“Right,” Baselton said.
“Okay,” King said. “What kind of dinosaurs are these?”
“I have no fucking idea,” Dodgson said, climbing out of the car. “And it doesn’t make any difference. Just follow the procedure.” He closed the door softly.
The others got out quietly, and they started forward, down the wet trail. Their feet squished in the mud. The sound from the clearing continued. To Dodgson, it sounded like a lot of animals.
He pushed aside the last of the ferns and saw them.
It was a large nesting site, with perhaps four or five low earthen mounds, covered in grasses. The mounds were about seven feet wide, and three feet deep. There were twenty beige-colored adults around the mounds-a whole herd of dinosaurs, surrounding the nesting site. And the adults were big, thirty feet long and ten feet high, all honking and snorting,
“Oh, my God,” Baselton said, staring.
Dodgson shook his head. “They’re maiasaurs , he whispered. “This is going to be a piece of cake.”
Maiasaurs had been named by paleontologist Jack Horner. Before Horner, scientists assumed that dinosaurs abandoned their eggs, as most reptiles did. Those assumptions fitted the old picture of dinosaurs as cold-blooded, reptilian creatures, Like reptiles, they were thought to be solitary; murals on museum walls rarely showed more than one example from each species – a brontosaurus here, a stegosaurus or a triceratops there, wading through the swamps. But Horner’s excavations in the badlands of Montana provided clear, unambiguous evidence that at least one species of hadrosaurs had engaged in complex nesting and parenting behavior. Horner incorporated that behavior in the name he gave these creatures: maiasaur meant “good-mother lizard.”
Watching them now, Dodgson could see the maiasaurs were indeed attentive parents, the big adults circling the nests, moving carefully to step outside the shallow earthen mounds. The beige maiasaurs were duck-billed dinosaurs; they had large heads that ended in a broad, flattened snout, rather like the bill of a duck.
They were taking mouthfuls of grass, and dropping it on the eggs in the mounds. This was, he knew, a way to regulate the temperature of the eggs. If the huge animals sat on the eggs, they would crush them. So instead they put a layer of grass over the eggs, which trapped heat and kept the eggs at a more constant temperature. The animals worked steadily.
“They’re huge,” Baselton said.
“They’re nothing but oversized cows,” Dodgson said. Although the maiasaurs were large, they were plant-eaters, and they had the docile, slightly stupid manner of cows. “Ready? Here we go.”
He lifted the box like a gun, and stepped forward, into view.
Dodgson expected a big reaction when the maiasaurs saw him, but there was none at all. They hardly seemed to notice him. One or two adults looked over, stared with dumb eyes, and then looked away. The animals continued to drop grass on the eggs, which were pale white, oval, and nearly two feet long. Each was about twice the size of an ostrich egg. About the size of a small beach ball. No animals had hatched yet.
King and Baselton stepped out, and stood beside him in the clearing. Still the maiasaurs ignored them.
“Amazing,” Baselton said.
“Fine for us,” Dodgson said. And he turned on the box.
A continuous, high-pitched shriek filled the clearing. The maiasaurs immediately turned toward the sound, honking and lifting their heads. They seemed agitated, confused. Dodgson twisted the dial, and the shriek became higher, ear-splitting.
The maiasaurs bobbed their heads, and moved away from the painful sound. They clustered at the far end of the clearing. Several of the animals urinated in alarm. A few of them moved away into the folliage, abandoning the nest. They were agitated, but they stayed away.
“Go now,” Dodgson said.
King stepped into the nearest nest, and grunted as he picked up an egg. His arms hardly reached around the huge oval. The maiasaurs honked at him, but none of the ‘ adults moved forward. Then Baselton went into the nest, took an egg, and followed King back to the car.
Dodgson walked backward, holding the box on the adults. At the edge of the clearing, he turned the sound off.