The Lost World (24 page)

L
evine followed the game trail, moving deeper into the darkness of the jungle. The parasaurs were somewhere up ahead, making a lot of noise as they crashed through the ferns and palms on the jungle floor. At least now he understood why they had formed into a single file: there was no other practical way to move through the dense growth of the rain forest.

Their vocalizations had never stopped, but Levine noticed they were taking on a different character - more high-pitched, more excited. He hurried forward, pushing past wet palm fronds taller than he was, following the beaten trail. As he listened to the cries of the animals ahead, he also began to notice a distinctive odor, pungent and sweet-sour. He had the feeling the odor was growing stronger.

But up ahead, something was happening, there was no doubt about it. The parasaur vocalizations were now clipped, almost barking sounds. He sensed in them an agitated quality. But what could agitate an animal twelve feet high and thirty feet long?

His curiosity overwhelmed him. Levine began to run through the jungle, shoving aside palms, leaping over fallen trees. In the foliage ahead, he heard a hissing sound, a sort of spattering, and then one of the parasaurs gave a long, low trumpeting cry.

Eddie Carr drove the motorcycle up to the high hide, and stopped. Levine was gone. He looked at the ground around the hide, and saw many deep animal footprints in the ground. The prints were large, about two feet in diameter, and they seemed to be going off into the jungle behind the hide.

He scanned the ground, and saw fresh bootmarks as well. They had an Asolo tread; he recognized them as Levine's. In some places the bootmarks disrupted the edge of the animal footprints, which meant that they had been made afterward. The bootmarks also led into the forest.

Eddie Carr swore. The last thing he wanted to do was to go into that jungle. The very idea gave him the creeps. But what choice was there?

He had to get Levine back. That guy, he thought, was getting to be a real problem. Eddie unshouldered the rifle, and set it laterally across the handlebars of the motorcycle. Then he twisted the grips, and silently, the bike moved forward, into darkness.

Heart pounding with excitement, Levine pushed past the last of the big palms. He stopped abruptly. Directly ahead of him, the tall of a parasaur swung back and forth above his head. The animal's hindquarters were turned toward him. And a thick stream of urine gushed from the poste-rior pubis, spattering on the ground below. Levine jumped back, avoiding the stream. Beyond the nearest animal, he saw a clearing in the jungle, trampled flat by countless animal feet. The parasaurs had located themselves at various positions within this clearing, and they were all urinating together.

So they were latrine animals, he thought. That was fascinating, and totally unexpected.

Many contemporary animals, including rhinos and deer, preferred to relieve themselves at particular spots. And many times, the behavior of herds was coordinated. Latrine behavior was generally considered to be a method of marking territory. But whatever the reason, no one had ever suspected that dinosaurs acted in this way.

As Levine watched, the parasaurs finished urinating, and each moved a few feet to the side. Then they defecated, again in unison. Each parasaur produced a large mound of straw-colored spoor. This was accompanied by low trumpeting from each animal in the herd - along with an enormous quantity of expelled flatus, redolent of methane.

Behind him, a voice whispered, "Very nice."

He turned, and saw Eddie Carr sitting on the motorcycle. He was waving his hand in front of his face. "Dino farts," he said. "Better not light a match around here, you'll blow the place up…"

"Ssssh," Levine hissed angrily, shaking his head. He turned back to the parasaurs. This was no time to be interrupted by a vulgar young fool. Several of the animals bent their heads down, and began to lick the puddles of urine. No doubt they wanted to recover lost nutrients, he thought. Perhaps salt. Or perhaps hormones. Or perhaps it was something seasonal. Or perhaps -

Levine edged forward.

They knew so little about these creatures. They didn't even know the most basic facts about their lives - how they ate, how they eliminated, how they slept and bred. A whole world of intricate, interlocking behaviors had evolved in these long-vanished animals. Understanding them now could be the work of a lifetime for dozens of scientists. But that would probably never happen. All he could hope to do was make a few conjectures, a few simple deductions that skimmed the surface of the complexity of their lives.

The parasaurs trumpeted, and headed deeper into the forest. Levine moved forward to follow them.

"Dr. Levine," Eddie said quietly. "Get on the bike. Now."

Levine ignored him, but as the big animals departed, he saw dozens of tiny green dinosaurs leap chattering out into the clearing. He realized at once what they were: Procompsognathus triassicus. Small scavenger, found by Fraas in 1913, in Bavaria. Levine stared, fascinated. Of course he knew the animal well, but only from reconstructions, because there were no complete skeletons of Procompsognathus anywhere in the world. Ostrom had done the most complete studies, but he had to work with a skeleton that was badly crushed, and fragmentary. The tall, neck, and arms were all missing from the animals Ostrom described. Yet here the procompsognathids were, fully formed and active, hopping around I Ike so many chickens. As he watched, the compys began to eat the fresh dung, and drink what was left of the urine. Levine frowned. Was that part of ordinary scavenger behavior?

Levine wasn't sure…

He edged forward, to look at them more closely.

"Dr. Levine!" Eddie whispered.

It was interesting that the compys only ate fresh dung, not the dried remnants that were everywhere in the clearing. Whatever nutrients they were obtaining from the dung, it must only be present in fresh specimens. That suggested a protein or hormone that would degrade over time. Probably he should obtain a fresh sample for analysis. He reached into his shirt pocket, and withdrew a plastic baggie. He moved among the compys, which seemed indifferent to his presence.

He crouched down by the nearest dung pile, and reached slowly forward.

"Dr. Levine!"

He glanced back, annoyed, and in that moment one of the compys leapt forward and bit his hand. Another jumped onto his shoulder and bit his car. Levine yelled, and stood up. The compys hopped onto the ground and scampered away.

"Damn it!" he said.

Eddie drove up on the motorcycle. "That's enough," he said. "Get on the damn bike. We're getting out of here."

T
he red Jeep Wrangler came to a stop. Directly ahead, the game trail they had been following continued through the foliage, to a clearing beyond. The game trail was wide and muddy, trampled flat by large animals. They could see large, deep footprints in the mud.

From the clearing, they heard a low honking noise, like the sound of very large geese. Dodgson said, "Okay. Give me the box."

King didn't answer.

Baselton said, "What box?"

Without taking his eyes off the clearing, Dodgson said, "There's a black box on the seat beside you, and a battery pack. Give them to me."

Baselton grunted. "It's heavy."

"That's because of the cone magnets." Dodgson reached back, took the box, which was made of black anodized metal. It was the size of a shoebox, except it ended in a flaring cone. Underneath was mounted a pistol grip. Dodgson clipped a battery pack to his belt, and plugged it into the box. Then he picked the box up by the pistol grip. There was a knob at the back, facing him, and a graduated dial.

Dodgson said, "Batteries charged?"

"They're charged," King said.

"Okay," Dodgson said. "I'll go first, into the nest area. I'll adjust the box, and get rid of the animals. You two follow behind me, and once the animals are gone, you each take an egg from the nest. Then you leave, and bring them back to the car. I'll come back last. Then we all drive off, Got it?"

"Right," Baselton said.

"Okay," King said. "What kind of dinosaurs are these?"

"I have no fucking idea," Dodgson said, climbing out of the car. "And it doesn't make any difference. Just follow the procedure." He closed the door softly.

The others got out quietly, and they started forward, down the wet trail. Their feet squished in the mud. The sound from the clearing continued. To Dodgson, it sounded like a lot of animals.

He pushed aside the last of the ferns and saw them.

It was a large nesting site, with perhaps four or five low earthen mounds, covered in grasses. The mounds were about seven feet wide, and three feet deep. There were twenty beige-colored adults around the mounds-a whole herd of dinosaurs, surrounding the nesting site. And the adults were big, thirty feet long and ten feet high, all honking and snorting,

"Oh, my God," Baselton said, staring.

Dodgson shook his head. "They're maiasaurs, he whispered. "This is going to be a piece of cake."

Maiasaurs had been named by paleontologist Jack Horner. Before Horner, scientists assumed that dinosaurs abandoned their eggs, as most reptiles did. Those assumptions fitted the old picture of dinosaurs as cold-blooded, reptilian creatures, Like reptiles, they were thought to be solitary; murals on museum walls rarely showed more than one example from each species - a brontosaurus here, a stegosaurus or a triceratops there, wading through the swamps. But Horner's excavations in the badlands of Montana provided clear, unambiguous evidence that at least one species of hadrosaurs had engaged in complex nesting and parenting behavior. Horner incorporated that behavior in the name he gave these creatures: maiasaur meant "good-mother lizard."

Watching them now, Dodgson could see the maiasaurs were indeed attentive parents, the big adults circling the nests, moving carefully to step outside the shallow earthen mounds. The beige maiasaurs were duck-billed dinosaurs; they had large heads that ended in a broad, flattened snout, rather like the bill of a duck.

They were taking mouthfuls of grass, and dropping it on the eggs in the mounds. This was, he knew, a way to regulate the temperature of the eggs. If the huge animals sat on the eggs, they would crush them. So instead they put a layer of grass over the eggs, which trapped heat and kept the eggs at a more constant temperature. The animals worked steadily.

"They're huge," Baselton said.

"They're nothing but oversized cows," Dodgson said. Although the maiasaurs were large, they were plant-eaters, and they had the docile, slightly stupid manner of cows. "Ready? Here we go."

He lifted the box like a gun, and stepped forward, into view.

Dodgson expected a big reaction when the maiasaurs saw him, but there was none at all. They hardly seemed to notice him. One or two adults looked over, stared with dumb eyes, and then looked away. The animals continued to drop grass on the eggs, which were pale white, oval, and nearly two feet long. Each was about twice the size of an ostrich egg. About the size of a small beach ball. No animals had hatched yet.

King and Baselton stepped out, and stood beside him in the clearing. Still the maiasaurs ignored them.

"Amazing," Baselton said.

"Fine for us," Dodgson said. And he turned on the box.

A continuous, high-pitched shriek filled the clearing. The maiasaurs immediately turned toward the sound, honking and lifting their heads. They seemed agitated, confused. Dodgson twisted the dial, and the shriek became higher, ear-splitting.

The maiasaurs bobbed their heads, and moved away from the painful sound. They clustered at the far end of the clearing. Several of the animals urinated in alarm. A few of them moved away into the folliage, abandoning the nest. They were agitated, but they stayed away.

"Go now," Dodgson said.

King stepped into the nearest nest, and grunted as he picked up an egg. His arms hardly reached around the huge oval. The maiasaurs honked at him, but none of the ' adults moved forward. Then Baselton went into the nest, took an egg, and followed King back to the car.

Dodgson walked backward, holding the box on the adults. At the edge of the clearing, he turned the sound off.

At once the maiasaurs came back, honking loudly and repeatedly. But as they returned to the nests, it seemed as if the adults forgot what had just happened. Within a few moments, they ceased honking, and went back to dropping grass over the eggs. They ignored Dodgson as he left and headed back along the game trail.

Stupid animals, Dodgson thought, as he went to the car. Baselton and King were setting the eggs into big Styrofoam containers in the back, and fitting the foam packing around them carefully. Both men were grinning like kids.

"That was amazing!"

"Great! Fantastic!"

"What'd I tell you?" Dodgsoii said. "Nothing to it." He glanced at his watch. "At this rate, we'll finish in less than four hours."

He climbed behind the steering wheel and turned on the engine. Baselton got into the back seat. King got in the passenger seat and took out the map.

"Next," Dodgson said.

"
I tell you, it's fine," Levine said irritably. He was sweating in the stifling heat beneath the aluminum roof of the high hide. "Look, it didn't even break the skin." He held out his hand. There was a red semicircle where the compy had pressed its teeth into the skin, but that was all.

Beside him, Eddie said, "Yeah, well, your ear is bleeding a little."

"I don't feel anything. It can't be bad."

"No, it's not bad, " Eddie said, opening the first-aid kit. "But I better clean it up."

"I prefer," Levine said, "to get on with my observations." The dinosaurs were barely a quarter-mile away from him, and he could see them well. In the still midday air, he could hear them breathe.

He could hear them breathe.

Or at least he could, if this young man would leave him alone. "Look," Levine said, "I know what I'm doing here. You came in at the end of a very interesting and successful experiment. I actually called the dinosaurs to me, by imitating their cry."

"You did?" Eddie said.

"Yes, I did. That was what led them into the forest in the first place. So I hardly think that I need your assistance - "

"The thing is," Eddie said, "you got some of that dino shit on your ear and there's a couple of little punctures. I'll just clean it off for you." He soaked a gauze pad with disinfectant. "May sting a little."

"I don't care, I have other - Ow!"

"Stop moving," Eddie said. "It'll only take a second."

"It's absolutely unnecessary."

"If you just stand still, it'll be done. There." He took the gauze away. Levine saw brown and a faint streak of red. Just as he suspected, the injury was trivial. He reached up and touched his ear. It didn't hurt at all.

Levine squinted out at the plain, as Eddie packed up the first-aid case.

"Jeez, it's hot up here," Eddie said.

"Yes," Levine said, shrugging.

"Sarah Harding arrived, and I think they took her back to the trailer. You want to go back now?"

"I can't imagine why," Levine said.

"I just thought you might want to say hello or something," Eddie said.

"My work is here," Levine said. He turned away, raised his binoculars to his eyes.

"So," Eddie said. "You don't want to come back?"

"Wouldn't dream of it," Levine said, staring through binoculars. "Not in a million years. Not in sixty-five million years."