Paradeisia: Origin of Paradise Read Online Free PDF Page B

temperatures on a dig was not ideal, but, in Doctor Ming-Zhen's mind, anything that drove others away served to save more fossils for him and his teams.
    They had so far exposed two twelve-foot skeletal forearms.  The expectancy of his fledgling team was palpable.  Veteran that he was, even he had some trouble containing his anticipation.  Such a find was extraordinary even if the arms were not attached to anything.
    One handsome member of the team, named Chao, was “studying” to be a paleoanthropologist [1] , though from what Doctor Ming-Zhen had seen he had not exhibited any discipline, spending his time at the Academy in revelry and womanizing.  His wealthy parents had paved the way to his success with golden bricks, paying for a lavish lifestyle at the Academy and bankrolling any project he undertook there, notwithstanding this dig in the Gobi (which is why Doctor Ming-Zhen allowed his participation despite personal disapproval).
    Since the moment they had arrived, Chao had treated Doctor Ming-Zhen more like an employee than an esteemed professor.  Now, with a tone of authority, he asked, “Are you able to identify the dinosaur from these bones, Ming-Zhen jiàoshòu ?”  (Jiàoshòu was the term of respect Doctor Ming-Zhen's students used when addressing him .  Chao spit it out like a sour grape.)
    Doctor Ming-Zhen arose from his crouched position and asked the rest of the team, “Is anyone ready to venture an identification?”
    His team squirmed.  He repeated, “Anyone?”
    A young woman on her knees grasping a dental pick looked up.  She speculated, “Well, tarbosaurus was discovered in this area, but these arms have three fingers, so we know it is not a tyrannosaurid like that.”
    Doctor Ming-Zhen nodded with approval, “Very good, Jia Ling.”  Of all the students he had ever guided, she had been his most promising; not because she was necessarily smarter than any of the others, but because she had shown the most patience.  Probably the best example of this was her endless dedication to the hunks of earth they brought back after the excitement of digging them up was over.
    Whenever possible on a dig, a fossil was removed by crane as part of the sediment in which it was contained—as a giant, multi-ton chunk of plastered earth.  Loaded onto a huge truck, it was carried to a museum or other facility where the sediment was meticulously drilled, chipped, and brushed away until the fossil was fully exposed and analyzed.  This process often took months or even years of exhausting, tedious labor.
    For Jia Ling, though, it was the thrill of the hunt.  Long after all the other students had bored of this mind-numbing work, she would work long into the nights, picking away endlessly under hot overhead lamps.
    As a result of her tenacity, she had once discovered a cluster of eggs within a six by six rock that they had thought only to contain a fossilized adult.  These eggs had revealed several interesting aspects of behavior: among them that the dinosaur had carefully laid its eggs in a spiral, and that the young would be born with fully functional claws and teeth, quite ready to kill.
    Doctor Ming-Zhen rewarded her dedication by taking her under his wing and devoting special attention to her welfare at the Academy.  She came from a poor family and her father had died in a construction accident when she was young, so she had no money to visit her mother in distant Chengdu (a metropolis of twenty million in southwestern China).  At Doctor Ming-Zhen's invitation, she frequently spent evenings at his home with his wife and infant daughter.  They had become very close.
    So close, in fact, that Jia Ling was a second daughter to him in everything but law.
     
    “Could it be a carcharodontosaurid ?” another student asked.
    Jia Ling said, “No, these arms are too long.”
    The other student shot back defensively, “There isn't a fossil of carcharodontosauridae with arms, so how would you know?”
    Jia