how i got my name...

with all the excitement going on around me during this whole trip back to drumheller i've been forgetting to blog about the most important thing to me here in all of the tyrrell.

that would be this skeleton. known to most as the huxley tyrannosaur, or to the scientific community as specimen TMP 81. 12. 1... but to me it has a much simpler name... mommy.

its hard to think that 65 million years ago, right before the great KT extinction, i had a living and breathing mother... who was probably part of some pack or social group of other tyrannosaurs. a natural "family" for my kind... a thing i've never known in the real world (though i have been part of a group of caring humans you could call my family even if we aren't remotely related!).

i of course never knew her in this form, and never will...

before you ask how do we know if this is my mom, i investigated this earlier in my trip by checking with darren tanke. the short story was that her skeleton was found right over top of the fossilized nest my egg came from. in fact she was buried while on the nest... so unless a complete stranger rex wandered onto my nest, it is a safe bet this was my mother.

based on what we've seen in other meat eating dinosaurs, it looks like she was protecting the nest... and based on her large size this would have been unusual for a tyrannosaur (as she could easily have crushed us eggs... in fact it looks like a couple of my siblings may have been squashed in the cretaceous by mom's huddling on us). what could have been threatening us eggs so much that she'd risk it i wonder?

this is the purely scientific evidence that the huxley tyrannosaur was my mommy. most palaeontologists would say there was a strong chance she was my mom (or dad, as dino genders are impossible to confirm from just the bones), but we'll never know for sure...

speaking from just the scientifically provable angle this is correct. i can't prove to you "properly" that she is my mom. yet at the same time there is no question in my mind that she is my mommy, and not my daddy or other random t-rex.

we vivus-dinosaurs (that's the proper term for us dinosaurs somehow not extinct today) have another way of IDing our long dead kind...

contrary to the common belief of the humans in my life, i don't waste my time in trying to talk to my mom or other extinct dinosaur skeletons. sure they don't strike up a complex conversation, but i have met with limited success in getting answers back from them...

the reason being, somehow all us living vivus-dinosaurs can hear echoes of dinosaurs long extinct. there is no rational explanation, but it is true. ask any of us, and we'll all agree.

no this isn't like a ghost or a conscious entity we're communicating with. in fact the communication is mostly one way. rather we can hear, what seems like anyways, the last thoughts and feelings of that dinosaur before it died. often we can even tell you what killed it because of this echo (if indeed these are the last thoughts being "preserved", mind you).
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now the more complete a specimen the more complete the echo... for whatever reason (which as you'll see in a moment i think i've now, for the first time ever, figured out!). it also seems the more of the skull present the better the quality of the echo. words and "conversations" are possible with a skulled animal (though the conversation on your part just prompts different aspects of the echo. sort of like having a recording of someone and picking different parts of the recording to listen to).

even with the smallest fragments if you listen hard enough (if you're a dinosaur) you can catch a glimpse of an emotion or a word... but the general rule the more of the dinosaur the better the echo, and the more of the skull the more you can understand it.

so we come to my mother. complete neck to toe, but NO skull. even my vivus-dinosaur acquaintances think i'm silly for spending as much time "talking" to her as i do. she is a lot of intense emotion, but no explanation.

i've never figured out what happened to her, but i know what she felt in the last moments of her life...

mom's echo begins with the purest joy and happiness i've ever "heard" in an echo, but it only lasts a short time (she'd probably been feeling it for a while before the "recording" of her echo). this gives way to sheer panic and terror going into a moment of absolute determination (to protect i want to say, but i'm only going with my gut feeling... but it would explain why she was on the nest). it finally ends with intense fatal pain (sadly not uncommon from echos at all!), but her's is very pronounced and fast. dinosaur death's usually aren't as quick or powerful as hers (but usually as painful)...

again i can't tell you why or how any of this happened. without her skull all i can get is a "feeling" off her with no words to explain. however that is not to say nothing of her past self has managed to come through deep time to me...

she has spoken a single word to me. only the once, but this singular communication has been the most important word anyone has ever said to me...

i remember it clearly, which is saying something. it is among my first memories ever, and despite my tiny brain making remembering things hard, i'll never forget this moment for as long as i shall live.

it was the first time my legal guardian craig brought me through the museum's galleries (he'd taken me to the labs and collections many times, but this was my first public side tour). most of this i can't recall for the life of me (but if you compare this old photo of me and him there in 2003 to the modern one of my below taken this year in 2009 you'll see there are many differences!), but i certainly recall being brought into range of my mother for the first time!

as craig carried me before her, i was hit with the echo unsolicited (which never happens normally... we vivus-dinosaurs have to listen or probe to get something out of the fossils). at its conclusion, in the usual haunting whisper manner of a fossil echo i heard my mother say "traumador." i knew immediately this was my mother, and that this was her name for me.

i wasn't just imagining this either people of the web wide world! i didn't just take some random name thrown out by a fossil skeleton, and decide this was my 65 million year old name...

despite the fact i grew up like a human, and often behave more like one than a tyrannosaur, i have strong saurian instincts deep within me. this is one of the most baseline. the bond of a coelurosaur chick with its mother. we normally imprint on our mothers, but as i had extenuating circumstances preventing me to do that, this was as close as i was going to get to such an event.

this was the echo of my mother knowing me, somehow, outside of my egg... despite having never seen (or smelled, a very important sense to us tyrannosaurs) me in her lifetime, yet i tell you matter of factly, that was what she'd done. somehow, i was the most burning thing on her mind when she died...

as of such i've always felt a deep and emotional connection to my mother. we never really met, but yet we still have a bond across 65 million years. it makes me feel like in some way as a dinosaur i fit in somewhere (cause it sure isn't easy in the human world being a vivus dinosaur!).

the funny thing about it all is i said it aloud right after my mother, and craig assumed i came up with this out of thin air, and figured it would be the name he'd give me (up till then it had been "little guy" or "rex"... so i'll give him credit for still being on the market for something to call me, and not stick me with one of those!).

once i was old enough to explain where i'd gotten the name from, craig didn't entirely believe me. he thought i'd wanted so bad to "hear" my mother i made up a memory of her talking to me when i was a hatchling.

after all she hadn't ever done it again, right?... well that was true. until today!!!

today as i experienced mom's usual emotion echo, something bizarre, but sadly far from a new thing happened to me...

i suddenly felt uncontrollably dizzy. my mother's skeleton (even the cast skull attached to her) began to glow. it was another magic episode! ever since i'd overdosed myself in mystical gradient radiation (the scientific name for magic) i could detect magic (at least according to professor paradigm's findings so far i could). a long story to be sure, click on some of these links for the full details.

the general gist is that if something magic happens around me, i know about it. magic according to everyone i know has something to do with dimensions beyond our 4D world... i don't know something to do with the stringed up, or no wait, string theory. point is stuff from beyond our height, weight, depth, and time dimensions somehow get into our reality, and i can see them (where many others might miss it).

which might sound far fetched, like dinosaurs hearing echoes from our dead... only today i figured out the two are connected!

professor paradigm said after examining the magic's effect on me, he suspected we dinosaurs absorbed mystical gradient energy and retained it, unlike humans who simply get coated in it. i think this difference explains why we hear our dead ancestors, and humans can't.

prehistoric dinosaurs communicate through magic!!!

i'm not sure how or why, but that's what i sensed when my mom's echo triggered (i tested it again on a few other skeletons and the same thing every time! they triggered magic sensing episodes in me, complete with dizziness and glowing).

unlike the maori magic though, this new "fossil" magic didn't keep making me feel sick or dizzy for long. i'd only feel it for a moment, and then the magic felt more natural... dinosaur magic? as opposed to human (which may not be the case, but this was more pleasant then that other new zealand magic!).

well my mom's usual emotional barrage washed over me (in more detail then ever before... an effect of the magic i wonder?). then an odd silence. not as in the echo finishing (which it normally did after her pain) more like a blank space on a recording...

after a few minutes i started to think i was imagining the difference in the ending, and as i'd spent my time with mom for today, i turned around and began to walk away.

suddenly from behind me. "traumador," i heard in my mother's voice. the most glorious voice i'd ever heard (again). i spun around. unbelieving. in all my years seeing my mother she'd never said my name since that first time. i won't lie, occasionally i'd wondered if craig was right and my tiny brain had imagined mom giving me my name. now i knew for certainty it was true!

just before i could savour that happiness, my mother continued. "my dear sweet little traumador," mom sounded like she was talking to me now, but yet it clearly it was an echo. she had thought or said this in the cretaceous, but yet it was addressed to growup me. "be on your guard my little, danger soon shall stalk you..."

okay that was an ominous. why was my mom thinking i was in danger. more to the point why did the echo give me the distinct impression she meant for me to have this message well after i was out of my egg? i had to be imagining that interpretation (afterall echoes aren't science), she must have been thinking of me in the egg (but me above all my other unhatched siblings? why was i so special?) as the ancient danger she was protecting us from destroyed her.

that had to be it, i thought. it was the prehistoric horror that had consumed her so fast all those eons ago.

what danger could i possibly be in right now?

Elsewhere in the Museum...

(From Layla Oviraptor's personal journal)

Concealing my presence here at the Tyrrell has not been easy thus far, but what choice do I have?

The runt is still here at the museum, and has clearly been nosing around. His timing is far to convenient for his presence here to be anything but a direct affront against the Pack [of the Primordial Feather]'s operation here in Drumheller. Especially given his close ties to the "crate".

As if I needed any further reason to be concerned, but Professor Paradigm has also made his presence known in the region. If there is an organization I do not want interfering in our project it is Palaeo-Central.

Bringing matters to a head, Professor Paradigm confronted the runt yesterday, and I fear they may now be collaborating against us. If so I and the operation may be in grave danger...

I had been contemplating abandoning this whole endeavour, but that would have me returning to the pack in defeat. Something that would greatly undermine my lofty position as lieutenant to the royals [In pack lingo royal= Tyrannosaurid].

However today the tide had shifted against the runt. With such weight, it was unlikely he'd have fathomed it... Until it was too late, in any case.

My secret weapons had arrived, heralded by Desdemona Deinonychus seeking me out in the museum.

I typically do not have a fondness for Dromaeosaurs, but this was one of those rare instances where I felt great pride in knowing they were closely related to me. They were among the best of our hunters [in coelurosaur terms hunter=warrior], and definitely our most subtle. In this dire situation I needed foot soldiers of Desdemona's caliber, and now I had them.

I quickly briefed Desdemona on the development in events since I'd summoned her. Unlike me, who worried about the possible disaster that could follow a failure on our part, Desdemona kept the cold focused demeanor of a raptor prior to a hunt.

"You worry to much Oviraptor," she calmly assured me. Her eyes narrowed in focused anticipation. "This just makes my presence here all the more appropriate!"

I could not help but worry at her excitement over this delicate situation we were currently both overlooking. That was the way of the predator I suppose, to see opportunity in adversity, thrill in carnage, and to revel in overwhelming odds. It was not for me however, and I couldn't help worry I'd made a mistake bringing Desdemona in to help me.

As I followed Desdemona deeper into the museum my fears disappeared.

The rest of the Crimson Talons were restlessly gathered, ready for my and Desdemona's orders. Clearly they were antcipating the hunt as much as their matriarch.

I could see that Desdemona had brough her second in command Valor Velociraptor to assist her carry out the attack. Backing them up were a number of local Dromaeosaurus and Atrociraptors. Clever of her to not bring in too many noticible outside Dinosaurs. A nice clean local job. One that would hopefully be carried out quickly and quietly.

With a task force of raptor's poised ready to remove the runt, and any threat he represented how could my fears be anything but a thing of the past?

Next: Attack of the Raptors!!!

(Production Note: The clues in the fossil of the weekend have now been realized... "Danger soon shall stalk" Traumador indeed. For a better view of his potential danger click here.)

the traumador quarry... (origins part 3)

so it turns out that my being discovered as an egg was part of a nearly 100 year long saga...

i still have a lot of questions, but at least i know a few of the facts...

here's the short version of the saga (if you want the longer version click the link).

a very mysterious fossil hunter named francis slate operating during the great canadian dinosaur rush SEEMS to have found the site both me and my mother were found at (i say seems as this mr. slate isn't in any proper history book). than in the 1940's my mom was officially found, but my egg (and those of my long dead brothers and sisters) remained in the ground undiscovered. it wasn't until 2003 that my eventual discoverer craig returned to the site and stumbled across my nest...

of all things i've wanted to know about myself, is where did i come from?... of course the saying "where did i come from" has a lot of meanings... but today at the top of my list was the simplest meaning. what was the place i came from?

after many years of wondering, today i no longer have too!

not only did i make it to where i came from, but i was being guided through it by the one and only darren tanke! the guru expert on the history of fossil collecting in alberta.

this morning we ventured to just outside the town of huxley, alberta. the spot was on a isolated ranch like any other in the praries. only this one was bordered with the natural walls of the badlands at one end.

after getting out of the car, darren casually asked me what i notice immediately about the area of remote badlands around us...


looking around what did i notice... not much. just a stretch of badlands very similar to those around drumheller or dinosaur park. i could have been anywhere along the red deer river...

that was till after a minute or two. i realized there was something funny about the top of the outcrop. i guess funny isn't the right word (especially when i figured out exactly what it is). it was a very pronounced and distinct layer. i'd never seen one like it before.

after another minute of thought i realized what i was looking at. i was face to face with the only record of what happened to my kind 65 million years ago. it was THE KT boundary! the layer found throughout the world that marked the end of cretaceous period, and with it the doom of the dinosaurs. (like i said not such a funny layer in the end!).

i have an intense fear of this moment of time. even if it was 65 million years ago. asteroids always fall on me in my worst nightmares. yet looking at it here in the rock it was deceivingly calm and mellow. one could almost believe it wasn't the marker of one of the most disastrous moments in the earth's history, the way it just sat there doing nothing. yet recorded in that layer is an insane amount of destruction (global forest fires, molten rock rain, massive tidal waves... you know the end of the world type stuff).

i shared my findings with darren, who was quite impressed. "good eye," he complimented me. darren than asked me pointedly"but is that all you noticed?"

"yeah," i truthfully told him, a little embarrassed. i thought i'd done really well, but apparently not.

darren pointed to a spot just in front of us. "right there," darren instructed me as he handed me a picture. "what do you notice about it compared to this photo."

it was the photo darren had shown me yesterday, of that unknown explorer francis slate digging at the site i'd be found at years later.

what about it? i thought. this photo was marked on the back as being taken in 1914. that was ages ago (95 years if you spend the time to do the math i realized). a lot has changed since then...

hasn't it? i reasked myself as my tiny brain caught onto what darren was leading me towards...

i was standing RIGHT where the photographer had been standing! right there in front of me was the VERY spot francis slate had reported finding "saurian eggs of unknown nature".

that was amazing!

i turned to darren all excited and started to ask a million questions... mostly about how did he find this site, and how could a photo almost a hundred years old still be a clue.

after a few minutes calming me down, darren answered my many questions.

for the last 10 or so years darren has taken it upon himself to find all the various dig sites in alberta, those that are a century old or older all the way up to the present so that a solid record can be preserved for the science of palaeontology for centuries to come... (details on darren's techniques and findings are coming NEXT post so stay tuned). using clues like this photograph darren is able to find even the most obscure of quarrys.

of course darren is only just one man. he can't possible hunt all the badlands of alberta alone, so he recruits people to help him out in searching for these "lost quarrys" (as they are now lost to us in the present). after all more eyes are better than two... wait is that how that saying goes?

he told me the story of one particular helper, who took an interest in the field notes of francis slate, and managed to track down this site we stood at.

that person was of course (soon after the events in this flashback to become) my legal guardian craig.

5 years ago...

francis slate had been getting the better of craig for the whole summer of 2003. not that he was wholeheartedly looking at first. normal lost quarrys can be searched for as a side project during normal field work. not with this slate guy.

_

darren had only managed to ever track down one of slate's sites back in 2000 (and he spent that whole summer looking!). that was because it was in an easy place. right outside the atlas coal mine's visitor centre, the atlas being a major tourist attraction in the drumheller region. with this difficulty in mind darren urged craig to drop it, and try looking for "normal" lost quarrys.

_

yet craig grew infuriated (darren didn't know why, but it seemed craig took it personally). he dropped all his other commitments at the museum in august, and went out with the sole purpose of finding some of francis slate's dig sites. this wasn't just a day job, it became craig's life for that period. by day he'd wander and drive around the badlands, and come back at night to read and research till he HAD to sleep.

_

despite this craig came back empty handed for two weeks in a row. than on august. 14 a lucky break. while reading through charlie sternberg's notes for any reference to slate, craig stumbled on sternberg mentioning a visit he made in 1946 to a site slate had spoken to him about in 1914.

which if course was the spot that i now stood in here in the year 2009.

craig's site check for lost quarry clues ended very quick when he found fossils on the surface. a type he'd never seen in the field before... eggshell!

as he poked around (being careful not to remove anything from the rock, as that could damage delicate fossils) he was surprised to find the eroded out remains of several eggs... a nest he concluded!

if he was surprised at that, he was amazed (and darren tells me a bit freaked) when one of the eggs popped out of the mound as he probed around it. craig grabbed it as it nearly rolled down to possible destruction... he was astounded at how intacted a egg it was. it was perfect in every way. no cracks, no damage, not even the slightest clue of fossilization even. it was even light weight and still proper egg shell coloured.

just as he was about to try and set it down carefully on the ground it suddenly started to shack and crack itself open...

this is about where i can jump in and add my point of view...

this is about how i remember this happening. which is pretty easy for me to remember. not only is it my first memory, but as we tyrannosaurs are closely related to birds we imprint on the first thing we see just like them. so the image of craig's very surprised face is rather hardly ingrained in my mind (as small as it is).

not much of a view of my birthplace at the time though, mind you. just some nice sky and a big human...

that's how it all began... well for me anyway. here in this place 5 years ago...

as i looked upon it, half imagining what happened and half remembering it, all kinds of deep huge emotion swelled up inside me. i caught myself trying to cry. which was silly.

not because darren was there (he told me afterwards it was touching, and one of the most significant moments he's had showing some lost quarrys... though i was outdone by the daughter of one of levi sternberg's fieldcrew members when he showed her some pictures of her father she'd never seen).

silly because we tyrannosaurs can't cry properly! another one of those human behaviours i've picked up from hanging out with them so much. (and imprinting on one as we've just seen). i wished i could cry at that moment thouhh. this was a rare instance i'd be crying due to happiness!

its funny. i didn't have much more information on how i was found due to this field tri[, but now that i'd been to THE place i felt more connected to my origin. isn't it always funny how you can imagine or see pictures of something, it just isn't anywhere near as cool as seeing the real thing, is it?!?

now that he'd done a huge favour for me, it was time i did something for darren back. more to the point something that could help us both out. i was going to pick up where craig and he had left off, and find out more about this francis slate!

there was only one thing. i didn't know how to find lost quarrys... good thing i was with the guy who invented how to look for them!

next: how to find a lost quarry!

a complex story (origins part 2)

(Production Note: Much of the content of this post is fictional, and not actually research Darren Tanke is engaging in. Please take this made up stuff in the spirit it is meant (and not harass or blame Mr. Tanke over OUR artistic license). We will be covering Darren's real research (which the fiction in this post is an exaggeration of) very shortly in the continuation of this storyline. Prehistoric Insanity)

with no obvious point behind the present that has returned me home, i've decided to create a purpose for the trip.

while i currently have access to one of the world's greatest palaeontologic institutions, i'm going to find out everything i can about how my egg was found and hatched.

now, there's a lot of details one can look into about any specific fossil...

• where was it found?


• who found it?


• how did they find it?


• how long until it was dug up?


• who was on the field team that did the digging?


• how long did the dig take?


• how long till the fossil was prepared (that's a fancy word for cleaned off)?


• who did the preparing?


• who studied the fossil?

etc.

and this is only when you don't have a personal stake or connection to the fossil... which in this case i think i would have!

if there was one man at the museum who could help me with these questions, it was technician extraordinaire darren tanke. who thought i was just popping by his nook in the preparation lab to say hi... boy was he in for a surprise. i had like a million questions for him!

after the necessary catch up (like everyone darren was very interested to hear about my new zealand adventures... in particular my encounters with professor paradigm for some reason) i tried to present my current quest in a rational manner... which sadly with my brain capacity, and how excited i was to maybe get some answers wasn't so rational, but darren being the really clever guy he is figured out what i wanted to ask him.

now for those of you who haven't heard of darren tanke, well how to put it? as far as dinosaurs and palaeontology are concerned he is kinda a big deal!

darren started working at the tyrrell musuem a couple years before there technical WAS a museum (the alberta government had decided it was starting it up, but assembled the staff before the building was completed), and is now the longest serving staff member at the museum!

though he technically isn't a true palaeontologist (in that he never got a PHD) i think saying this, even though it is a fact, is kinda insulting. darren publishes more papers and articles a year than 2 or 3 of your average palaeontologists combined! he is an expert on ceratopsians, dinosaur pathology (that's fancy wording for dino injuries and illness), and the history of alberta's palaeontology. on top of that he is among the best of the best when it comes to digging up and/or preparing fossils.

_

it was darren's expertise in the history of alberta's fossil hunting in particular that i thought would help me the most at moment though. darren has made it his mission to try and track down every scientific dig site located in alberta. it helps that he has been on like half of them (well not really, but a lot). however making the job harder for him is that most of the early fossil hunters in the province didn't really record where they dug beyond vague references of general regions.

_

to solve this darren has become a quarry hunter. using clues such as pictures taken of these old digs, garbage left behind, and their old camp sites darren has been tracking down 5-10 of these old dig sites a year. along the way he has become an expert on not only who was working in alberta, but what has been dug up as well!

_

before talking to darren and having him fill in many of the gaps in the story, here is what i knew about my own discovery...

back sometime in the 1946 my mother (pictured here) was found by someone near the town of huxley alberta (about an hour north of drumheller). however due to the extreme nature of the site mommy was found at, they couldn't excavate (that's fancy wording for dug up) her at the time. so she was just left there. it wasn't till the early 80's when the tyrrell museum started active field expeditions that she was finally dug up. a team under the legendary phil currie (including darren!) finally rescued her from millions of years burial...

_

however this is only part of the story. afterall i'm not my mom. she was cleaned off and put up in the museum a good decade before i too was unearthed...

_

i know that my legal guardian craig discovered me by going back to my mom's site, and found my egg just below where she'd been taken out. the thing is though, that's about all i know...

_

i have reason to believe it is a way more interesting story though. my main clue is this old photo. it is labelled as being taken the day before i was found. you'll note not only is craig in the photo, but also my JERK! of a cousin, larry... what larry is doing there i have no clue...

_

this was the key part of the story i was very keen to learn. which i was hoping darren could help me with.

_

"the huxley site," darren seemed off put when i asked him. not by me mind you, rather the site i asked for. "it's just been a while since i actively looked into that one. it's not your normal site that one... just let me get my files on it."

_

darren went to work on his puter, and next thing you know i had all sorts of other facts to flesh out the story of my discovery.

_

to start off with in the museum's records, me and my mom are not known by our names. rather we have special collection numbers assigned to us. these as so that the museum can keep track of us in their huge collections, and scientists can refer to us specially and everyone will know what they mean (though why our names don't work for this purpose i'm not sure??).

_

my mom is TMP 81. 12. 1. which doesn't make a lot of sense if you don't know the tyrrell's numbering system. all museums have different cataloguing systems, but they usually involve numbers.

_

in the tyrrell's case these numbers mean something. TMP stands for tyrrell museum of palaeontology (the museum hadn't gotten the royal retitle when they started their collections so hence the lack of an R on the front). the 81 means mom was dug up in 1981, and this way you know when anything at the museum was dug up immediately. the 12 indicates that huxley was the 12th location the museum dug at, as the museum gives their fossil sites numbers to help keep track of where fossils are found. finally the 1 means mom was the first fossil found at the site.

_

i already knew this, but for you on the innerweb my number is TMP-2003. 12. 7. see if you can figure out what that means?

_

the right answer is i was found in 2003, august. 16 to be precise (my hatching day!) though the number won't tell you that. i was found at the 12th quarry in alberta aka. huxley, and i was the 7th specimen extracted (i was egg 6 out of 10... so as mom was number one, the last of those eggs in the nest was TMP- 2003. 12. 11).

_

next i got all sorts of facts about how mom was dug up. she was fossilized in the layer just below the KT boundary itself!... meaning both of us were literally among the last of the tyrannosaurs ever!...

fun fact this spot in huxley is one of the ONLY sites in all of alberta where the KT boundary is exposed! so it was really lucky we were buried there and not somewhere else...

_

(Production Note: Photo from Royal Tyrrell Museum Finders: A Century of Fossil Hunting in Alberta)

_

in the present, she was exposed halfway up a sheer cliff, and was only noticed due to some broken off chunks that had tumbled to the bottom through erosion. the height and steepness of this cliff proved too much for the limited field crew of mom's discoverer charles mortram sternberg, and she had to be left where they found her.

fortunately she was encased in solid ironstone so erosion was considerable slowed down, meaning mom could be left for quite sometime without too much worry of lose or damage to her skeleton. sternberg recorded this find, and hoped someone would return when the resources and manpower were available.

_

sadly this didn't happen till nearly 45 years later, when in 1981 phil currie of the tyrrell noted the find in sternberg's notes and organized a sizeable dig team. it was an ordeal, as the crew had to dig from the top of the cliff down nearly 30 metres to her skeleton (all this cliff material being called over burden as it was over top of the fossil in question and naturally a burden to remove!).

_

with this rather deep quarry there was constant danger of the cliff collapsing on the dig team, and with the majority of her body safely removed dr. currie reluctantly had to leave mom's head in the side of the hill. his worries proved correct as a few years later the quarry did slump, and had anyone been digging there they'd have been buried along with my mom's head!

_

poor mom though. i don't know what i'd do without my head. fortunately they were able to lend her a cast skull of another t-rex from montana!

_

this ended the clear part of the story, and the transition into the weirder part was marked by darren drawing out an annoyed "right," i looked at him puzzled. he turned to me with a slightly serious face. "remember how i said there were some weird things about huxley? that's because they tie into the commission."

_

"the what?" i asked.

_

"the dominion's palaeontologic commission," darren stated. than he threw a glance to the door, as though to make sure no one was listening in. "the precursor to palaeo central."

_

"you know about palaeo central?!?" i almost yelled in excitement.

_

darren shushed me with his finger. "no i don't know about them," he stated in a rather formal manner. he once again looked to the door, than satisfied no one was listening whispered. "no one knows about them. they officially don't exist, but if you've been working in palaeontology as long as me their activities become pretty obvious."

_

man did i have a ton of questions for darren now, but he refused to answer any of them. "look traumador, i understand if you just learned about them you'll want to know all about the, but trust me you don't really. the more you know the more you could risk compromising them and their operations. the palaeo central initiative is the only sure line of defense fossils have at the moment."

_

despite this slightly downer of a warning, darren winked at me "at the same time you can start to figure out some things about them, the same way i did," darren offered, and reached into one of his filing cabinets.

"i can even give you these without arising too much suspicion," darren assured himself. "as these documents pertain to your discovery."

_

which brought us back on tangent with why i was here. only now it had a hint of super spy excitement. what did my discovery have to do with palaeo central?

_

well it turns out it wasn't a direct link, and didn't have to do with palaeo central of professor paradigm really at all.

rather these documents came from way back in the early days of alberta palaeontology. the 1910's to be exact.

_

that was the time of great fossil hunters seriously prospecting and collecting in the badlands of alberta for fossils (though not the first time, it was just the first big effort to do so). in an era known as the great canadian dinosaur rush. back than teams from new york and ottawa competed (in a friendly manner mind you) to find and collect dinosaurs from the red deer river valley. as the rush is a big topic, my next post will be on it so i can stay on subject here. so stay tuned.

_

that's the general story though. two crews working the badlands, and finding lots of canadian dinosaurs. or at least that's the general official story. my heart started to race as i read on in darren's papers to find out it wasn't the whole story...

_

in the documents a whole new chapter to this era of palaeo history was added. while the famous exploits of the two teams were going on in the public eye, on the fringe there was something more ominous going down. in 1912 the canadian geologic survey detected activities by a third player. an european aristocrat by the name of lord antonin annex.

_

darren was able to track down some letters from the survey to the british colonel office. the letters claimed this annex guy had his own agents working in alberta, who were digging up fossils and than smuggling them back to central europe to his private collect. the survey implored the british to assist them.

_

it was at this point the story ended. well at least in the papers in front of me... "hey what happened next?" i demanded of papers, not darren mind you. i was just annoyed as though i'd only gotten half a book, and it cut out at the best part.

_

darren grinned at me. "officially nothing," he typed something into the computer. "the british colonel office never replied, and these 'accusations' against annex were never proven."

_

"however try and look anything up from this period in the geologic survey's database and," darren explained as he hit a key. instead of access to the database, he got an access denied pop up requesting a user name and password. "kinda funny don't you think. what with this being a public database and all. i never would have found out a thing if i hadn't tracked down those hardcopies. "
_

"here is what happened next in 1912, as best i can put together," darren offered.

_

the colonial office did respond. though they were unable to take direct action against annex or his country due to the growing tensions that would explode into world war 1. however they were able to give the survey the resources it needed to deal with the situation internally. thus was born the dominion's (canada was called the dominion back than) palaeontologic commission.

_

"that sounds just like..." i started to say, meaning to say palaeo central.

_

darren cut me off agreeing with me. "yes, it does doesn't it."

_

darren flipped to what looked like some boring notes in a geologic survey manifest. they weren't boring at all on closer inspection though! they were chronological notes of the palaeontologic commission activities for the years 1912 through 1917...

_

"again, someone went to a lot of trouble to bury or cover up this organization," darren cautioned me. i could just picture professor paradigm with a big vault or something like one, stuffed full of books and paper. "i was just lucky enough to stumble across these summary notes taken by a secretary during a meeting somewhere. they weren't supposed to be taken. i suspect they were written as reminders for a bigger summary."

_

according to the notes, there'd been a secret battle going on in the back ground of the dinosaur rush. as the legitimate fossil hunters scoured the badlands, covertly so were people working for this lord annex. these "annex" agents got away with a lot in the first two years of the dinosaur rush...

_

lord annex had 14 skeletons dug up and smuggled to him (none of which have yet been accounted for). his agents sabotaged the legitimate crew's efforts, tried to play the them off each other, and even on occasion stole their fossils from under their own noses. that is till this palaeontologic commission began operations.

_

suddenly there was a counter-attack against annex's people in the badlands. there were a lot of exploits by the commission, but sadly these were only recorded in darren's book as one sentence summaries. many were very tantalizing, but of course lacking any details. after a couple of minutes the records for july 1914 caught my attention.

_

annex's men had been driven away from what would one day be dinosaur provincial park, and so they moved their operations up north. the society followed him, and this took them to around huxley!

_

"well done," darren smiled when i shoved the page with the reference in his face. "i wondered if you'd find that part."

_

darren handed me an official geologic field report with this photo attached. there was something about the picture that i found funny. i couldn't put my finger on it, but i'm sure i stared at it, as darren asked. "recognize it?"

_

"should i?" i answered with a question not looking up. the picture had me enthralled. i did feel as though it was familiar...

"you tell me," darren responded. "it is where you were born."

i looked up at darren and i'm sure my jaw dropped. that made no sense! how was it there was a photo of people working at my egg site almost a hundred years ago?!?

"remember how i told you a second ago charlie sternberg found this site in 1946. well i know as a matter of a fact that is almost the truth," darren clarified. "charlie did technically find it on his own, but he knew roughly where he should be looking... because of this." darren pointed to the report. "a field report written by member of the commission 32 years earlier."

"i thought you said that the palaeontologic commission was a secret," i challenged. "why would they have put out an official field report?"

_

"not report," darren corrected me. he pulled out the drawer this one had come from to show me it was full of similar documents. "but reports!"

_

"funny you should ask that, traumador," darren continued. "i wondered the same thing. at first it looked as though the geologic survey was trying to publish the findings of, but yet hide, the commission's scientific activities by claiming them as actions of some of sternberg's people (who were the canadian team in the rush)."

_

"wouldn't that ruin a cover up?" i wondered out loud. i would make the worst super spy ever people of the innerweb... i can hardly keep track of what's going on around me right now, that alone around other people. that alone try to picture what WILL happen to all these variables. yet even i knew publishing these field reports would catch someone's attention! as was clear by darren knowing about them...

_

"exactly," darren agreed with me. "in fact in 1918 there was a massive uproar within the geologic survey when these field reports were brought to the administrations’ attention."

_

darren pulled me out another larger photo. it looked like one of the men from the dig picture of my birth site, but i couldn't tell what he looked like. where his face should have been there was a hole.

_

"it turned out these reports had all be filed and published by this man. francis slate. a key agent of the commission, possibly THE key agent! by the time the survey found out what he'd been doing it was too late. too many copies of the reports had been printed and distributed. for them to get all of the copies back they'd have raised immediate attention to their contents. instead they just left them mixed in with the sternberg's reports where they went largely unnoticed for years," darren informed me.

"why would he want them published in the first place?" i asked. "won't that break his cover?"

"i don't know," darren confessed. "it's only one of the many things i'd like to know about this man!"

"if i had to guess, as the reports are only on scientifically important sites, i think he just wanted them to be known by other people," darren informed. "slate seldom ever collected things himself. on occasion he did alert the american and canadian teams to skeletons, but many of his sites were well outside their operating area! if he hadn't recorded these other sites they might have remained unknown forever."

_

"for example he records, though rather cryptically, at your site... the presence of eggshell!" darren pointed to the report. holly smokes! he was right!!! this predated the first official discovery of dinosaur eggs in canada, at devil's coulee, by well over three quarters of a century!

_

"did he get in a lot of trouble?" i hesitantly asked, thinking how much trouble i'd gotten into for when i screwed up. i figured messing up a big conspiracy would lead to way worse punishments.

_
"no," darren said matter of factly. before i could ask he added. "he'd been dead nearly a year before the survey discovered the reports."

_

"slate died at the end of the dinosaur rush. with the withdraw of all the fossil hunters, annex didn't have the same cover he'd enjoyed up till than, and the outbreak of world war one made it difficult to ship to europe anyways. the lord pulled out of canada. due to this the geologic survey shut down the commission. all a few months after slate died." darren said sadly, as though this francis slate was a friend of his.

_

"you okay?" i sympathized.

_

"yes," darren said putting on a fake smile. "i just think it's tragic that the exploits of this man have been deliberately forgotten. in fact his whole life has been wiped out. there are no records of him before 1912," darren pointed to the photo i held in my claws. "there isn't even a good photo of him. any closeups of him have had his face destroyed or distorted on purpose. i'm sure for security purposes back than, but now that just means he is spectre of history."

_

there was a sombre silence between us for a minute. "anyways about 6 years ago i made a real effort to try and find out as much about francis slate as i could. him, and this lord annex, are the biggest unknown players in alberta's palaeontology left. to do this i recruited as much help as i could get to try and find francis' field report sites," darren told me.

_

"among this help was a person and a dinosaur you know. craig and larry," he emphasised.

_

"craig had been helping me with my lost quarry project [post on this ubber soon promise!] for a while. so i gave him your site's field report to check out that week. as for larry i have no idea why he suddenly took interest in field work, but when he heard we were checking around huxley he insisted that he was coming to help. i needed all the help i could get, and i wasn't not arguing with a fully grown tyrannosaur," darren levelled with me. "so we all went our seperate ways in the morning, and by the end of the day next thing i knew craig came back to field camp with 9 field jacketed eggs, and you hatched and wrapped up in his hoodie."

if a tyrannosaur could cry i would have shed a tear there. fortunately for me we don't actually cry tears... though due to my hanging around humans i have picked up some of your emotional expressions, and i gave away my vulnerability by sniffling.

_

trying to change subjects to distract from my emotional moment i asked. "did you find out anything more about slate?"

"nope," darren said slightly resigned. "you and this drawer hold everything i was ever able to find out about francis slate. i gave up a few years ago, and am sticking with lost quarries that won't led to dead ends," with that he took back the papers from me, and put them back into the drawer which i than noticed he had double locking on.

_

well i had a few more answers about where i came from. at the same time i had some way bigger questions too. i was not feeling too chipper, as darren started to plug away at his puter.

_

i took this as my cue to leave. just as i was about to head out the door from behind me darren offered. "i have a free morning tomorrow," he had loaded a map onto the screen. "would you like to go see the site?" which i pointed to...

would i!?!?!

before you knew it i saying thank you over and over again, while shaking his hand so hard his voice came out funny when he asked me to stop.

it was set! tomorrow i'd have the master of finding lost dig sites take me to where i was dug up! though i knew in the small logic part of my head it won't answer all my questions, i still felt like tomorrow i'd finally know where i came from...

to be continued... where it ALL began!

(Production Note: Much of this post is fictional. References to Traumador's egg, the Palaeotolgic Commission, and Francis Slate are not real. Information on the Huxley Tyrannosaur IS factual though, and based on real events. The only fiction around this Tyrannosaur's history is Francis Slate's involvement with its discovery. In reality it WAS discovered by Charlie Sternberg in 1946 and dug up as described.)

a damage bench mark (the visitor part 9) (enemy! part 4)

only a few more days before my cousin larry has to head off to his audition with peter jackson elsewhere in new zealand. though i have to say initially larry's unannounced visit produced nothing but trouble, the last couple days i've been finding him far less of a JERK! and almost tolerable.

he still is a bit of an egotist, human hater, and general condescending to me, but compared to times past (especially when i bumped into him in vancouver) he is much more agreeable than i recall him ever being...

that having been said there are a large number of outstanding questions larry still hasn't answered since he arrived:

• why is he visiting me period (or as they call it here in new zealand full stop!)?
  

• when was he in drumheller visiting everyone at the royal tyrrell museum (my old home)?
  

• why was he even at the tyrrell (he hates museums)?
  

• how did he find out i was in new zealand in the first place (only 3 people know i'm down here!)?


• what movie is he auditioning for with peter jackson?

i was determined that today i was going to get the answer to at least one of these questions!


as we walked home from my current workplace the otago Museum (which we had just been exploring) i decided that the tyrrell was the easiest of these to pursue.

as larry and i entered the botanic garden (my current home) we'd entered into a comfortable silence walking. which to be honest is a little weird. normally in the past me and larry would have nothing but very UNcomfortable silences. if we weren't arguing about something...

i decided to risk this quiet truce. "larry could i ask you about the tyrrell?" i ventured as politely and casually as i could.

larry delayed... it was almost as if he were deciding whether it'd be better of him to answer or not... "of course cousin," he answered after a clear deliberation in his head.

alright we were in business i thought! "when were you there," i eagerly asked. i hadn't been at the tyrrell since x-mas last year...

"i popped into drumheller for a visit with my mom {known to most humans as black beauty the tyrannosaur} in july," larry answered.

that made sense. though larry has never been a fan of the confinement of museums he is something of a family dinosaur, and he did have a habit of visiting his mom at least once a year. that was the majority of the times i'd seen him actually in my life come to think of it.

"how is aunt black beauty?" i asked. i'd always gotten along fine with larry's mother (and my mom's sister).

"she is very well," larry responded smugly. "they finished some big renovations at the museum earlier this year, and my mother's display area was majorly upgraded."

the renovations weren't completely news to me. i'd seen the beginning of them back during my attempt to return to drumheller last year. aunt black beauty's area was majorly torn up at that point, but i had no idea it had been completed...

"that's great news," i acknowledged. it was good to hear that at least one of the tyrannosaurs at the museum was doing well. there was another i cared about far more though. "and how is... my mother?"

though i'm not sure he wished to express it, but larry's body language made it as though he had the satisfaction of making a kill during a hunt when i asked this question. an odd description i know, but i know my tyrannosaur body language (at least compared to a most humans!).

"she misses you traumador," he stated coldly. "and she was most distraught learning you'd moved this far away from her."

that cut a little deep. for a moment i was silenced by guilt. "is she really mad at me?" i ventured.

"saddened i'd say rather than mad. you know how perpetually melancholy skeletal dinosaurs are," larry corrected me.

it was true. fossilized dinosaurs being not truly alive were more an emotional imprint of their former selves, and as they are still aware that they've lost their bodies and minds tend to be sad about it...

guilt still numbed my head a bit. "other than my making her sad," i gulped. "is she doing okay?"

"yes," larry simply answered. "she would very much like for you to return to somewhere near drumheller though."

returning to north america really wasn't an option right now. i didn't have the money for it (i'd had to smuggle myself into new zealand as was the first time), and more to the point i'd be returning to the old problem of too many dinosaurs there that i had already fled.

desperate to change subject. "what about lillian?" i asked. lillian was one subject that already made me feel a little better. she's so dreamy..."she didn't happen to mention me did she?"

larry's posture once again showed he felt satisfaction like a kill, but his voice was somewhat angry and resentful. "lillian no longer works at the royal tyrrell museum. serves the absconder right."

"WHAT?!?" i thought out loud. i was unable to believe my ears!

lillian had been the museum's mascot for years! their star attraction... why in a million years would they get rid of such a magnificent specimen... (especially considering that curvy tail, those recurved talons, perfect teeth, and the body of a goddess... excuse me people of the innerweb i need to find a drool collecting bucket for a second)

i'd heard rumours before i was fired, that lillian might be leaving the museum. in fact it was my telling her about those rumours that ruined my asking her out way back in yesteryear.

and what did larry mean by absconder? what was lillian absconding from?

"yes the museum was," larry paused. for some reason he was considering he's wording carefully for some reason, and it wasn't to shield my feelings for lillian. "the museum was persuaded to consider more 'cooperative' albertosaurs to represent them to the public. lillian was too head strong and self-absorbed."

funny wording coming from larry. "self-absorbed" ha... i'd still say larry takes the cake for that one over lillian. though to be fair lillian was sort of a matriarch... oh sorry that is the tyrannosaur way of saying "princess" or spoiled girl. in a t-rex pack the alpha females (or royalty) are matriarchs.

"wait a minute you're saying the museum hired new albertosaurs to replace her? why would they do that?" i asked in disbelief. wait a second. though i didn't know it at the time i'd met her replacements... during my return to the museum i'd run into a very aggressive and rude pack of albertosaurs in the lobby. those must have been them. where else was the museum going to get a pack of living albertosaurs on short notice?

i pushed further confused by a part of larry's answer. "who persuaded the museum? not lillian?"

"the pack," larry instinctively whispered in a droning voice. i know he didn't mean to answer that because he snapped his head about and his voice became very calculated. "an outside party to the museum that very much has important dinosaurs interests at heart. something museums tend not to take into account."

"what outside party?" i demanded. "i've spent my whole life around museums. dinosaur heavy ones at that, and i'd never heard of such a group helping dinosaurs out."

"you're young still cousin," larry condescendingly replied. "you were never made aware of it's existence because you had not yet come of age. i can see you have many questions about this. which is good. it is why i have come to visit you."

finally larry was going to answer my biggest question. why was he here to see me at all!

that is he would have... had we not be drastically interrupted!!!

unbeknownst to us while we had entered the botanic garden we had been watched... no watched isn't the wrong word... we were being hunted...

we tyrannosaurs don't have the best bewaring instincts. in the cretaceous as the top predators of our environments (minus around water... we still had to be careful of giant crocodiles) we had little to fear... of course with the extinction everything's changed except our ancient instincts... humans can be very much an equal top predator to us... only more cunning and sneaky!

one of larry's actions in new zealand had angered a particularly dangerous human into action...

the germ-man had set out to lay a trap for me and larry in retaliation for larry's terrifying him the other day...

earlier in the day the germ-man had devised the most ironic of revenges. during the flood dunedin had a little while ago i'd tried to make up to the germ-man for eating his favourite dish by giving him some bananas.

"let us see lizard," he jokingly said to himself. "you ate one schnitzel, but gave me 5 bananas in return. i'd say that is one too many. i shall have to give it back to you."

only the germ-man could have devised a way to use a banana against us...

for you see once you've eaten a banana you're left with a peel... something i'd never have thought of. partially because i don't eat fruit under any circumstances (they make me literally sick in my predatory stomach), and also i never would contemplate turning food into a weapon.

we were about to learn one of the diabolical uses for fruit.

the germ-man had prowled the botanic garden all day waiting for us to pass by. in a different life he would have made an excellent tyrannosaur. patiently and contently stalking his quarry. savouring the anticipation of the perfect moment to strike...

the only problem with this is that we tyrannosaurs WERE the quarry! in that different life it would have been some poor ornithischian who'd have to worry. not us...

it just so happened that the perfect moment for the germ-man to strike was right as larry prepared to tell me his true reasons for coming to see me...

the germ-man of course had no perception of the ill timing of his attack. nor would he have cared. in fact knowing him he probably would have been twice as happy...

throwing his banana peel carefully into position the trap was set.

doesn't look like much does it. to be frank it isn't really...

unless you put 6 tonnes of weight balanced solely on one leg on top of it...

in which case something very much like this would happen...

i wasn't sure which was louder... larry completely destroying one of the benches of bench hill or the bellow of pain larry emitted when he hit...

needless to say it was just a lucky thing that no one had been sitting on bench hill... just imagine that same 6 tonnes needed for this equation to work in the first place running over a person!?!

larry though not seriously hurt fortunantly (we t-rexs are made tough) was somewhat stunned and disoriented after his tumble. certainly in no shape or condition to finish our conversation.

he staggered off with a minor limp to his clearing to rest off the minor injuries he'd recieved from the fall.

the germ-man who'd gone unnoticed simply enjoyed the whole incident unfold from his hiding place.

"wunderbar," he laughed. "those stupid lizards will never suspect, with their brains, that are tiny and small that this was my doing."

"if only there were some way i could share this most joyous of spectacles with others," he mused.

"ah but of course!" something in his wicked mind schemed. "with but one call, on my phone... oh my lizard friends i have only begun with you."

the germ-man cackled to himself as he ran off to enact his new plan... one that would have HUGE implications...

meanwhile i had implications from the germ-mans first stunt as was. my landlord ben the gardener was furious to say the least as the destruction of two of the benches on bench hill among other things. i got a call from him within 15 minutes of larry's falling, and him demanding to see me at the garden's cafe/information centre.

"do you have any idea how much those benches cost traumador?!?" he demanded and exclaimed at the same time. "what if someone had been sitting on them!?!"

"no idea, and they'd have been squished," i answered glummly.

"when i agreed to let your cousin to stay here you promised that nothing drastic would happen!" ben challenged.

"problems actually," i corrected. ben's face got really angry looking (in human body language... a lot different than t-rex... just pointing out i can read both species body language... can get confusing for me sometimes). so i quickly added. "but i can see this being a bit of a problem."

" 'a bit of a problem'. that's the understatement of the month," ben grumbled.

"traumador, do you have any idea how hard it is for me right now not to just chuck the two of you out of my garden?" ben pleaded.

"probably pretty hard," i tried to reassure him. i had to get him on my side right now!

"seriously though ben i swear it was an accident." i had no idea about the germ-mans involvement... yet... "larry just tripped. it'd be like kicking out all the little kids who fall over in the gardens and squish grass in the garden every day..."

"it's not that simple traumador," ben frustratedly responded. he was trying to be nice, but the 'gravity' of the situation was 'weighting' him down (i'm trying to 'lighten' this part of the story... get it ;p ). "even if i ignore the fact that the next time your cousin trips he could hurt or kill someone. i still have two demolished expensive benches to replace!"

than an idea popped into my peanut sized brain! "okay the benches i can help you with," i offered. "we'll replace them."

"on a security guards salary?" ben was skeptical.

"no a hollywood star's," i rebuttaled. "larry's the richest dinosaur actor in history. he can totally afford two new benches."

ben stood thinking about it.

"please," i pleaded. "it takes care of the problem he caused, and he didn't mean it. you should see the bruises and cuts on his back from the tumble. larry didn't do it intentionally."

than ben's face lightened back to close to his normal chipper happy self. "alright. so long as i have the money by tomorrow," he paused. "and tell your cousin not to trip anymore in the gardens! anywhere else, but if it's here i'll have to kick you two out traum."

great. so i now had to not only keep larry from being larry, but i had to prevent chance circumstances too!

that and now i had to tell larry i needed more money from him...

and i didn't get the answer to my question about why larry is here...

worse of all the germ-man had one more huge surprise in store for us!

to be continued...