember?” he said. “But we can still enjoy it. We can still keep enough to do the DNA.”

“No thanks,” she said as she read the printing off her foil packet. “I’ll be happy with my….Soup, Turkey, with Cubed Vegetable Segments.”

The sun set, and the stars came out. They looked somewhat different than they did during the twenty first century. None of the constellations looked quite as they had before, and even the moon looked slightly larger. It was surprisingly cool for what they were expecting, not quite an arctic climate, but not tropical either. It resembled more like that of Central California.

“It is rather interesting what we see out there,” she said. “You know, there are probably stars we haven’t ever seen before, you know, long since gone to supernovae or something. And there are some that are missing, I bet, you know, some of the stars we know that haven’t formed yet.”

One thing that seemed quite different was the number of meteors streaking through the sky. Most of them did what one would expect. They would disappear as fast as they would show up in the night sky. But there were several that seemed to continue on over the horizons. They were harbingers of things to come.

“I’m going to turn in,” she said as she found a dry space a few feet away from the SUV. Walt decided to stay awake for a couple hours longer and write some things in a spiral bound notebook he brought along.

“You smell something funny?”

He took a whiff of his own clothes and hands, and realized he didn’t quite get all traces of the musky urine off in the creek. “Yeah, but I think it’s just me.”

“Figures!”

He put his pencil to the paper and took some notes. His first entry, he wrote was…. “Out of all the experts in the field, why did you guys send me with HER?”

For three days, they gathered samples, took photographs, and took notes. They also argued about everything from pitching tents, cataloging samples, and even the taxonomic and botanical nomenclature of the items they were observing. One thing they did notice and agree upon was the total lack of large dinosaurs they were finding.

“I think we came a little late,” she said. “Perhaps millions of years. The meteors we see at night are just the tail debris.”

“We did have one encounter with a dinosaur,” he said.

“Don’t remind me!” she said. “I don’t think that smell will EVER get out of my sweater.”

“We wouldn’t have met him if we were too late,” he said. “The only reason why we haven’t seen that many is the fact that something that damn big will likely be territorial. We’re in his domain, and everything else just stays the hell out. If we drive around a little, we’ll likely see more.”

“Then let’s just get what we have back home, and then prepare for another trip. We’ll look a little more the next time.”

“I take it you’re eager to get back,” he said. “Got plans on being somewhere?”

“For your information, I have a date Wednesday. We’re going to New York to see a play.”

“And no matter when we leave here, we’re going to be back by Monday afternoon. Remember, we have a time machine.”

“If I don’t get any real food to eat….or a real shower and some fresh clothes, I’m going to freak out. Again, we can come right back any time we want…”

“Let’s look around today, we’ll fire the thing up and go back at about sundown,” he said. “Sound alright?”

“Then start charging it up. It takes some time for that thing to get warmed enough to work.”

“Sounds good,” he said. “I’ll fire it up and we’ll look at more plant samples and the like. In fact, I kind of can’t wait to show them this!”

He held up a one gallon plastic jug filled with murky yellow liquid.

“You KEPT it?”

“Hey, this stuff doesn’t fossilize!” he said. “It’s definitely unique!”

“I went back sixty five million years to get a bottle of urine!”

“Sixty three million three hundred forty thousand nine hundred sixty six, to be exact.”

“Split hairs,” he said. “Hey, don’t you have some weather phenomenon to document or something?”

“You do your job, and I’ll do mine!”

He went back to the machine mounted on the trailer and began turning the switches and dials according to the guide book the engineers had sent along with them. He was halfway through the checklist, when a large electrical spark arced across the metal housing, lighting several bundles of wire ablaze and damaging several of the components. He tried to re-route some of the components, only to have the same results.

“Okay you moron, what the hell did you do?”

“I think it shorted out,” he said. “Remember, we were exposed to moisture…”

“Great,” she said sarcastically. “Can you do ANYTHING right?”

She took the instructions from his hand, and tried following the procedures recommended in such an emergency. She had the same sparking results.

“WE’RE TRAPPED HERE!” she screamed.

“Now, now, I’m sure we can figure something out here,” he said.

“”This thing is fried!” she screamed. “What’s this?”

She reached inside a compartment and pulled out a blackened piece of hollow metal. “This is the magnetron! This is the one and only thing that makes this thing WORK! It was specifically made for this machine, there is no back up!”

“Again, a risk we had to take,” he said. “But…”
“That’s your problem, you always think that we can figure something out, that there’s always an alternative… We’re not temporal engineers, we’re not electrical technicians. We’re paleontologists! We don’t have the wherewithal to deal with this!”

“Let’s make the best of it and see what options present themselves.”

“Oh, plenty of options will present themselves….IN SIXTY THREE MILLION YEARS! We’ll be FOSSILIZED by then!”



That night, as the meteors streaked through the skies and the unfamiliar screams and squawks of the prehistoric creatures filled the air in the distance, they sat and looked at one another, speechless. Meals-Ready-To-Eat and Brontosaurus urine were now the least of their problems.

“August 21, year 63,338,966 Before Christian Era….or somewhere within a few days of that…” Wrote Dr. Johnson. “The Chronometric Displacement Apparatus is toast! We’re stuck here. With some hope, I’ll find a way to preserve these notes for future scientists…."

“We have always assumed that the large Herbivores were herd animals. That seems to be the case with mammals, but with these creatures, that’s not the case. They ARE territorial, though. That is likely because it takes so much ground to support one of these animals, let alone a whole herd. Making things more difficult, I noticed from actually touching one of these creatures physically (and being urinated on by one) that these things are warm blooded. It would take tremendous energy resources to maintain such a large animal that also has to expend energy to maintain body heat.

“I was expecting this creature to be drab or mono colored, but this animal was not. He was gorgeous! Vivid bands of yellow, brown and hints of crimson. He was marked much like a Gila monster. Smaller creatures usually have marking like that to indicate danger, such as toxicity. Otherwise, they stay camouflaged. Then again, something this large doesn’t need camouflage to stay safe. Why is this creature so showy? I think of birds, and how the males are the flashy ones and the females are less spectacular. Perhaps this is where that comes from. Warm blooded, spotty coverings of pinfeathers, reversed pelvic bones, elegant male markings. Hard to believe that the Brontosaurus is just a big chicken! But that seems to be the case.

“Upon following one of the swaths this beast trampled through the forest, we found that their territories do seem to overlap a little, especially by females. Females are still spectacularly marked, but not quite as much as the males. They also seem to be slightly larger. They also seem to stake out much larger territory than males. Perhaps that is due to the need to care for young.

“They nest, much like birds. This afternoon, I observed a female rolling around in the forest knocking the trees down, and then shoveling brush, leaves and ground covering into an area near the edge, where eggs can be carefully placed under a tail, but not be crushed by the body of the immense animal. They actually nurture their young, and it appears that they do so for some time after hatching, as I can tell by the few times I’ve seen females with young at side. There isn’t really a ‘breeding season’ as I have seen young of all sizes with females. It will be interesting to see exactly what kind of mating habits they have.

“I estimate that the tail on this beast must weigh close to five tons, yet they don’t drag it behind. They hold the tail about six feet above the ground. How this is accomplished, I don’t know. I hope to find a dead one and do some kind of necropsy to answer these questions.

“For years we thought that the Cretaceous was a tough time and the dinosaurs were already dying off. I don’t think that really is the case. They are alive and doing quite well, there are just fewer species of them than we thought. Most of what we do see are quite large and cover large tracts of ground. Perhaps that is why we don’t find too many in the fossil record. They just weren’t always in places that would preserve them so we could find them…

“These are the last ones,” said Sarah as she pulled the last two MRE’s out of the back of the Explorer. “Do you want Beanie Weenie or Tomato Jubilee?”

“Jewish, remember?”

“I’ll have the Beanie Weenie,” she said.

“Have a little of this to wash it down with,” he said as he handed her a fifth gallon bottle of Wild Turkey.

“Thanks,” she said as she reluctantly took the bottle and had a sip. “I didn’t know you had…”

“I don’t,” he said as he took the bottle back and drank. “Not normally. Just when I heard I was going on this foray with you, I thought I’d be prepared.”

“Give me that!” she said as she snatched the bottle from his hand and took another large swallow.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I brought a whole case. Wasn’t sure how long we’d be here.”

“Well, here’s to us! We’ll be the first humans in history to drink themselves to death!”

“Or be eaten by a T-Rex.”

“Oh, he’s a scavenger,” she said. “I saw one feeding on a dead Triceratops this morning.”

“When did you see that?” he said. “You didn’t call me?”

“You were down in that stand of Gingko trees taking a dump!” she said. “Didn’t want to bother you. I took a little walk over to that next meadow over. Did you know that they were white meat?”

“Like a big gigantic chicken,” he said. “Kind of like we expected.”

“I thought I was done for,” she said. “Damn thing even saw me, and looked my direction. Then he just went back to his little pile and buried his nose in it and went to town.”

“Well, that answers that question,” he said. “These big beasts around, when somebody dies, there’s enough to eat for everyone. So much for the big bad predator.”

“I’m surprised that there aren’t a lot of predators around,” she said.

“That is a bit of a surprise,” he said. “It had been speculated that the late Cretaceous was a tough time, and the dinosaurs were on their last legs as it was before the Chixulub impact. If that were the case, there’d be more predators. Instead we’re seeing a reasonable population of plant eaters.”

“Then you believe this is a healthy ecosystem.”

“At least it is right here!” he said. “We can do a little exploring. We’ve been here three weeks and we haven’t gone more than three miles from the car.”

“How much gas do we have in that damn thing?”

“I think it’s got a full tank,” he said. “Wanna go for a little ride?”

“After we’ve been drinking?”
“What? Are you afraid of getting a DUI? I highly doubt if we’re going to find a Brontosaurus who’s going to make us take a breathalyzer!”

They stumbled back into the SUV and drove into the darkness. By the light of a full moon, they continued eastward for several hours, until they came to a beach. Still woozy from the night’s drinking, they sat until the sun rose over the broad shallow sea.

“I suppose it wouldn’t matter if we…” she contemplated as she reached for his waist.

“We’ve got plenty of time,” he replied as he began to unbutton his shirt.

“We could uh…nobody would ever know…”

He began to nuzzle on her neck, and she ran her hands down his thigh. Slowly, she slid out of her pants, and he rapidly took his belt off and stripped his jeans off. He threw a blanket down on the sand, and picked her up, carefully placing her on it. As his body slid over hers, she suddenly became still.

“Look!” she said as she pointed out toward the water.

“The sun rising,” he said. “It’s beautiful.”

“No! See that thing in the water!”

She sat up and pointed toward a long object sticking out of the water. It resembled the multitude of ‘photographs’ taken over the years of the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland.

The mood was ruined.

“It looks like a Plesiosaur,” he said.

“Just as well,” she said as she fumbled around for her clothes. “I do have a boyfriend.”

“And I suppose a giant swimming lizard would have stopped you with him, too?”

“I bet he’s about a hundred feet long,” she said. “We think they were about as long as a Blue Whale.”

The thing swam close enough to the shore they could see the green and blue markings along its snake like neck.

“Liopleurudon Ferox,” he said. “Commonly found in France and Italy.”

“We’re a long ways from France,” she said.

“We’re a hell of a lot closer than you think!” he said. “If we had the gas, we could drive there in a couple weeks!”

“There’s an ocean between us.”

“We were still connected during the Cretaceous,” he said.

“Oh, I forget about that plate tectonics stuff,” she said. “And anyways I think that’s of genus Muraenosaurus, or Microcledius…”

“Too damn big!” he said. “I’ve dug up a lot of these damn things in the twenty five years I’ve been picking up rocks! I know my Plesiosaurs.”

“How can that be,” she said. “You’re only in your early thirties! I haven’t even been in this game that long!”

“I knew I wanted to be a geologist since I was five!” he said. “My grandpa gave me a rock hammer as a Hanukkah gift when I was six, and I’ve been digging ever since!”

“That’s right,” she said sarcastically. “You’re the geologist!”

“Well, you even admit that you’ve spent your whole career looking at charts and photographs,” he said. “How did you ever get this far? I admit, I read your papers, and at first, I was dazzled with all your theories of everything. How can someone determine that Siberia was a desert in the Permian? How did you figure that South Dakota was like Florida in the Cretaceous? And we now know how that turned out…”

“Models,” she said. “Computer models…”

“Were you even aware that this sea was there?”

“You keep saying that North America and Europe are connected,” she said. “But this looks like a lot of water…”

“This is a shallow sea,” he said. “Only a couple hundred feet deep at best. If we drove north into Canada, we’d be able to go around it, across Baffin Island, or at least what will become that, over Greenland, and then right down through Norway and Great Britain and right over to France.”

The Plesiosaur obviously had rather acute hearing, as it heard them arguing and it began to look over in their direction.

“Uh…we’ve been discovered.”

“I don’t think he’s going to bother us,” he said. “They had a long neck, but a big fat body and broad flippers. He didn’t do too well in shallow water.”

The creature began to approach the shore, getting close enough to become a threat.

“Not in shallow water?” she said. “He’s pretty damn close!”

“Grab your shit and get back in the truck!” he said. “NOW!”

She grabbed the blanket and the rest of her clothes and ran to the driver’s side. He ran over to the passengers door and got in.

“He’s on our ass!” she said as she started the engine.

“Put it in drive and floor it!”

“I’m spinning in the sand!”

“Drop it into Four Wheel High!”

The vehicle continued to spin as the beast began to lurch onto the shore.

“Too big for shallow water?” she said. “He’s just an overgrown hairless seal! Seals do JUST FINE flopping around on the sand!”

The large aquatic creature stretched it’s neck toward the truck, and tapped it with it’s upper jaw. That was just the extra nudge they needed to get out of the sand. She floored it and sprayed a column of sand back toward the creature. The large animal looked over toward the side, and began to flop along the shoreline, where it then stopped several yards down the beach and dug in the sand with it’s snout. It found what it was really looking for, a clutch of eggs laid by one of the enormous sea turtles of the day.

“What is it with these things?” she said.

“What? The dinosaurs?” he replied. “The term comes from ancient Greek. Dino meaning ‘Thunder’ and Saurus meaning ‘Lizard’ or ‘Reptile.’ and by the way, the aquatic thingies aren’t dinosaurs. They’re standard reptiles.”

“And dinosaurs aren’t reptiles?” she said. “That’s a little against what I learned in school…”

“They’re warm blooded, they’re social to some extent, they have pinfeathers and scales with irregular leafy edges. Not to mention the jaw and other things about the skeletal structure…”

“I know,” she said. “Just a big seventy ton chicken!”

“Just keep your eyes forward,” he said. “And please don’t hit that Ankylosaur!”

The low slung thirty foot creature stood firm right in the path of the vehicle. She swerved hard to the left to avoid it and it’s large wrecking ball like tail.

“Ankylosaurus Minmus,” she said.

“Not quite,” he said. “Minmus was from Australia in the Early Cretaceous, and that was almost sixty million years ago. This one’s most likely Gastonia.”

“Do you have to CORRECT me every time?”

“Sorry, just force of habit,” he said. “Anyways, we pretty much thought these things were extinct in North America the last five million years of the Cretaceous.”

“Well, we’re finding out fast that everything’s just a little different than we thought, right?”

“Anklyosaurs liked semi arid highlands and coastal lowlands,” he said. “And this is definitely a coastal lowland, so we got something right, correct?”

“It’s pissed off and coming after us!”

“It’s clumsy,” he said. “It can’t get too fast!”

“I’m doing forty five, and he’s still gaining on us!”

“Sure it’s a HE?”

Sarah looked in the rear view mirror again.

“I don’t see it’s balls, so you’re right, it’s probably a SHE!”

“Turn off into those dunes!” he said.

“And risk getting stuck in the sand?”

“Just turn off into the dunes!”

She did, and the dinosaur quit her charge.

“Keep steady speed through here and we won’t get stuck,” he said. “She was running after us because she was pissed off!” he said. “We probably came close to her nest. When we headed this way, she was convinced we were leaving it alone.”

Just then, they heard a loud thud. Blood splattered on the windshield, and a medium sized body rolled past the side of the vehicle. She stopped the truck.

“What the hell was that?”

“You hit something,” he said. “That’s all. Hopefully we won’t be stuck in the sand after this.”

“Like it’ll really matter,” she said. “We had two full tanks of gas, and we’re about quarter way through the second one.”

“Well, let’s see what we clobbered.”

He got out and found the mangled body of a velociraptor. He picked up the scaly, pin-feathered animal and threw it in the back of the truck.

“You’re KEEPING that thing?”

“Lunch!” he quickly replied. “Remember, we’re out of the freeze dried shit!”

“How does that fit into your Kosher diet?”

“Fowl is Kosher,” he said. “Remember, big chicken!”

“Well, what kind of ‘fowl’ is that?”

“Velociraptor,” he said.

“Little baby one,” she said. “Better get out of here before it’s mama comes looking for it…”

“It’s full grown,” he said.

“There were geese on my Grandmother’s farm in Michigan that were larger than that.”

“You thought they were eight feet high, six hundred pounds, and a very nasty disposition, right?”

“Well, yeah,” she said. “I’ve got Jurassic Park on DVD.”

“This ain’t Jurassic Park,” he said. “Those things in the movies were more like Deinonychus, only slightly larger and minus the feathers.”

“Let me see if we can get out of the sand, before we find out how social these little fuckers are!” she said.

“See if you can hit something for dinner, too!” he answered.



Later in the afternoon they built a small fire and roasted the pale meat over the open flame. They remarked upon it’s rather spectacular flavor and texture.

“Tastes just like….CHICKEN!” she said.

“That should be no surprise!” he said.

“Now we can’t just live on meat alone,” she said. “We’re going to have to find some herbivorous choices.”

“You’re a Palaeobotanist,” he said. “Perhaps you can tell me what to look for.”

“I have a good idea what plants are what from looking at leaves,” she said. “But fossils don’t tell you whether a plant was nutritious, or whether or not it was toxic.”

“Old Boy Scout trick,” I said. “If a bird can eat it, a human can…most of the time. Then again, my old Boy Scout leader used to tell us that EVERY plant is edible…at least ONCE!”

“Well, this is what I can tell of this day and age,” she said. “Chameabateia is edible, but not that nutritious. Most of the fruits of the Washingtonia genus, that’s the palm trees if you were asking. are edible and good in nutrition. Fortunately we have seen some, but unfortunately we haven’t seen very many palm trees. The typical things we’re used to, the squashes, melons and cabbages haven’t evolved yet, nor are we going to see the citrus or anything of the Prunus or Pommus family for at least twenty million years! We‘re also about thirty million years too early for anything of the Legumosa family, so that‘s it for the beans.”

“I saw something that looked like tomatoes a few days ago,” he said.

“Astralagus,” she said. “Nightshade. Usually…”

“Toxic?” he said. “How do we know if the poisonous stuff evolved yet?”

“Well, one way to find out,” she said.

“I’m NOT trying it first!” he said.

“Naw, not that,” she said. “We just wait and see if one of these overgrown half chicken half iguana things eats it and survives, and then we’ll try it.”

“Now when is Cannabis going to show up on the scene?” he said. “We’re going to run out of bourbon soon!”

“Mid Paleocene,” she said. “But it’s in the same order of plants as Magnolia, so I could be wrong. If I were you, keep looking. But if it’s some kind of chemical escape you’re looking for, we probably can find some moldy grass. That has similar effects to LSD.”

“I’ll stick to the bourbon for now.”



“September 25.…or sometime close to that, a few days after the Autumnal equinox…” he wrote. “Here’s what we’ve found…Tyrannosaurus Rex is a ground scavenger, not the horrible hunter we thought he was, and he also has a vegetarian aspect of his diet. We figured this out after having a run in with one, and it seemed to totally ignore us and the three young diplodocus’ that were in the same swamp. It would rather find something dead on the ground. They do travel fast, about thirty three miles an hour, but he’s so top-heavy that he isn’t exactly built for fighting. If he tried to take on any of these larger herbivores, they’d have him on the ground with a swipe of the tail.

“After examining the rather ripe remains of a fallen Brontosaur, I solved the mystery of the tail suspension. There are four massive tendons inside the tail that run the whole length of the tail, two on either side. On each side, one is anchored toward the front of the pelvis, and the other is anchored farther up the animals back near the shoulder blade. That is what holds the tail off the ground, not muscle contractions.

“We also got to observe mating behavior among these beasts. They do it pretty much like we do….the female rolls onto her back, and the male straddles her pelvic area, and…well you get the idea. There is a broad variation of ’relationship styles’ among these beasts. Brontosaurs, especially the females, are very promiscuous, and when they’re in the ’mood’ they are quite vocal, attracting males. This ’forwardness’ often frightens males, but she does get takers, and one female will bed down with four or five in a day. T-Rex is about the opposite, being somewhat monogamous from what we can tell. Ankylosaurus and Triceratops mate like the big cats of the mammal world, where a male and a female will pair off for a few days, mating several times a day before the male goes his way and finds another female to do the same with. Velociraptor are more herd (or flock) like, where only certain males are allowed to mate, and the females usually play harder to get. Deinochysus females are rather picky, too.

Interesting thing we did find…with what little equipment we have to examine Chromosome and DNA structure, we found something rather interesting. Among most sexually reproductive creatures, the gender is decided by a pair of chromosomes. There are two varieties of chromosomes, X and Y. Males, in most sexually reproducing species (including humans), have an XY pair, and females are endowed with XX. With birds, that’s the opposite, as the Males are XX and the Females are XY. So are all the species of the land dinosaurs that we have tested. This isn’t the case for the pteranodons and the aquatic reptiles, as these were exactly that…reptiles. But the warm blooded feathered types, this was the case. Perhaps this is one more connection between birds and dinosaurs?

The vegetation is an interesting mix of flowering plants and conifers. She was anticipating a greater population of flowering plants and fewer of the Gymnospermate phylum. The trend seems to be that the flowering plants are among the lower canopy, and the needled type stuff, such as the sequoiadendrons and firs created an upper canopy. The large dinosaurs seemed to do well on the high topped growth, whereas the lower herbivores like triceratops and Ankylosaurus seemed to have no problem with the low growing flowering bushes (Angiospermate). For the longest time we thought that the emergence of flowering plants was a contributing factor to the dinosaur die off, but now we know otherwise. As the Angiosperms evolved, so did dinosaur digestive tracts and taste buds.

There is an interesting behavior I observed among Triceratops, and I have reason to believe some of the other larger yet shorter dinosaurs practice. Although the Triceratops is an herbivore, he will rip into the carcass of another herbivore to feast on stomach contents. I’ve observed this behavior in the Hippopotamus in Africa, so maybe it should be no surprise that this beast would do the same thing…

On a side note…I came across a couple trees that have sap which is pretty rich in hydrocarbons. I experimented with some chemical techniques, and found a way to turn the sap into a chemical cocktail similar to gasoline. So far the SUV is running on it pretty well, albeit it knocks and pings a little. I wonder what else we’ll be able to figure out.