Tides of the Heart (Crestwood Chronicles #1)

Epilogue

"Wow... Look at that!" Carefully brushing loose dirt from the exposed portion of the fossilized skull, I trace the inner circle of the eye socket with my fingertip. "The scleral ring is almost perfectly intact."

"The what?" Tamisha, one of the two interns helping me excavate, leans in for a closer look.

"The scleral ring. It's a ring of bony plates inside the eye. Lots of fish, reptiles, and birds have them," I explain. "The non-avian dinosaurs had them, too, but they're super delicate, so they rarely preserve."

"Will that make this find important?" Peter, the other intern, asks timidly. He's pale, skinny, extremely introverted, possibly on the spectrum, and half in the closet. He reminds me of myself a few years ago.

"It will make it more valuable, for sure," I say, validating his question. "But the gut contents are what really make this specimen so spectacular."

I shift a few feet to the right on the slanted slab of red-brown stone and indicate the rib cage, flattened and slightly distorted by the fossilization process, but still recognizable as such. Pointing to a small, round, unusually smooth formation, I say, "this is a gastrolith—a pebble swallowed to help grind up food. If we have gastroliths, then these surrounding fragments could very well be the animal's last meal. Gut contents can tell us more about behavior and environment than the skeleton can, sometimes."

My walkie-talkie beeps and crackles with static before Professor MacDowell's voice comes through.

"Charlie. Pick up."

I unclip the radio from my belt and depress the button to speak. "I'm here, Professor."

"Storm's on the way. I'm recalling everyone to camp."

Frowning, I get to my feet and turn in a slow circle, studying the sky. There are some high clouds and a few cumulonimbus thunderheads off to the south, but nothing imminently threatening.

"Right now?"

"Yes—now. B team isn't answering their radio. Cassie might have it turned off. Hazel's taking the ATV out to get them."

"Alright. On our way."

I clip the radio back on my belt and stand with my hands on my hips, contemplating the site and my surroundings. We're about a mile from camp—twelve to fifteen minutes if we scramble—but at the moment, there appears to be no rush.

"I don't see no storm," Tamisha says, surveying the sky with a skeptical expression.

"The weather can change fast out here," I reply. "Better be safe than sorry. You two head back; I'll secure the site and follow soon."

As Peter and Tamisha gather their gear and head down the ridge towards the camp, I collect four heavy stones and place them near the folded tarp at the ready. Then I get out the digital camera we use for documentation and begin snapping shots of the site.

When professor MacDowell invited me back to the summer internship program—as one of his graduate assistants, this time—I'd been thrilled to accept. To my surprise, Hazel had volunteered to come as well, reprising his role as the camp workhorse.

In the two years since I was last here, not much has changed. The Utah desert landscape is still as beautiful and barren as ever, and even the tents are the same. The main difference is the people. Professor MacDowell, Hazel, and myself are the only returnees this year.

There are four interns, and I'm in charge of half of them. The other graduate assistant, Cassie, is in charge of the other team.

We've been taking turns between two primary sites: the Utahraptor and a sauropod bone bed. A bone bed is where many individuals fossilized together, either because they died together, or because something like a river caused their bodies to accumulate in the same place over a relatively short period. The Utahraptor is the closer site, though more of a hike to reach, being near the top of a ridge and accessible only by foot. The bone bed is at the base of a hill, fairly close to the road, which is why Hazel can retrieve the other team with the camp ATV.