FOSSIL FEVERI reach down and lift from the ground a dinosaur. The large rock that I heft into my hands is definitely bone. I can see the marrow. I can see outer striations running the length of the piece. My heart thumps. I feel the excitement that must have coursed through the blood of the world’s greatest fossil hunters. Hoodoo winds gust against me like the malicious guffaws of a lost banshee. I lick my bleeding lips. I have been trekking, for days now, over eroded gulleys within Alberta’s Badlands. Fossil fever has gripped me like the plague. Turning my nights into a series of restless nightmares about rock and filling my days with an empty longing that has kept my eyes off the road and on the passing canyon walls. At first Mary and the girls enjoyed leisurely strolls among the Hoodoos and canyons, while I scrambled with increasing desperation over millions of years of weathered sediment. Late on the third afternoon, after only a little over four hours, I began to feel something. ‘I feel a presence.’ I called. ‘I can feel the presence of a dinosaur. He’s here somewhere.’ Josie muttered back, ‘I’m feeling the presence of a good seat.’ and plopped herself down on rock bench. Her eyes were like twin brake lights. Today, they have given up the ghost. The specter of long dead lizards has lost its thrall. In short they are tired and have decided to go fossil hunting in the shops. My triumphant croak of, ‘Eureka!’ is heard only by a passing flock of geese, which don’t really care. They wheel and bank across Red Deer River and descend beyond sight. One hundred years ago Barnum ‘Bones’ Brown, perhaps the greatest fossil hunter ever, sailed a raft along that river. In 1910, paleontology was emerging from its infancy. The fossil wars had ended. American universities had begun to collaborate rather than compete for each new discovery. Nevertheless, the famous fossil hunting Sternberg family also launched a raft and followed Bones Barnum down the river. Their friendly rivalry resulted in the discovery of thousands of bones and several whole skeletons. I am so jealous I could spit! Within the next hundred years over three hundred skeletons would be unearthed from the Canadian Badlands. I had only unearthed a variety of fossilised trees, some bison bones and some rocks so full of fossilized oyster shells that they made me instantly hungry and yearn for beer and a beach. What I wanted was a dinosaur, and now I had one. I search in a grid and find more bones. I am not allowed to dig. That is against the law. I may, however, pick up anything loose upon the surface. I can see imbedded in the dirt what could be a hip. I find what could be teeth. I scrabble up to the next flat area and gasp. I’m not just looking for a few old dinosaur bones – although, that in itself is pretty cool. No, what I want is a significant find, something that will thrust me into the history pages of paleontology and onto the walls of the Royal Tyrrell Museum. At last, I think I’ve found it! Exposed, on flattened bed of clay, is a fossilized nest, with one large dark egg poking out of it. I carefully edge closer. I place a coin in situ, as the fossil hunting manual suggests, and take photos of my find. The battery in the camera dies. I curse the malicious hoodoos. I curse the malicious wind. I curse the wild geese. I curse myself; the goose who forgot to charge the battery. I return to the lookout at the top of Horse Thief Canyon. That night I make contact with Don Henderson, curator of dinosaurs at the Royal Tyrrell Museum. He says bring in the photos and specimens. I can hardly sleep for excitement and fever. My dreams are full of labeling rocks and a quiet force repeating, ‘Just follow procedure.’ The museum opens at 10am and we are first in line. Mary rubs my back in the hope that I’ll get better. The girls find the lookout. I stare at my reflection and it stares back with blood shot eyes. I nervously clean my fingernails – the policy for no excavation is very strict. Eventually the doors are open and I barge to the front counter and ask for Dr. Henderson. My arms are full of rocks. Behind me, school groups pour into the museum. The gift shop fills up. It won’t be a meteorite that wipes out the human race. It will be a ‘Closed’ sign. Don Henderson eventually appears. He looks like a gentle university professor and I am instantly relieved. He also has the hint of a Scottish accent. He is the Sean Connery of the Paleontology world. He immediately identifies the bones as belonging to a hadrosaur. He examines the teeth and dismisses them as just bits of rock. Apparently, however, I have found part of a leg, some spine, hip and possible skull fragments but nothing of interest to the museum. ‘We literally have tons of it out the back.’ I bring out the photos of the nest. He grimaces and says, ‘This area was mostly bogs and marsh. It was too acidic for eggs to survive. It is not likely to be a nest. The hadrosaurs preferred drier ground for their nests. They would have laid their eggs somewhere else but not in a swamp. He looks carefully at the nest. ‘I think it is just the remnants of a tree stump. There are a lot around here. You have probably seen them? In the front of everybody’s yard?’ Disappointment crashes about my shoulders. Apparently there are whole fossilized forests waiting for anybody to pick up and bring home as shade for their fossilised gnomes. I try to smile and thank him. ‘No. Thank you.’ Says Don Henderson, my new most favourite paleontologist, ‘We are always interested to see what the public have found. We can’t look everywhere.’ He then asks us where we are from and we tell him about the teacher exchange. ‘You can be the caretaker of those fossils but I think you will have trouble taking them out of the province.’ ‘That’s alright.’ I reply, ‘I’ll donate them to our school.’ I may not have won myself a footnote in the annals of paleontology but at least I can claim to have found a dinosaur. A duck billed dinosaur no less. As for the nest, Dr. Don Henderson may have a couple of decades worth of experience and research but I was there! Like many rocks in the museum it requires a little imagination and faith to give them meaning. He just needs a little more faith. Swamps have hillocks. I need to go back to the site, find some rocks that look like egg shell. Find some little bones that look like an unhatched hadrosaur. Find that howling Hoodoo ghost and tell him to shut the hell up! But before that, I think I need to find some panadol. |