Old Earth (10 page)

McCauley stopped again and let the thought truly sink in.

“Remember,” he continued, “there’s still so much to learn about our planet. Just a few years ago, the world’s longest canyon was discovered below two miles of ice in Greenland. It’s been there for some four million years but invisible until ice-penetrating radar hit it during airplane flyovers. It’s still buried under two miles of ice, but we now know it’s twice as long and twice as wide as the Grand Canyon even though it can’t be explored.”

“The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” Cohen said.

“Absolutely,” McCauley proclaimed. His lesson had penetrated. “And since we’re here to dig for evidence, I think it’s time to call it a night. We start tomorrow.”

• • •

McCauley was looking over the last embers of the campfire when he heard footsteps and someone call his name.

“Dr. McCauley?”

“That’s me.”

“Hi, I’m Jim Kaplan. I look over this place.”

“Mr. Kaplan, great to meet you. I’ve heard all about you. Thanks for coming by.”

“We’re going to get along famously if you call me by the name my golfing buddies do. It’s Kappy.”

This made the Yale professor very happy. “Kappy it is. And I’m Quinn.”

“Like ‘The Mighty Quinn?’”

“Not so mighty, and certainly not an Eskimo, but you know your music.”

“Manfred Mann. 1968.” Kappy laughed. “It comes from years listening to Cousin Brucie on SiriusXM.”

“We’re definitely going to get along, Kappy. How about saying hello to my team, then we can knock down a scotch in my tent.”

• • •

That night they talked dinosaurs and music. Kappy gave McCauley a primer on the park. The teacher had read much of it, but hearing about the geological history from someone filled with such passion reinforced McCauley’s decision to come to Makoshika.

“We’re the largest state park in Montana. More than 11,500 acres. I challenge you to find a better ancient burial ground. They call it badlands. I think we should be promoting the park as the world’s great lands.”

“I like the ring of that,” McCauley said. He offered up his half-filled plastic cup with a wonderful twelve-year-old Glenlivet Scotch. Kappy met his toast. They laughed at the dull thud the cups made.

“Did you know there are a number of stories about the origin of the toast?” McCauley asked.

“Oh?”

“Yes. The first is owed to the Greek gods. As they drank their wine or other fermented delights they could appreciate the brilliant color by holding it up to a candle or the sun, which they controlled. They could take in the most pleasing of aromas. The could touch the velvety liquid and they could savor the flavors as they drank to their hearts’ content. But there was nothing for the ear, so… .”

“Ping!” Kappy concluded. “They clinked their glasses.”

“So the mythology goes.”

“The other story?”

“Well, from Greece to Rome. The priests also enjoyed their libations. But it was not always considered in the best of form. So, they created a good reason to justify their more serious drinking. They told parishioners that by bringing their glasses together and creating the distinctive, high-pitched musical tone, the devil would be chased away. What better justification to get drunk than to scare off the devil?”

“Gotta love it. Yes, seems the Church has always been able to invent parables to explain away a great deal of things.”

“I suppose that’s what makes history so interesting,” McCauley said. He spoke from his comfort zone. His undergraduate degree was history with an emphasis on the world since 1914. Ironically, paleontology—even earlier history—came to him later.

“I like to believe it also makes for more enlightenment, not less. Out here, it’s Native American culture that leads to a certain open-mindedness,” Kappy commented. “You’ll hear your fair share of stories the more time you spend in the badlands. They had a way of seeing and interpreting things spiritually and quite naturally.”

“What would you recommend?”

“Look up, look down, look everywhere. You’re going to want to take your team along Kinney Coulee Trail, about four miles south of the entrance. The terrain’s rougher than the basic loops, but the rock formations are amazing. You’ve been to Bryce Canyon?”

“Sure have.”

“Well, we’ve got examples of similar windblown formations in isolation: sculptured spiral statues painted in earth’s most lively colors. Positively beautiful.”

“There’s a half-mile loop off the Cap Rock Nature Trail. The walk is one of my favorites. It begins on Cains Coulee Road. You’ll catch great views of our natural rock bridge. The formation still astounds me. Also, take Diane Gabriel Trail up the line a bit. It loops through a prairie section. About midway you’ll see a duck-billed dinosaur fossil embedded in a cliff. It’s a real crowd pleaser.”

“I’ve seen pictures,” McCauley replied.

“Nothing compared to the real thing. But all you’ll really need to do is stand anywhere in the park and turn 360. The topography changes everywhere you look. Microclimates and ancient water sources have carved out the most unbelievable landscapes, a feast for artists’ and photographers’ eyes. Pure gold for us. You’ll feel a solitude that’s indescribable.”

“The Lakota used to put their ears to the ground, listening for the footsteps of their direct ancestors and even those who came before them. It’s all legend, of course, but who’s to really say? There’s so much we don’t understand.”

“That’s why we’ve come to your backyard, Kappy.” He raised his cup for another thud. “We’re going to a have a great time and you’re welcome to join us whenever you’d like. But let’s get something equally important on the books.”

“Oh?”

“I’ve come equipped and we need to set a date.”

He walked to the end of his tent and lifted a black tarp that had covered a shipping skid. In addition to backpacks, canned food, digging tools and rain gear, Kappy saw McCauley’s prize possession: his Callaway golf clubs, bought used on eBay.

“When do we play?” he asked.

Fifteen

MAKOSHIKA STATE PARK, MT
THREE WEEKS INTO THE DIG

The simple truth was that the process hadn’t changed since the time of Cope and Marsh or even years earlier. You had to dig. The treasures were usually lower. Exhaustingly lower. Depressingly lower. Sometimes unforgivably lower. And, as McCauley had pointed out, no matter how far you dug, you had to be in the right place. Modern equipment made some searching easier, but luck still played a heavy hand.

It was a percentages game. For most people in the field, it was completely and utterly a game of failure. You were simply a few feet off. You stopped too soon. The weather was too hot or too cold to go on. Your support staff gave up. You lost your funding. Your bones ached. You grew too old to continue…or to care. However, there were still extraordinary things to uncover.

“The earth has all the time in the world,” McCauley explained. “We don’t have such luxury. So gang, get your backs into it more.”

It was hot, and work was tedious, exactly what Dr. Quinn McCauley had promised. He’d chosen a spot nearly two miles off the beaten path, far from the park entrance where the tourists stopped to gaze at the famed dinosaur cemetery and well beyond the main road that led up to Makoshika State Park. With the exception of jet contrails during the day and satellites sweeping past in the night sky, contemporary time hardly existed. It was the perfect environment to explore the past.

• • •

Well into their first week, the students were enthusiastic and already an effective team. McCauley’s prompting helped shape their camaraderie, but each wanted to be the first to find something really noteworthy.

The closest layers bore sloths and horses. The mammoths were deeper. Then the dinosaurs. There was evidence of the ancient ocean with shells literally photographed in time by sediment and silt.

“Fossilization is Mother Earth’s three-dimensional photographic record,” he casually noted around one of the evening campfires. “You surely have the picture. Some animals sank into mud and sand after their death. If scavengers didn’t immediately raid the carcasses, layers of sediment eventually covered the remains. Under the right combination of heat, pressure, chemical reactions and time, the harder parts of the creatures—bones and teeth—
could
become fossils. But it was far from automatic.”

His students knew this to a great extent, but the rest was a powerful lesson.

“Most animals never fossilized. They just decayed; disappeared from earth’s record and, the missing fossil record, forever lost, is far, far larger than the remaining, existing fossil record waiting to be found. That in itself is staggering. What we will
never
know is greater than what we will
ever
find.”

“Be patient gang,” McCauley implored through the second and third weeks. “You’re in one of the richest dinosaur graveyards in the world, but only a small percentage of the genera that ever lived makes it to the scrapbook. For paleontologists, it’s like randomly spinning the tumblers of a giant safe. Most of the time they don’t click. But, when all the numbers fall into place, the door can open to untold treasures…or another vault.”

Not that McCauley had ever found the combination to anything really remarkable himself.

• • •

“Hey, Dr. McCauley, your TA, Pete, is on your phone,” yelled Rich Tamburro from the base camp tent.

McCauley had left his cell there while barbequing the team’s chicken dinner. By the time Tamburro brought him the cell, the line was dead. Service in the park was spotty. Not surprisingly McCauley couldn’t get DeMeo back.

“No go?” Tamburro asked.

“Nope. Probably checking to see if there’s anything to report.”
Nothing major so far
, he thought.

The students might disagree. Tamburro and his digging partner Anna Chohany uncovered Triceratops fossils. Lobel and Cohen worked a nearby gully and came up with evidence of an Edmontosaurus. Rodriguez, Trent and Jaffe working together found dinosaur gizzard stones. These were smooth, egg-sized rocks which looked like they had been polished by a tumbler. But the process that resulted in the glass-like quality was actually something quite natural and amazing: the dinosaurs’ own digestive system. They’d used stones to grind up food in their gizzards. Of course, the finds would have to be confirmed. However, each discovery prompted McCauley to push his students further.

Over dinner he did just that

“You want to make history, you have to beat history,” he said. “It’s full of tricks. Keep reading the rocks; the slope of the strata. Feel the winds and the directions they blow. Look for signs of streams and where they could have made twists and turns through the ages. Follow the leads. And work harder.”

These were important lessons. Wind and water erosion constantly changed the landscape, reshaping the cap rocks, sandstone knobs and freshwater shale. Scrubs, grasses and more than one hundred forty species of wildflowers conspired with the land to mask clues. Pine and juniper roots dug into the earth and spread in all directions creating more barriers to exploration.

• • •

THE NEXT DAY

“Finally,” McCauley proclaimed when he reconnected with his teaching assistant.

“Hi, boss. How’s it going?”

“Pretty well. They’re all engaged. How are your travels?”

“Good. Taking trains some of the time. Renting motorcycles occasionally. Meeting cool people.”

“Cool or hot?”

He laughed. “So far they’re cool and, well, some of them cold. But I’m having a great time anyway,” DeMeo said honestly. “Think you’ll come up with anything?”

McCauley turned his back on his students. “I can only hope. But I’m already thinking about moving to a new area. We could use some bigger challenges.”

“Like what?”

“Still looking around. There are some formations down the valley that might be interesting. Remember last year in South Dakota?”

“Oh yeah,” Pete DeMeo recalled. Careful excavation of sandstone revealed some interesting finds for the students. They weren’t worthy of a scholastic journal account, but it led to a rewarding summer program.

“Well, that’s what I’m hoping for.”

“Good luck, boss.”

“Thanks.”

“You still have my itinerary?”

“Yup, somewhere.”

“Well if you find it, don’t call. Oh, and did you get a text about your visitor?”

“No, who?” McCauley asked.

“Someone from Cambridge. The department wrote me maybe thinking I was with you.”

“Cambridge, Massachusetts—Harvard?” McCauley asked.

“The other Cambridge. The original one. Cambridge University. University of Cambridge. However they say it.”

“Fuck.” McCauley knew what that meant.

“The department
invited
someone on your behalf…”

“To spy.”

“They call it an evaluation,” DeMeo offered.

“Same difference. Bureaucratic shit.”

“I’m sorry. I wish I could have…”

“It’s not you, Pete. I wish they’d just leave me alone.” McCauley swore to himself. “Well, who do I have the pleasure of babysitting and for how long?”

“Just have a last name. Alpert. Some Brit. And at least five days.”

“Five days too many. Starting when?”

“What’s today?” DeMeo asked.

“Tuesday.”

“Tomorrow. Maybe sooner.”

“Oh shit! I’m going to call the chair and make his vacation miserable!”

“Wouldn’t do that. I think they held off sending word until the last minute.”

“Intentionally.”

“You think?” It was a sarcastic comment for certain. “Suck it up. Before you know it, it’ll be over. You’ll be fine.”

“I won’t be fine. I’m taking off for golf this afternoon at Cottonwood with the park director. After that I promised myself a nice hot bath in town, not a soaking from the department.” McCauley was truly frustrated.

“Like I said, suck it up and play nice.”

“Easy for you to say. While you’re exposing yourself to every beauty in Europe, I’ll be under some bloody academic’s microscope.”

“Be a good boy. And like I said, do me a favor, don’t call. I might get lucky yet with some French or Italian babe who wants to try on an American for size. Consider me out of cellphone range for the next month.”