Bone Hunter Read Online Free PDF Page B

the unusual.
    This is perhaps the place where I should emphasize this fact about paleontologists, so you will understand exactly how naked I felt. Half of them begin as geologists and half as biologists, but the point where they meet is in decoding evolution, and the study of evolution is all about spotting trends and divergences from those trends. And here I was a rank newcomer with a bandaged thumb, grass stains, and the hideous luck of having slept at a dead man’s house. They observed me clinically, watching to see what I would do and what would happen to me next. I couldn’t help but wonder if they had me pegged as an endangered species.
    Grimly determined to look like the innocent bystander I was, I shifted my shoulders in line with the crowd and did some scanning of my own, recognizing some faces from television specials on dinosaurs, some names from the registration packet, others from the spines of my old geology textbooks. This was a gathering of the elite among vertebrate paleontologists, a rare, intense festival of note swapping and antenna touching among scientists, persons who as a class spent the grand bulk of their time working—by preference—in solitude. A moment ago, the atmosphere had been jolly and convivial; now, it was electric and edgy.
    I noticed the scent of pine and turned to find out where it was coming from. Earthworm Magritte was standing about five feet to my left, staring at me with frank interest. He had his thick hands spread out on his sturdy hips.
    “What’s the Golden Jawbone Award?” I asked.
    “It’s the booby prize,” he answered. “A bronze cast of the holotype of Allosaurus fragilis’s left mandible, mounted on a
walnut plaque. We hold a kegger each year and give it to the guy who claims the most from the least evidence. They make a speech and gas away all they want while their audience gets stone-cold drunk. George won it the last three years running.”
    “How charming. Just the thing I want for my ego wall. I’d put it right next to my diploma.”
    Magritte recorded my quip without smiling. “You ought to see George’s ego wall. Or I guess you have. He took the jaw off the plaque two years ago and started carrying it to meetings, kind of brandishing the thing like a scepter. The king of fools.”
    “Is that how you see yourselves?”
    Magritte ignored my question. “He’d have it sticking out of his back pack on field trips to let the new recruits know he was the George Dishey. A real wise guy, our George.”
    “So he thrived on being called a bullshitter.”
    Magritte pushed at his glasses again. “In yo’ face—his favorite place to be.”
    Officer Raymond reappeared at my side. “Who’s that guy?” he asked, gesturing toward an elderly man with an aquiline nose. “And that woman, and—”
    I glanced back at Magritte. He had vanished. To Officer Raymond, I said, “One at a time. The nose is a famous Brit. Analyzes dinosaur tracks; you’ve seen him running down beaches on TV, prattling about the rate at which the big leaf-eaters could trot. Don’t know the woman.” She was petite and sharklike, with a sharp nose and fashion glasses. She was doing the same thing I was, looking from person to person to gauge reactions, her jaws rhythmically working at a wad of gum. “That guy,” I said, acknowledging the next person Raymond nodded toward, “is Jack Horner, out of Montana. He’s a MacArthur fellow. You know, the genius award. Crichton modeled the paleontologist in Jurassic Park after him. The guy next to him is Dave Gillette, another biggie; he did the Seismosaurus
dig. That next guy I don’t know. Probably studies fossil shrews or something unsexy like that.”
    Raymond gave me a sharp look.
    “Big vertebrates are where it’s at in paleontology if you want to catch the public’s interest,” I said, the wild nervousness of the moment loosening my tongue. “I don’t know much about bones, never been to a meeting like this before, but just