One of the Pest Control officers darted in with a coil of rope and risked hands in order to rope the sharp beak shut. A twist of the pterosaur’s neck lifted him off the floor and sent him flying, but the ropes around its beak held. The tiny crimson eye rolled murderously; then, slowly, that wicked little eye began to close. By the time the tranquilizers had taken effect, Kit was bruised and battered, but La-La Land had quite a zoological prize.
”Good work,” Bull said, panting slightly. “What’re those?”
He pointed toward the ceiling.
Sue Fritchey was studying the smaller winged figures perched now amongst the rafters-through her field glasses. “Those over there are Ichthyornis, looks like. Little primitive birds, beak full of teeth, about the size of a seagull. Fish eaters. They’d be about the right time period and ecosystem to come through with a sternbergi. Must be twenty of ’em up there. And over there,” she swung the glasses around, “we’ve got about fifteen little pterosaurs the size of crows. Hell, I have no idea what those are. Those, either.” She’d swung the glasses around toward a pair sitting by themselves near the rafters. “They look like predators of some sort, but I’m not sure. Could be fish eaters, but the beaks look wrong. Far as I know, there’s nothing in the fossil record anything like what I’m seeing.”
”Are there enough of any of those things for a breeding colony?” Bull asked sharply
”Maybe. Those two by themselves, probably not. Those pterosaurs, though, and the ichthyornis flock… Close to critical failure of the gene pool, of course, but we’ve rescued species from that close to the brink. Depends on the number of breeding-or gravid females up there. It’s hard to sex birds without plumage differences to go by and I’m not seeing any. And I have no idea how to sex pterosaurs.”