Dinosaur Hunter

by Steve White

  We chose to go wide.

  We were stopped in our tracks by the horsetails being forced apart by a nasty-looking customer. Both of us went for our shotguns.

  It was a huge and very inappropriately named Poposaur.

  Chest-high on us, it looked like how popular culture used to imagine a T-rex: ugly and bulky and plodding, with sad little arms and a massive, brawny head armed with giant jaws.

  It announced its presence with a gurgling, wet roar and padded quickly – or as quickly as it could – at a Metoposaur. The amphibian, weak and exhausted, could do little but gape its jaws but it was a sad little deterrent and the Poposaur merely stepped around it as the Koskinonodon floundered. The brutally ugly Rauisuchian tore a mouthful of mud and flesh, the Metoposaur hissing asthmatically.

  The little Sphenosuchians came trotting over, hoping for odds and ends.

  While the Poposaur ate the Koskinonodon alive, we stepped lively and went wide to avoid trouble. PJ stepped in the rotten carcass of something dead beneath the mud and had to drive off an intrigued Diapsid that came lurching towards him, its lashing tail kicking up clods of wet earth.

  Further on, the stream narrowed and we once more faced another temporary dam of broken and twisted conifer branches and horsetail trunks. We struggled through and found a pond, shallow and stinking. Fish struggled at the surface, gasping for oxygen; coelacanths, little sharks, teleosts I didn’t recognize.

  A little gharial-like Paleorhinus lounged at the edge of the pool, dappled by a pink light coming in through the thick canopy that had closed around us overhead.

  Lightning forked. Thunder rolled.

  I checked the time and our position on the GPS. The hour’s walk to the rendezvous was almost up and the wallow was still a klick away. Too late to make any planned pick-up. A jungle penetrator from the tilt-rotor could probably have pulled us out so my concerns were still only mild ones, but I checked in anyway.

  ‘How’s it looking?’

  ‘Angry,’ said the anxious voice from Mogollon. ‘We’re about to lose low drone coverage imminently. The Pink Team is prepped for dust-off but the window is closing pretty fast and I think you need to get ready for an evac. If the front passes, you can head back out tomorrow.’

  ‘We’ll push on to the wallow,’ said PJ. ‘They can pick us up from there.’

  Lightning flashed.

  The air was leaden and wet. I checked the rebreather scrubbers. Still 75 per cent efficient. And the tanks in the pony rigs were full.

  The hot breeze became wind and I had to clear pollen and dust from my goggles. The high wall of Neocalamites around us shuddered and swayed. The stream really narrowed now and the shadows deepened. PJ kept stopping to survey the darkness, the hollows and dark dells where the horsetails were thickest.

  We saw a long tail skitter away at one point but nothing else other than dead and dying fish trapped by the drying stream.

  Then, up ahead, the banks once more widened and the colour in the air changed from a dingy dark green to a yellowy-pink, a haze swirling as the wind picked up again. The sky overhead was still a patchy blue, but the cloudy vanguard of the storm was streaming westward.

  I checked the GPS again. We had made the wallow.

  ‘Mogollon, Flamingo. We’ve made the wallow. How we doing?’

  ‘Flamingo, Mogollon. We got a fire advisory. Looks like heat lightning has triggered forest fires to the east. It’s forming a front with a speed right now of about four miles an hour. That gives you … about five hours before it arrives. It may pick up speed but the storm might start laying down rain and blow it out. We’ll check water levels, but so far, so good. Also registering a lot of lightning strikes.’

  ‘Copy, Mogollon. So how long before the Pink Team might be grounded?’

  ‘Wind’s making it choppy already. If the fire takes a hold, smoke and vis will become the issues. Either way, I’d like you outta there within the hour.’

  ‘What about our gear?’

  ‘May have to leave it to fate, Flamingo.’

  PJ shrugged. ‘We got spares.’

  ‘OK, Mogollon. We’ll hole up at the wallow hide and wait for your pick-up. Keep us appraised.’

  ‘Copy, Flamingo. We’re launching the Pink Team and they’ll set up an orbit west of you. Will keep you advised. Mogollon out.’

  We edged cautiously to the wallow. Something was moving up ahead. In fact it was many somethings. A whole herd of them, each one weighting a ton or more, a dozen feet long. PJ looked back and smiled at me. We edged into the thickets of club mosses and tree ferns this side of the wallow’s edge. There were deadfalls of horsetails steamrollered down, many hollowed out and moaning in the wind blowing through them. The hide was opposite, invisible, but PJ signalled we hole up and settle in.

  We found a good spot. Plenty of cover. I took out my scope.

  The Placerias herd was very impressive, even though many of its members looked thin and sickly. The size of hippos, their skin around their barrel-shaped bodies was leathery and folded, their limbs bandy, semi-sprawling. There was something pig-like about the heads, although the raised ridge on their skulls was more reminiscent of the sagittal crest on a gorilla’s skull. They had beaks like a parrot or a turtle, and on either side was a downward-pointing tusk, scuffed and worn flat in the older animals. A few Placerias dug about with them, not to eat but to find water. One or two had been successful and they drank from the shallow wells, dribbling mud and sieving out what detritus they could. A squabble erupted as the biggest fought for possession of the waterholes. They cracked heads and wrestled with their beaks and tusks, shouldered and butted one another in tests of strength while the smaller and weaker animals stood at the edge of the wallow looking dead on their feet, ribs jutting, skin taut across their flanks. Several sat or lay on their sides. Probably close to death. They had already caught the attention of scavengers, Rauisuchians not unlike the Poposaur we had seen earlier but smaller and of an indeterminate genus. A pair, one much smaller than the other, picked over one of the inert, mud-caked Placerias, flicking a forked tongue over the dicynodont’s rump. When it elicited no response, the larger Rauisuchian gave a tentative bite. That did trigger a response, the Placerias starting and snorting enough to send the Rauisuchians scurrying to a safe distance.

  PJ had slipped his rifle from its case and set it up on the stout trunk of a fallen Neocalamites. Out of habit I checked wind speed and direction. Two knots. Westerly. But if he was taking a shot here, the breeze was not really going to have any impact at all.

  I checked my watch. We had about 35 minutes. I was about to tell PJ when he said, simply, ‘Look.’

  There was a flash of lightning and only a brief interlude before thunder crashed. I followed his pointing finger.

  My first dinosaur. A Coelophysis stalked out of the horsetails, sending a Hesperosuchus on its way, the little dog-croc trotting off to a safe distance.

  I took photos. There was indeed an avian grace to the dinosaur, its head nodding, hips swaying as it followed in the wake of a Placerias pulling a deadfall apart with its tusks. The Coelophysis reached high to snap up a dragonfly. Crunched it down, insect wings and legs splayed out on either side of the dinosaur’s head until it tilted its head back and chugged down the insect’s long body. As the Placerias’ shadow moved on, the colours on the Coelophysis’ head glowed iridescent, ultraviolet, in the sunlight, making ‘it’ a ‘he’. The rest of its slender body was coated in dust and when he scratched at his ribs, little puffs of dust blew off him.

  Then, on his long scrawny legs, he trotted after the mammoth dicynodont, perhaps to catch whatever the giant stirred up or perhaps to enjoy the cool of the shadow it cast.

  ‘What do you think?’ PJ asked.

  He tracked the dinosaur with the scope. It seemed unconcerned when forked lightning crackled down. Glanced up briefly when the following thunder rolled overhead. The sky was bruising to yellows and pinks and purples and greys.

  It would have bee
n a legal kill but the Coelophysis looked so small, so puny, compared to the giant dicynodonts, even to the Rauisuchians still making a nuisance of themselves, that it didn’t feel so much like a kill as putting it out of its misery (even though it was by far the most lively of the animals at the wallow). It almost felt like a waste of ammo and I wondered if PJ was just getting impatient to bag something, anything, especially as this would have been our first of the Big Three. The irony of the name was not lost on me as I watched the smaller of the Rauisuchians chase off the little dinosaur. It could easily have killed the Coelophysis. And even if we did make the shot, the scavengers would be on it long before we could actually get anywhere near the carcass to take samples and measurements.

  Still, it was a legitimate target, and it was what we came here for.

  ‘Do it,’ I said.

  PJ chambered a round.

  I watched through my scope. ‘Go for the heart.’

  The Coelophysis was scratching at something in the dried mud. He dug at it with his taloned hands. His irises were slits in the harsh sun, but the scales on his snout glistened. Flies clustered around his eyes and the nostrils at the tip of his long muzzle. His down looked well groomed if ragged and coated in pollen and grit.

  Then suddenly he was gone. I looked up from my scope. He was just a tail disappearing into the horsetails.

  And now there was commotion. The Placerias were lowing and braying. The more sickly were struggling to rise and the scavengers were parting for a Postosuchus that came swaggering into the wallow.

  Now that was more like it.

  It was easy to imagine why, on its discovery, Postosuchus was offered up as an ancestral Tyrannosaur. Although this theory was quickly discarded, right now it was easy to imagine where the assumption had come from. It was an impressive beast. It stalked forward, not on all fours but with its smaller forelimbs hung down loosely. It gave no indication it was about to attack, was hungry, thirsty, agitated or relaxed. It just strode towards the Placerias, its alligator back, covered in plates of armour and ridged with scutes, held straight; the huge Carnosaurian head was ugly, a brow of hornlets over each eye, lumps of horn running down its scarred and battered muzzle.

  The creature’s jaws were closed but when any of the Placerias turned to face the predator, they swung open and long blades glinted in the sun, and its long tail swung back and forth as it broke into a trot.

  One of the Placerias, a smaller one, apparently sick or starved or both, was still laid out in the wallow, its hide a jigsaw of dried mud. Asleep or exhausted, it struggled to rise, mud flaking off in little bursts.

  The Postosuchus sensed weakness. Charged.

  The morning sun lanced through the thunderheads and struck the killer obliquely, casting long shadows.

  Beside me came the crack of the rifle. It was a small sound compared to the roar of thunder coming in from the east but it was a clean shot.

  The express load hit the Postosuchus in front of the eye. I saw the entry through my scope but the huge Rauisuchian kept charging. I heard PJ cycle the rifle.

  But, then, the animal swerved and tottered before lurching into the ground in a fantail of dried mud and dust. It skidded to a halt at the feet of the small Placerias who could only look on stupefied before it turned and trotted off as fast as its bandy legs could carry it.

  PJ stood and beamed at me through his mask. I remember his face very clearly. A yellowish tinge from the pollen. Reddish from the dust. He had his goggles on his forehead. The skin around his eyes was clean but ringed with dirt and sweat. His hair was tangled and greasy.

  I keyed the mic.

  ‘Mogollon, Flamingo. Splash one.’

  The comms fritzed as lightning cut across the sky.

  Somebody said something but the thunder was deafening.

  ‘Mogollon, Flamingo, repeat, splash one.’

  ‘Copy, Flamingo. Good show.’

  PJ swung the rifle on his shoulder and swung astride the horsetail trunk.

  ‘Flamingo, Mogollon, break, break, break. Flying conditions are becoming untenable. We need to dust you off in five. Pink Team is already inbound. How copy?’

  Maybe enough time for a couple of photos. No time to do any science.

  ‘Copy loud and clear.’

  PJ swung off the log.

  ‘Wait,’ I called, unslinging my shotgun. Still a lot of very dangerous critters out there. A rubber bullet might not deter a full-grown Placerias.

  PJ waited on a rise at the edge of the wallow. Could have been a log. Could have been a bank of mud-covered debris.

  But it wasn’t.

  Something rose out of the ground. Dried mud burst upwards and something massive, not unlike a tree trunk, swung round then split apart. Jaws. They took PJ about the waist and he yelled my name.

  Placerias wallows were usually sited in areas free from major aquatic predators. The Redondasaurus might have wandered here looking for water. It could have been there for days, weeks, seeing out the worst of the dry season cocooned in thick mud. It looked like riverbed, all ridges and lumps and bumps. Looked too big to be animal. More like a tree. It didn’t need to eat. Just wait out the drought. Maybe the storm had aroused it. Maybe it smelt water or maybe the Placerias were old enough or young enough or ill enough to stir its appetite.

  Didn’t really matter.

  All that mattered was the Phytosaur, then the biggest animal I’d ever seen, shook its head and its tail came thrashing out of the earth in an explosion of earth that covered me.

  My shotgun was in my hand and I fired. It was a wild shot. No aiming. It was stupid. I could have hit PJ but at that point it wouldn’t have mattered as he was screaming now and well on his way to being dead.

  There was pandemonium in the wallow. The Placerias were clearing out as fast as they could. There was dust and pollen and mud flying and swirling and billowing, a fog of dirt that covered my goggles. I wiped them off but then had to blink grit away. My eyes were already teary. I blinked hard. The Redondasaur was so large it was hard to make out what I was seeing. Just trains of scaly skin streaming past and a crocodilian leg.

  I struggled to fight my way out of the deadfall. Whipping branches caught the shotgun’s strap, tangled around my arm. I fought free, trying to keep my head over PJ’s screams and the yelling of the Pink Team crews in my earpiece.

  All I wanted to do was get a clean shot.

  I stumbled over club mosses. Tripped. Fell.

  Got to my feet and drew the shotgun up to my shoulder.

  The Phytosaur was padding its way down the streambed.

  PJ had stopped screaming. I sighted through the shotgun’s ghost ring. There was nothing but a vast swathe of armoured back. A river of scutes and plates and scales winding its way through mud and dead plant.

  I don’t remember too much after that.

  I had liked PJ. But not enough to kill the Redondasaurus out of any sense of grief or rage. It was one of the calculated risks you took. Went with the territory, as one of the advisors had told us.

  I stood for a while, I think, until I had to bend double and cover my face to hide from the downwash of the tilt-rotor. In shock, I was led to the aircraft and sat looking out at the beige, cracked mud of the wallow.

  As we lifted off, the scavengers were already swarming in to enjoy a rare meal of Postosuchus.

  Jane Summers is a model and CEO of her own fashion company. She is unique in having visited every time zone available to MHC®. PJ Griffin was listed as deceased; although the Pink Team gunship visually IDed the Redondasaurus that killed Griffin, the body was no longer visible and rules of engagement prevented them from firing on the Phytosaur. Griffin’s body was never recovered.

  THE MORRISON FORMATION

  Period: Late Jurassic

  Age: Tithonian stage (152–150 mya)

  Present location: South-and Mid-West USA

  Reserve size: approx 7,500 square miles (about the size of Kruger National Park, South Africa)

  CONDI
TIONS

  By the Late Jurassic, the supercontinent of Pangaea had split roughly in two along a north–south divide, into the supercontinents of Gondwana to the south and Laurasia to the north. The Morrison was situated to the extreme west of the northern landmass and was closer to the equator than the position of modern North America.

  Atmospherically, ‘greenhouse’ conditions were still prevalent, with carbon dioxide levels still several times higher than in pre-industrial modern times. These raised levels of CO2 allowed the gymnosperm plant groups (pines, conifers, ginkgoes etc.) to grow faster than they do in modern times, with forests continuing to flourish when water supplies allowed. This allowed the Morrison to support high numbers of large to gigantic herbivores and their predators in levels much higher than in similar present-day pre-industrial environments (estimates vary between 25 and 40 per cent higher, based on Africa’s Amboseli National Park).

  However, global temperatures remained high; the Morrison at this time experienced a short wet season with temperatures averaging 20°C (68°F) but during the prolonged dry season, temperatures were 40–45°C (104–113°F).

  For these reasons, training regimes for the Morrison also involve low-oxygen acclimatization and the mandatory use of rebreathers, although the conditions tend to be far less humid than in Chinle.