Re: PARADIGMS LOST

[John Schneiderman <dino@revelation.unomaha.edu>]

Those were neat...but you missed one very important part...
We have to bury this site, so that it can be found later.

The drought was a nasty one.  It cared little for anything, and many
dinosaurs unfortunate enough to stay behind, while others moved to more
greener pastures, ended up a pile of twisted, scavenged, corpses.
The drought had done its work.  The skies began to fill with angry, rain
cloud, black with moisture.  A family of dromaeosaurs stepped out of
dry woods and out onto the floodplain.  They have been hungry, very
hungry.  They scanned the scene, and sniffed...for anything to relieve the
pain in their stomaches.  Suddenly, the dominate female sighted the
remains of a rotting Tenontosaurus.  The dead animal lay on its side
blotted and covered with flies.  The smell was almost too much for the
dromaeosaurs, but the prospect of food over-ruled the stench.  The
smallest of the family was first to attack...more of play, than attack, it
was instinct.  His toe claw lashed at the blotted underbelly, which
bursted instantly, throwing the hapless juvenile.  When he came to, the
rest of the family was crawling all over the corpse eating anything that
could be.  There activity did not permit them warning of what was
crashing down the dry, cemented, riverbed.  The adult male, looked up, and
jumped away from the carcass just as a wall of water, swept away, his meal
and his family.  He could only stare out at the rushing torrents, stepping
back as the water lapped at his feet.  He had never been up against such a
foe, so he did what he could only do, turn and run away.
The river picked up everything in its wake, and mixed them about.  But
the river soon lost its momentum and slowly was forced back into its
channel.  The tenantosaur floated up to the surface along with two
surviving dromaeosaurs.  The corpse came to rest at a quiet part of the
river, with the dromaeosaurs jumping to safety.  They ran and did not look
back.  The water heavy with sediment and parts of other Deinonychus
(killed by the drought at an earlier time) gathered with the
Tenontosaurus.  Slowly the mass sank beneath the surface and were
entombed.  The other unlucky dromaeosaurs also drifted furthur down-stream
for a similar fate.

---John Schneiderman (dino@revelation.unomaha.edu)