Chapter Ten

When they reached the edge of another smaller open area, Daniel stopped short. Dr. Roost almost bumped into him. Two creatures, each about the size of a ­full-­length car, although they weren’t much taller than Daniel, confronted one another. They reminded him of bighorn sheep with their enormous domed heads. Their skulls were bumpy and they had a ring of bony knobs at the base around the neck and towards the small eyes. Short, bony spikes protruded upwards from the back of their ­heads.

Suddenly, Daniel’s mouth dropped open when he realized what he was ­seeing.

“Stygimoloch,” he ­whispered.

Dr. Roost whispered back. “They look different from what I expected. They’re even fiercer looking than any drawings, especially their heads.”

Suddenly, the pair of Stygimolochs stood on their hind legs. They each let out a booming low call, like a foghorn on a ­ship.

“That’s what we heard before,” Daniel ­realized.

Mildred Roost ­nodded.

“Could I have the camera?” Daniel asked when the massive creatures didn’t appear to notice ­them.

Dr. Roost handed it to Daniel wordlessly. He took several shots as the two animals circled one another, and then another couple when they began clashing heads. They made tremendous clunking noises each time their ­armour-­like skulls connected. Daniel skirted them with ­care.

“Don’t go any closer,” Dr. Roost warned, treading softly behind ­him.

“No way,” he agreed, sticking the camera away within easy access. Then he tied a piece of tape on a tree branch and they set off again. Daniel eyed the creatures warily until they were out of ­sight.

They continued to hear the foghorn sounds after they’d left the pair of discontented creatures. Not long afterwards, they came across a small herd of about ten hadrosaurs under a grove of pine trees. Daniel recognized them right away as Edmontosaurus saskatchewanensis. They were gathered loosely together, foraging for food. Some concentrated on higher pine needles, while the smaller ones feasted on cones and twigs. Their nesting grounds must be nearby! Maybe he and Mildred Roost were getting closer to the injured ­female.

Daniel quickened their pace. They circled the meadow and the herd. Even though these dinosaurs were ­plant-­eaters, he wasn’t sure what they’d do in order to protect themselves and their young if they saw humans or smelled human scent. They were huge beasts, and one stomp from them would end his or Dr. Roost’s life in seconds. He did take several snapshots of them, though, from different angles, and Dr. Roost jotted notes in a journal. Daniel also made sure to take time to mark the places they ­passed.

Soon the air became moister and breathing became more difficult. Dr. Roost wheezed behind Daniel, but wouldn’t let him stop. He could feel himself tiring. All of the terrain looked the same, and he couldn’t recall any distinguishing features. Then he noticed ­gull-­like creatures wheeling into the sky in the distance. They must be flying over the river! They had to be near the injured female! He hurried forward, and Dr. Roost sensed his excitement and moved faster as ­well.

“Are we almost there?” she asked, puffing ­slightly.

“Yes,” Daniel said confidently. He wasn’t going to admit to Mildred Roost that all he could remember was that the Edmontosaurus was sheltered under an overhanging bank beside the ­river.

Finally, as they struggled through some particularly dense foliage, they emerged into a clearing. The water’s edge was just ahead. Daniel followed the river’s twists and turns for several hundred metres, hoping they’d stumble upon the duckbill nest without further endangering the crusty old doctor or himself. They scuffled unevenly through the silt on the shore, stopping every once in a while to shake the dirt out of their ­shoes.

All at once, they rounded a bend in the river, and there she was!

Daniel and Dr. Roost crept towards the nest. She had already commandeered the camera and was snapping shots. Daniel kept watch for predators. He didn’t want to be caught off guard, but it was hard to concentrate when the goal of his trip lay just ­ahead.

When they got closer, they saw that the mother Edmontosaurus lay encircled around her nest, guarding her eggs as best as she could. Her leathery sides heaved as she tried to take in air, the large pouches by her nose expanding with each breath. Her huge golden eyes barely opened as they approached. She had little strength left and gave only a weak ­snort.

“Is that the same Edmontosaurus you saw before?” Dr. Roost ­asked.

“Yes, I’m positive it is,” Daniel ­answered.

“This is an amazing opportunity to see one up close.”

Mildred Roost crept nearer, seeming not the least concerned for her own safety. Daniel moved to pull her back, but soon realized that although the Edmontosaurus seemed aware that they were there, she could do nothing about it and they were relatively safe. Mildred took more ­close-­up photographs as Daniel moved in to study the Edmontosaurus, looking for evidence that she might be Roxanne, the same one that he and Mr. Pederson had excavated in the ­present.

As he circled her body, he saw again the unnatural angle of her left hindquarter. The injury was obviously serious enough to inhibit activity. He moved around her until he stood where he could reach her forearms with their ­mitten-­like hands. The top one was tucked tightly against her chest, while the bottom one flopped outward onto the ground. From the angle of it, Daniel was positive it was broken ­too.

Both breaks seemed to coincide with those on the fossil they’d found, but there were other characteristics he needed to research before making a more positive identification. Roxanne’s fossil had been surrounded by little babies, but this one only had eggs that were beginning to crack. He couldn’t see anything wrong with her head, either, as the photos from the RSM had shown. He had no way of knowing what would happen to this one when she died or how or if she would be preserved. The Edmontosaurus that he and Mr. Pederson had found seemed to have been buried along the riverbank, which was a strong similarity but not ­conclusive.

Daniel’s thoughts turned again to how amazingly different the creatures in this world were from his own. He couldn’t fathom how the prehistoric ones had evolved or vanished and ­present-­day animals had appeared. Yet they had, and whether wild or not, they were still living ­creatures.

As he watched the suffering creature, Daniel wished he could do something. Maybe he could feed her? As quickly as he could, he climbed the ­embankment.

“Where are you going, Daniel?” Mildred Roost asked a little ­anxiously.

As he explained his mission, she nodded. “I guess I don’t need to tell you to be careful?”

A few metres away, there was a copse of pine trees. Scouring the surroundings, Daniel hurried over to them and grabbed a handful of pine cones and twigs lying on the ground. He wasn’t sure if she would eat it, but all he could do was try. Returning to the mother dinosaur, he placed the food on the ground right by her ­mouth.

She gave a short, snorting sniff, but didn’t have the strength to reach for the food with her enormous tongue. Daniel decided that there was no way he was going to ­hand-­feed her the way he did his horse Gypsy! Her ­flat-­beaked head was humungous, and even if he could have lifted it off the ground, he wasn’t getting that close to the hundreds of closely packed teeth in her cheeks. Herbivore or not, he was sure she could crush his hands!

Even if he dared to feed her and she did eat something, how much would she need? And for how long? There was no way he could stay here for days on end to take care of her. Her breaks would probably never heal. The ­bird-­like carnivores circling overhead seemed to know there was not much hope for her as they gave a long screeching call, like the caw of a crow, to one ­another.

Suddenly, Daniel noticed several tiny hatchlings partway out of their shells. No movement or noise came from any of the other dozen or so eggs. Daniel gulped back the sadness making his throat ache. He knew it would only be a short time before the Edmontosaurus died. But he tried one more time to feed her, realizing that she wasn’t going to bite ­him.

He even tried to open up the top part of her beak to set some food inside her mouth. As he did so, she gave a slight jerk. Her head rose off the ground just long enough for Daniel to see the dried blood caked to it. So her head was injured too. One more reason to believe that maybe this was Roxanne!

Daniel moved in closer and gently touched her tough skin. It felt like old leather, rough and thick. Feeling braver, he stroked her neck and nose the way he did his horse Gypsy. He wondered if she could even feel his hands running over her tough thick body. Her heaving breaths were intermittent and laboured. After a while, she didn’t even bother to open her ­eyes.

Feeling fairly safe beside her, Daniel sat down and recorded his findings, making notes about her condition and the special features of her body. Mildred Roost continued to take detailed ­photographs.

After a time, Daniel could no longer ignore the rumblings in his stomach. He realized he was getting weak from ­hunger.

Dr. Roost came over to him. “Time for a snack?”

“I sure could eat a sandwich right about now,” he said. “Too bad the Zapsalis ate them all!”

“Not quite,” she said with a smile, as she unzipped her backpack and drew out a couple of ­Baggies.

“Ham and cheese, my favourite!” said Daniel, smiling and reaching for one without a moment’s ­hes-itation.

He gobbled a couple of sandwiches as he wrote in his journal, then swished them down with bottled water. He offered Dr. Roost an energy bar, but she declined and he wolfed two of them down ­too.

They sat back for a few moments, lost in their own thoughts. Daniel tried to estimate the time it would take to get to the spot to get back home. What if Dr. Roost couldn’t make it? Maybe there was a shorter way, but he doubted it. Dr. Roost seemed very resourceful, maybe she could think of something. He was just about to ask her, when she ­spoke.

“You know, Daniel, you remind me of my oldest son,” she said. “Always looking for adventure and usually finding it too.”

“I didn’t know you had a family!”

“Oh yes, two boys. My husband died eighteen years ago…a heart attack took him. He was a paleontologist too.”

“Where are your sons now?” Daniel asked ­curiously.

“Randall, my youngest, lives in Vancouver with his wife and two daughters. He’s a medical doctor,” she answered. “He decided to help those living in the present.”

She grew quiet for a moment, then said briskly, “And Trevor, I lost him in an avalanche on his way up to do some environmental studies at the North Pole.”

Daniel was speechless for a few ­moments.

“I’m so sorry,” he said ­finally.

She shrugged, although her eyes filled with sadness. “He was a good lad, doing what he loved to do. Geophysical research.”

“How old was he? What was he doing? I mean, I know it’s none of my business, but…”

She patted Daniel’s arm. “He was ­thirty-­four. He was part of a small group of scientists studying how climatic change at the North Pole might affect the global climate. He was particularly interested in researching how global warming is impacting on the world’s atmosphere, oceans, and land masses.”

“Wow, that’s really important stuff!”

Dr. Roost gave a small chuckle. “Indeed. But the irony is that neither of my sons wanted to follow in their father’s or my footsteps. Yet Trevor ended up working on almost exactly the kind of thing we’re doing right now.”

“How did that happen?”

“Over the years, there was growing evidence that the polar caps were actually warm during the Cretaceous Period. They’ve found fossils to prove it, like leaf fossils, mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, dinosaurs, marsupials, and champsosaurs. They actually believe there was global warming way back then.”

Daniel turned this information over in his mind. How ­astounding.

Dr. Roost laughed again. “I used to tease Trevor about him ending up like his folks after all, but he’d just brush me off and grin. Then he’d proceed to tell me all about the latest fossils they found.”

“You must really miss him,” Daniel ­said.

“Yes, I do. It was a few years ago now, but I still miss our conversations.” Mildred Roost turned to Daniel. “Like I said, you’re a lot like him.”

“Didn’t he have any family?”

“Yes, I have a grandson, though he’s a bit younger than you. I’m sure he’ll make a good paleontologist some day, if I have any say in his upbringing. I’d like him to meet you some day, Daniel. You’d be a good influence for him. He could learn a great deal from you.”

Daniel smiled with pride, not knowing what to say. No one had ever given him such a generous compliment ­before.

“Well, enough of this maudlin stuff.” Dr. Roost stood up and brushed off her pants. “Time to get some more work done.”

Daniel and Mildred Roost simultaneously pulled out their tape ­measures.

“Great minds think alike,” said Dr. Roost, giving Daniel a thump on the ­back.

Gently, they measured the Edmontosaurus, including the circumference of her head, her eyes, her forearms, and her hind legs. All the while she lay docilely, almost as if they didn’t exist. The tail was the hardest to measure with its series of bumps that ran all the way up her back and neck. He wasn’t quite sure how far from the long pointed tip he needed to measure up her back. He sketched the dinosaur and marked her dimensions, figuring that this duckbill was at least thirteen metres long in ­total.

Her ­three-­toed, hoofed feet were the most interesting to measure. Daniel plucked apart her toes, keeping a wary eye on her, in case she flicked him away. He would be seriously hurt if she did. And all the while he worked, he felt how incredible it was to be here with a real dinosaur, in a world others could only dream ­of.

Picking up the camera, Daniel took a sequence of photos showing the comparison of a small ruler to her teeth and other parts of her anatomy. While Dr. Roost lifted debris from the nest, he snapped details of the underside of the Edmontosaurus, the eggs, and her lifeless hatchlings. There would never be another opportunity like it!

Just as he got to his knees, he saw a sudden movement out of the corner of his eye. He realized that what he thought was a fallen log a couple of metres away, wasn’t. Scrambling to his feet, he motioned to Dr. Roost and together they backed away as the ­two-­and-­a-­half-­metre, dark grey Borealosuchus slid into the water. Whew! They’d been so immersed in their research that they’d forgotten to watch out for ­predators.

Once the Borealosuchus had drifted downstream, Daniel moved to the water’s edge and filled a vial. Water insects hovered around him. He tried scooping them into the vials, but that proved unsuccessful. He thought about catching them with his bare hands, but decided against ­it.

Moving back to Dr. Roost, he took another compass reading and studied the landscape, noting as many details as possible. Dr. Roost was packing up her gear, and she motioned to Daniel that she was ready to leave. He quickly stored away his stuff ­too.

As they were leaving the dying Edmontosaurus, Daniel stood over her for a few moments. A lump rose in his throat, as he gave her a farewell pat. Then they climbed up the embankment to the pine tree ­grove.

“Well, young man,” Dr. Roost said, “this has certainly been an extraordinary experience.”

Daniel nodded. “Now you can see why I had to come.”

“Indeed,” she said. “Thank you for bringing me along.”

“Too bad we have to go back now,” said ­Daniel.

“Oh, I think we could take a couple more minutes. I’d like to collect some plant samples yet.”

Daniel grinned. “Great!” That was exactly his thought. And although he knew that they were collecting samples for scientific study, he couldn’t forget something else about them. Each one could open a portal back to this exciting world.