‘Oh shit, not Ed too!’ David cried and then he turned toward Anton. He can see Anton down on one knee with his rifle raised to his shoulder. Then the wave of giant green dinosaurs crashes upon them. Anton squeezes the trigger just as two of the thirty foot tall monsters careen in front of the smaller black dinosaur. The shots drop one of the giants, his body collapsing like he was hit by a bag of cement. The other screams in pain and fury, his arms moving toward his rump where the second shot grazed providing enough time for the second Black Ghost to slink off down towards the river.
The green dinosaurs ignore the humans and take off after the Black Ghosts. Anton stands and begins jogging after them.
‘Anton, this way.’ A voice raises from slightly down the ridgeline.
‘Alex, quick they ran towards the river.’ Anton returns.
David calls out, all pretense of silence gone from their minds, ‘Ed Saren just bought it.’
‘Stay with …’
A sudden call echoes across the field. Three of the green hunters stop in their tracks as a massive orange head with a bright red ring of feathers around it emerges from over the ridge. Then a second head appears and a low, head thumping warble fills the air.
Three of the green dinosaurs lower their heads and take off down toward the river. Three more orange heads suddenly rise above the crest of the ridge like an apparition, revealing a beast with a soft orange color that fades down to a darker brown and green toward their massive belly. Long tails topped with red and orange plumes swung around to balance them as they crested the ridgeline, heading directly toward the humans.
Corey ran up from the brush and found himself running next to a massive grey foot. Corey’s turns his head in amazement. He’s barely high enough to reach the knee of the big theropod. The vision burns itself into his mind as he stares up at the burn orange breast with its mottle of brown spots rising before his eyes. Each spot each as big as his hand and spread across the wall of the orange-brown, feathered belly of the monster. The foot crashes down on the rocky surface barely three feet away from Corey. The ground shakes for a second and then it is gone.
Corey instinctively flings himself to the side just as a massive tail swings over his head, barely nicking the top of his helmet. Then the monster is gone, chasing down toward the river with three others. The pack of fearsome green hunters has become the hunted.
Corey suddenly twists and lifts his head as a second mountain of burnt orange crashes over him. As he rises, a smaller head turns and strikes forward. Black jaws full of white, deadly teeth descend toward his head. Corey falls to the ground and rolls. He can feel the hot, moist air of its breath push by him and hear the terrible snap of its jaws as they close on the air where his head was. Then the head is gone and he can see four of them following the trail of those who fled before them.
A hysterical giggle erupts from Corey’s throat as a thought passes across his mind, ‘Well at least the big ones ignore you. It’s the little ones you gotta watch out for!’
‘Corey, give me a hand with Ed.’ David calls, ‘We have to pull him out of here. There’s gonna be a hundred carrion eaters here in a minute.’
Corey pushed David aside and reaches down to pick up Ed. He lifts and two hands grab the body from him. Corey turns to see Tom Bracken lifting Ed onto his shoulders and into a fireman’s carry. Tom’s eyes are filled with tears and his jaw trembles a bit as he shakes his head and begins to jog down to the river’s edge.
Anton is half way down the ridgeline with Alex pushing barely twenty feet behind him. David, Corey and Tom, with Ed’s body on his shoulders, follow down the slope. Alex and Anton are already in the brush and gone from their view. ‘Which way is the boat?’ Tom puffed through clenched teeth as he fast-walked down the hill.
‘Down this way. We need to put him in a stasis bag and push the boat out onto the river.’ David shouted as they waded into the brush that thickens as they approached the edges of the swiftly flowing river.
As they reach the river’s edge, they climb aboard and Corey and Tom struggle to slide Ed’s body into the stasis bag. David fires up the vibration launcher for the Jensen Boat and twists in sudden alarm as the brush next to him splits aside. Anton emerges from the bushes and runs over to the edge of the boat.
Alex is following close behind him, ‘I couldn’t follow an elephant in the mess left behind by those big chickens! Let’s push off and see …’
Three orange head scream their fury just on the other side of the brush. Then a body suddenly towers above the brush and pushes their way.
‘Push it out! Push it out! Alex screams as he turns and fires a full spray on automatic. The attacking dinosaur drops not more than ten feet from them with a half-dozen, full-load slugs passing into his body. A second and third of the beasts scream from behind the brush and one suddenly appears, charging directly at them from out from the brush.
Anton fires blindly into the bushes as Alex jumps over the gunnels and into the boat. The craft floats free into the rapid waters of the river.
‘Quick, get ready, they will charge!’ David called. ‘We have to get out to the middle!’
Six burnt-orange dinosaurs appear at the edge of the river and calls of rage ring out from further into the brush. They stop at the water’s edge.
‘They stopped! They can swim! I’ve seen T-Rex swim before. What’s holding them back?’ David called.
Corey looked down river. A black shape is pushing a mound of water ahead of it like a surfacing submarine. A sinister, smooth black wave moving directly toward the Jensen boat.
A splash filled the air around them drawing their attention back toward the mainland, or at least as much of the shoreline as they could see. The sky before them is filled with the dark-gold orange and eight-feet of tooth filled jaws that are swinging down toward them.
The jaws arch down toward Tom and Anton standing in the bow of the Jensen Boat as it swings out into the rapidly deepening river. Tom can smell it’s breath and feel the heat of it as it opens unbelievably wide in preparation to the steel-trap snap that he’s seen so many times since coming back to this land.
Toms hands move in slow motion as he lifts the Pulsar Rifle up to his shoulder. An alarm rings in his memory and his hand moves blindly to the control on the rifle. He spins the slug-size up without moving his eyes from the descending jaws and then fires as the deadly maw lowers itself into the point where they will snap shut upon both him and Anton.
A foot long jet of sun-hot plasma erupts from the barrel of his rifle. The charged stream of molecules spin from the barrel of the weapon at hypersonic velocity and cool into molten and then a deadly solid projectile within a foot of the barrel. The massive blast of displaced air cracks through the air and the slug blows its way into the cavernous roof of the monsters mouth.
The impact of the blast does little to slow the steel hard charge of the jaws but the mass of white hot lead penetrates and then mushrooms within its skull blasting feathers, skin, bones and body fluids into vapor and ripping chucks of the monster out across the shoreline.
The jaws fly down, missing Anton but a small tooth rips across Tom’s arm. His armor hardens instantly as the four inch ivory sword thrusts across it, pulling his shoulder out of its socket and ripping the tendons holding it to his clavicle.
The boat lifts into the air as a black green reptilian body flies from beneath it. Like a freight train breaking from the water’s surface, it lifts into the air and jaws snap shut on the golden-orange but headless body before it can even fall to the water.
The jaws of the massive mosasaur clamp shut and pull the dead Tyrannosaurus into the river, gashing a four foot long hole into the side of the Jensen Boat as it clamps down with savage fury. The boat dips and then spins out into the center of the river. Water begins to rush into it and Tom lies stunned across the floor.
References
1. Spartak Poliakov, Oleg Poliakov, “Gravitonics is Electronics of the XXI Century”, New Energy technologies, Issue #
4, July – August 2002. http://www.intalek.com/Index/Projects/Research/Poliakov.PDF
2. Rajendra D. Badgaiyan, “Conscious Awareness and the Brain Processing”, Elements 3(3):8-12, 2005
3. Sebastián Apesteguía & Hussam Zaher, “A Cretaceous terrestrial snake with robust hindlimbs and a sacrum”, Nature 440, 1037-1040 (20 April 2006) | doi:10.1038/nature04413; Received 22 August 2005; Accepted 9 November 2005
4. “Blue skies, red-hot temps in Cretaceous”, GeoTimes Earth, Energy and Environmental News, April 2008 http://www.agiweb.org/geotimes/apr08/article.html?id=WebExtra041008.html
5. Landis, G.P., and Snee, L.W., 1991, 40Ar/39Ar Systematics and argon diffusion in Amber; implications for ancient earth atmospheres: in Kump, L.R., Kasting, J.F., Robinson, J.M., Atmospheric oxygen variation through geologic time. Global and Planetary Change. v. 5, p.63-67.
6. Ryan C. McKellar, Brian D. E. Chatterton, Alexander P. Wolfe, Philip J. Currie, “A Diverse Assemblage of Late Cretaceous Dinosaur and Bird Feathers from Canadian Amber.” Science, Vol. 333 Issue 6049, September 16, 2011.
7. Mark A. Norell , “Fossilized Feathers.” Science, Vol. 333 Issue 6049, September 16, 2011.
8. Lindsay E. Zanno, David J. Varricchio, Patrick M. O'Connor, Alan L. Titus, Michael J. Knell. “A New Troodontid Theropod, Talos sampsoni gen. et sp. nov., from the Upper Cretaceous Western Interior Basin of North America” PLoS ONE, 2011; 6 (9): e24487 DOI:0.1371/journal.pone.0024487
9. Gibbard, P.L., S. Boreham, K.M. Cohen and A. Moscariello, 2007, Global chronostratigraphical correlation table for the last 2.7 million years v. 2007b., jpg version 844 KB. Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England
10. Hambrey, M.J., and W.B. Harland, eds., 1981. Earth's pre-Pleistocene glacial record. Cambridge University Press, 1004 + xv pp. (book downloadable as series of PDF files)
11. J. Wendler, “External forcing of the geomagnetic field? Implications for the cosmic ray flux—climate variability”, Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 66 (2004) 1195 – 1203 (Climate change and magnetic pole reversals as influenced by the position of the solar system in the galactic arm.) http://tornado.sfsu.edu/geosciences/classes/gm700/PDF_Files/DaveGgeomag.pdf
12. Everhart, M. J. “Plesiosaurs as the food of mosasaurs; new data on the stomach contents of a Tylosaurus proriger (Squamata; Mosasauridae) from the Niobrara Formation of western Kansas. The Mosasaur” 2004, 7:41-46.
13. Lawrence M. Witmer et al., "Nostril Position in Dinosaurs and other Vertebrates and its Significance for Nasal Function." Science 293, 850 (2001)
14. Alan Graham, “Late Cretaceous and Cenozoic History of North American Vegetation”, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-511342-X (1999) (vegetation and climate)
15. "Stray Japan parrot talks way home". BBC News. 2008-05-22. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7414846.stm. Retrieved 2010-04-23.
16. Pepperberg, Irene (2002): The Alex Studies: cognitive and communicative abilities of grey parrots. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts & London. ISBN 0-674-00806-5
17. Li, Chun; Xiao-Chun Wu, Olivier Rieppel, Li-Ting Wang & Li-Jun Zhao (2008-11-27). "An ancestral turtle from the Late Triassic of southwestern China". Nature 456 (7221): 497–501. doi:10.1038/nature07533. PMID 19037315 (Turtle and Tortoise in Triassic and Cretaceous)
Gas pockets encapsulated in Amber have confirmed the higher oxygen content of the era. This cannot explain the monstrous growth that occurred during this age. In fact, even the human body seems to operate better with the slightly higher oxygen levels. With the higher oxygen of the Cretaceious we would heal faster, think faster, see better and with greater clarity. Burn victims as well as those suffering from Nitrogen Narcosis are quickly put into a high oxygen, barometric chamber to aid healing.
So, why did dinosaurs get so large? As we’ve seen in the quote at the start of this chapter, simple fluid mechanics tells us that the blood vessels and heart would not have been able to handle the higher pressures needed for such large creatures. Long-necked creatures such as the Brachiosaurus present additional problems. Their necks are not built strongly enough to support a head in the upright position or even a position parallel to the earth under the stress of our current pull of gravity. Simple logic also says that if you have a long neck, you didn’t develop it to feed over a pond or into the bushes. A long neck is made to either reach the ground or to be able to extend up to the highest, most tender leaves of the trees.
Sauropods are one of the most well known dinosaurs families, the most famous being the Brontosaurus, a mistake in bone assembly that never truly existed. The family continues to present a lot of other unanswered questions besides their size and how they supported such massive and long necks. The feathers described in this story have not been verified by forensic evidence. That is not yet. This does seem to be the trend however with even Tyrannosaurus remains showing fossil evidence.
Consider also the placement of nostrils on the Sauropods. There’s a great scene in Jurassic Park showing a massive head lifted into the air with nostrils placed at the top of the forehead. They may indeed have been located in this position but there has been a lot of past speculation that the family may have been trunked, rather like an elephant. Recent papers however have pleaded the case that the markings on the head bones do not suggest trunk but may have been for a cartlidge resonance chamber that followed down the top of the head. This story follows this suggestion providing an almost whale-like ability of the beast to project sounds.
Troodontids are a predominantly small-bodied group of feathered theropod dinosaurs notable for their close evolutionary relationship with Avialae. Despite a diverse Asian representation with remarkable growth in recent years, the North American record of the clade remains poor, with only one controversial species—Troodon formosus—presently known from substantial skeletal remains.
Ancient Ice Ages
Glaciation has been a rare event in Earth's history but there is evidence of widespread icecover during the late Paleozoic Era and during late Precambrian. Before the current ice age, which began 2 to 3 million years ago, Earth's climate was typically mild and uniform for long periods of time.
There have been five known ice ages in the Earth's history. The Earth is currently in an interglacial period of the Quaternary Ice Age, with the last glacial period of the Quaternary having ended approximately 10,000 years ago, a time when the first pyramids of Egypt were being built.
Boulder Filled Crevasse
For those interested, anyone can visit and even crawl along a stream at the bottom of a crevasse filled with boulders similar to the one in this chapter. Visit Pinnacles National Monument in California.
Chapter 8 : Terror
“Darkness of the heart
from unexpected paths flies in.
The questions start
and the doubts begin,
flickering in the corner of your eye,
whispering a dark and wicked lie.”
“Dark Wings of Night”
by redqueenself
Soft white radiance smothers the plateau. A deathly pale suffusion of long black shadows that stretch and climb across a bleak landscape echoing with the alien calls of an evening jungle. Hunters move through the brush and broad leaf cover, deadly silent in their step. They pass with a lethal efficiency, using skills sharply honed and perfected through the long evolution of their species. Pinnacles of evolution’s natural experiment conducted over the passage of centuries of millennium. Silent, deadly predators passing as shadows through the darkened jungle yet strangely willing to occasionally lift their heads to scream their passage to the cold pinpoints of sparkling brilliance above that fill the velvet black skies of the evening.
Their passage unchallenged carries them over the trails of their ancestors along grounds unhindered by fence or artifact. They travel through a wild preserve teaming with life unfettered. They have free access to all of their hunting grounds save one
. One recently orphaned exception, a tiny peninsula jutting out into the glowing waters of a wine dark sea.
Strange obstructions lie before this fragile finger of land to block the passage of hunters claiming ancestral rights to these grounds. Blockades physical and ever vigilant by their very design. That is, until this star studded evening.
The two dark forms dance across the star-lit landscape in a ritual of the hunters craft. Their near passage to natural predator and victim undetected as they move in perfect choreography across the ancient pathways. Tonight’s movements, directed with the malice of forethought, focus on the very strongest point of the alien barricade.
Silent and unseen except for the brief distortion of a perceived background, they move across the landscape and up to the very gates without challenge. Crossing with the smooth flowing grace of a mild breeze, they pass along the alien barrier and over to the steep vertical walls of the cliffs that lead down to the bone crushing surf and rocks below. Effortlessly they scurry down the steep walls and around the barriers. Then the shadows cross back to pass unchallenged into the unguarded interior of the game-fertile grounds.
* * * * *
‘The sea was something like this the very first time I saw it. That was the night that Alex and I pulled perimeter guard duty together for the first time. It was our very first evening here at Cretaceous Station. I guess it was an evening of “firsts”. The Argos hadn’t even landed.’ Molly Pasteur sat on a rock at the edge of Brittany Wenford’s patio. The cool air of the evening blew across the loose blond strands in her hair.
‘I loved the ocean then as I do yet. How can it be so still? It’s like a mirror with a thousand, thousand stars twinkling back the images of the bright milky way for as far as you can see until sky and sea meet at the far horizon. I remember, at first we thought this fantastic star display was the clean air of the Cretaceous. Never dreamed that we would be in an entirely different part of the galaxy.’ She sighed lightly, ‘I guess the beauty of this bright field of stars is deceptive.’
Hunter's Moon (Cretaceous Station Book 2) Page 32
