the rats

i needed any and every bit of info i could get on the pack of the primordial feather's presence in calgary (especially about this crate of theirs). i'd gone to my old palaeontologist friends kirsten and caleb to see if they knew anything. sadly neither of them had heard anything, but they thought some "rats" they knew might...

don't look at me people of the web wide world! i'm not sure why two incredibly smart scientists like caleb and kirsten are going to ask rodents, but that's what they said they were going to do. so off they went to try and track down these rats.

next thing i know caleb came wandering back with a vivus-dinosaur in tow!?! not what i was expecting at all ...

"i thought you said you were going to find a rat?" i found myself asking out loud... not necessarily how or what i wanted to say. one of the draw backs of the small brain.

"this is one of the rats," caleb retorted. i just looked at him disbelievingly. seriously, even i know the difference between a rat and a dinosaur!

suddenly the dinosaur piped up. "he means lab-rat, i can see your confusion," it mockingly told me. it then sarcastically greeted me "i'm theodore by the way. nice to meet you."

i was taken back for a moment, but then again thinking about it i had been somewhat rude. despite the little ornithischians immediate dislike of me, i recomposed myself and tried to redo my introduction... after all i hadn't specifically addressed it yet.

"nice to meet you theodore?" i paused unsure of his genus (and thus last name... most of us vivus-dinosaurs weren't given very imaginative last names). "i'm sorry it was rude not to introduce myself a moment ago. i'm traumador the tyrannosaur, and it is good to meet you."

suddenly the mid sized dinosaur picked up (i say mid sized as for a hypsilophodontid [like anyway] dinosaur he was actually quite large). "traumador, like as in the traumador?"

"uh maybe?" i shifted a bit unsure what theodore meant.

"you were the one who turned down the pack of the primordial feather?!?" he asked very excitedly.

"yeah," i said in a drawn out manner, not sure what response that was going to get me.

"then it is indeed very much a pleasure to meet you! wait till the other rats hear who i just met!" the large small dinosaur said excitedly. "i am theodore thescelosaurus. theo to everyone famous and important who knows me, and you do now know me. in fact you need to say theo as often as possible around my friends."

thescelosaurus that explained theodores large size. They were the largest of their very long running family the hypsilophodontids, although there are some long running questions as to just how they fit into this family... which come to think of it is what caleb studies!

"what am i suddenly?" caleb quipped in. "chopped liver! who feeds you, cleans up your messes, and takes you to the movies from time to time. why aren't i calling you theo? how can i now be the most important person you know?"

theodore didn't take his eyes off me, and spoke over his shoulder at caleb. "not now! you'll embrass me in front of the hero."

"fine," caleb dismissed his large saurian sidekick and walked towards me. "theodore still needs newspaper in the corner of his pen as he still hasn't figured out to piddle outside consistently."

"CALEB!" theodore shouted in annoyance. not that i laughed. we dinosaurs are a little more feral then humans. it isn't easy for us to break into the civilizaed mold of human society on such things.

to calm theodore down caleb continued. "i once caught traumador talking to a poster of a tyrannosaurus rex in the tyrrell's gift shop not realizing it wasn't real. for over two hours!" i thought it could be my friend...

it was as though caleb had handed theodore a toy, for the agile hypsilophodon sprinted off spouting off how he couldn't wait to tell the others. caleb turned to me. "sorry about that. i needed to give him something to gossip or he'd have never gone quiet. you can just mention you were 6 months old when i caught you doing that, when he retells the story to any of the other dinosaurs around here." caleb then winked at me. "now let's go find kirsten and see if she has tracked down our other in the know lab rat."

other dinosaurs. i had no idea the university had any vivus dinosaurs on hand, that alone more than one... and caleb and kirsten were calling them lab rats. i didn't like the sound of that!

"what do you do to these lab rats?" i asked with a bit of pointedness.

caleb caught my drift right away. "not what you're thinking traumador. we have had to," he paused for a moment thinking of the right word. which is something i've always liked about caleb. he never says anything without thinking about it first, and making sure it is the proper thing to say. i've always admired (and envied) him for that ability. " 'adopt' a number of vivus-dinosaurs from other institutions and museums recently, as they could no longer properly manage their supervision."

as if to emphasis what caleb was saying about this lack of supervision, theodore jumped into a nice patch of potted flowers and started chopping on them. "theodore stop that right now! you know how much trouble i get in with the grounds keepers!"

"why do you say recently?" i asked noting his use of the word earlier. again caleb doesn't say something without it being important, and a key part of his meaning.

"there has been a massive increase in the number of vivus-fossils people have been finding in the last few years. it started with just those few random and exceptional specimens turning up vivusly preserved, like yourself. now we are striking entire geologic units that are nothing but vivus specimens! there is no logically explanation as to why they are suddenly all turning up now. logic dictates we should have been finding them at a dispersed and steady rate throughout the history of fossil collecting. yet right now they are on a exponential increase," informed me while yet being puzzled by what he said.

wow, i didn't even know where to begin understand what that meant on so many levels. not only why they were finding so many of us vivus dinosaurs, but what all these new vivus dinosaurs were going to mean for me and our kind living in the present...

"many museums and institutions aren't able, or willing, to put in the resources needed to raise and tend to all these, at times certainly, attention requiring specimens once they've found them," caleb continued. "having watched what happened in drumheller with its dinosaur infestation problem, the international palaeontological committee has tried to set up a program to relocate vivus-dinosaurs to institutions that won't exploit these animals, and take as good of care of them as possible."

"has it worked?" i asked with concern.

"so far," caleb said uncertainly. "we're only really hitting the beginning of the 'crisis'. for example the U of C is currently home to four adult vivuses, nine juveniles, and sixteen hatchlings," that didn't sound too bad till he added. "but we're sitting on forty unhatched eggs, and have a waiting list of over twenty seven more waiting to be accepted. with only a staff of 6 full time palaeontologists, and a dozen research students to look after them all."

"that is shaping up into a crisis," i stated somewhat obviously. caleb just nodded.

a brief silence hung as we both reflected on the idea of nearly 100 vivus dinosaurs soon to grace the university. caleb finally got back to my question. "we call these guys lab rats, as we have been using their physiology to supplement fossil research. the experiments are pretty low impact though. just things like getting them to run or walk, all usually for a treat. it's not like the data we gather is readily accepted or publishable."

i looked at caleb puzzled. he just shrugged. "apart from dr. paradigm, the palaeontologic community is not at moment willing to use vivus-fossil 'material' as scientific evidence. there are just too many questions on how you guys are all surviving millions of years unharmed."

kirsten wandered up to us. "i found helma, but she's being a scarredy cat like usually. so we'll have to goto her."

as we wandered down the hall, it occurred to me i hadn't asked theodore my key question yet. though my hopes were dashed. the large hypsilophodontid had not heard anything about the pack in calgary. however bringing up the pack, next thing i knew theodore started listing off everything he knew about them...

or at least what he thought he knew. for a secretish society the pack has done well at keeping the outside world from find out much about them. a lot of what theodore said about pack membership and recruitment was wrong, so i kind of ignored everything he said after that. i couldn't really trust that any of it as accurate.

thankfully i didn't have to listen to theodore's pack rumours for too long. we approached a juvenile hadrosaur, probably in its midteens (in dino-years). kirsten warned me as we walked up to it. "let me do the talking. she doesn't care too much for theropods, and she can be very jumpy even at the best of times."

speaking of jumpy, the duckbill whirled around as it heard us coming. she immediately picked me out of the lot of us, and talking about me (not to me mind you) "who is that?!? why are you with a theropod? has he be security cleared for this building?!?" it half asked half accused.

"he's fine helma," kirsten assured her large lab rat. i could already tell helma was a hypacrosaur due to her crest and colouration (i'd met some before in drumheller... hypacrosaur eggs are pretty common in alberta. especially at devil's coulee). "he just needs to know if you've heard anything about the primordials."

the teenage duckbill grew tense upon the mention of the pack. "why? they're trying to eliminate anyone who knows too much about them? in that case i don't know anything!" helma definitely stated.

kirsten went to go pat the hadrosaur and calm her down, but when she put her hand on helma's back...

helma had a momentary startle. which with duckbills is quite loud.

kirsten smiled slightly embarrassed. "as i'm sure you're noticing our vivus dinosaur are not prone to quirky behaviour and demeanours," she sarcastically defended. "poor helma here was exposed to 'traditional' theropod/duckbill relations at far too early an age from some pictures in a book or TV. which has given her a perpetual predator prey view of the whole world ever since, and naturally she is always the prey. so don't take it too personally. she does this with everybody. it just happens you are a theropod this time."

theodore laughed at helma's freak out. frankly i don't blame him. it was pretty funny, though a little weird.

helma yelled at him to stop, and a whole squabble scene played out before me. the two dinosaurs fought like little hatchlings with theodore provoking helma, and helma reacting just how he wanted. then caleb and kirsten intervened like parents to try and break it up. i kind of wanted to walk away really, at least till they sorted it all out.

by the time they finally had it settled all four of them were upset. kirsten and caleb both explained to helma if she had heard anything, that telling me would keep the pack away (which was a bit of a lie... i had no way of keeping the pack away from the university or the lab rats, really).

the duckbill said she certainly hadn't heard anything about the pack being around the uni. she stated otherwise she would have certainly raised the alarm... which based on her little fright a few minutes earlier, i'm certain everyone would have noticed!

this was no good. i still had no leads... and i was out of dinosaur associating people.

what was i going to do now?!?

to be continued with a chance run in (with a special guest star!!!)

paradigm's egg layer...

things had hit rock bottom, people of the innerweb!

i'd solved the case of the fossil poachings going on around drumheller. however i'd gotten a little to keen in my investigation, and ended up being caught by the fossil poachers themselves!

worse still they weren't who i thought they'd be. as their two new "players" in this whole dark side of palaeontology i was very concerned. i had no idea what they were going to do to me, apart from probably sell me!

here were the two suspects... okay criminals, i didn't suspect them anymore, i knew they'd done it!...

from listening to them for the last few hours and paying attention to how they do stuff here is what i have figured out...

on the left was megan. she'd taken a job at the tyrrell's education department this year in an effort to infiltrate the museum to help with the poaching scheme. when i first met her, megan had been looking at a geological map of the drumheller area. she said it was a "project" she was doing over the summer. she was also no doubt the one who broke into the geology department.

one the right was jo. the member of the pair i knew the least about, but i was learning a few things. her job had been to do most of the digging once they started working on a poaching site. that way megan could keep up her presence in the museum, and make sure they hadn't caught on to the current dig. jo was also the the more ambitious of the two, and not as cautious as megan.

from eavesdropping and watching them... what else am i supposed to do tied up, waiting for my doom?!?... i'd figured out they were both professionally trained fossil diggers who knew their stuff.

megan had definitely been a technician at some point in her life based on how her conduct and methods. i'd over heard her say she'd worked at the american museum of natural history and the carnegie, two of america's prominent museums to be sure! she also had a tendency to remind jo of all the different places she'd dug in before... which so far sounded like every continent except europe and australia! why would such a well experienced and qualified technician abandon it all to take up fossil theft though?

jo was coming across as more of a scientist, and based on some goading by megan about some unfinished skool, i'm guessing jo had tried to become a palaeontologist once. whether she'd completed her training or not was besides the point, she was knowledgeable. very knowledgeable. i found it hard to believe she wasn't a curator already (though that would be hard when you're leading a life of crime!!!). i was getting the impression she'd done a lot of work in ontario, but she didn't name drop museums like megan did...

watching them work was both impressive and terrifying! for a two person crew they could get a lot done in a short span of time.

they also could interchange roles seamlessly and efficiently. I watched them swap tasks twice, and it was effortless. one of those cases where less was more powerful. a bigger dig team often needs to slow down and meet to make sure everything is done proper. in their defence big specimens are easier to damage (as you typically need to make them smaller for safe transport).

what surprised me most, as i watched, was how meticulously they were recording the site and information about the fossils positioning. that's what a proper scientific dig would do. recording how a fossil sits in the ground and mapping the whole site is where 75% of information about a fossil comes from.

why two commercial poachers needed to record this i wasn't sure. how many fossil collectors would want the full scientific dossier on the specimen? a little bit of info maybe for a keener, but anyone that interested in the information these two were gathering would probably want the specimens in a proper museum anyways! which a proper museum shouldn't be dealing in!

`
the two had an argument about it for a moment, but sadly as they both knew what they were talking about it didn't last long enough or outline enough details for me to really understand.

jo while digging asked megan to read back some of the mapping details for this last specimen. megan read back the numbers, but the eggs angle wasn't right. jo snapped at megan. "you're kidding me right? you've been approximating map coordinates?!?"
`

"only on this last batch. like it matters! i wanna get out of here. its only a matter of time before someone notices the tyrannosaur missing," megan defended herself. " it's not like anyone's going to care if the spatial orientation is off by a few degrees."
`

jo had one of her typical scientist sounding moments. "it defeats the purpose of the dig if we don't bother to record it right!" she scowled. "besides if orwell is as keen to purchase these as he sounds, then we better damn well make sure the information is spot on! you know how much his bosses care about the details."
`

"orwell, as in annex co. orwell?" megan asked to clarify, but the name had meant something to her and she crazily scribbled in the necessary corrections.
`

"yeah the one and the same," jo answered annoyed. "i emailed him some photos this morning, while you were blending in at the tyrrell. he replied within a few minutes. word out there is the company is very keen on acquiring any and all vivus-specimens they can these days."
`

that was it, beyond that they just started to double check their facts and field notes... not much to go on, yet i was not totally in the dark.
`

this annex co. i'd heard of it before. lillian the albertosaur had signed on with it after being fired by the tyrrell. however i had no idea what it did beyond run travelling exhibits in museums... why would they want illegal specimen for those? won't the museums ask where they'd gotten the amazing specimens from?
`
sadly i didn't have long to think about it. my time had run out... they were busy removing the last jacket. once it was out, jo and megan were likely to gather up the egg field jackets and myself, and ditch everything else and get out of town in a hurry. meaning i wasn't going to be anywhere to be easily found in under an hour!
`

despite the dread and terror that was starting to overwhelm me, the incident that happened with the removal of this jacket is of particular note...
`

as jo popped the jacket off its pedestal (the last rock holding the fossil in or on the ground) the underside of the jacket (aka the rock that had seconds ago been attached to the ground) fell off of the main block...
`

"oh *BEEP*," jo cursed as the loose chunk tumbled down the hill.
`

"there is an egg in it!" screamed megan. "we don't have long before it dies, pick it up quick!!!"

that didn't make sense... sure the egg was vivusly preserved. that is to say, somehow, it had fossilized so that the egg was still alive after millions of years... yet there was no way after being dropped and tumbled like that the embryo inside would have survived!
`

yet jo rushed forward very concerned as though she still had a chance of saving it. as she picked up the egg she asked in panic. "that wasn't 10 seconds was it?"
`

megan shook her head. "no you got it in time. nicely done!"
`

10 seconds, what did that have to do with anything? dinosaur eggs much like reptile and bird eggs can only handle SO much jostling before they die. especially for most non-avian dinosaur eggs, they would die even if you turn them over. just like most reptile eggs. only birds and a few closely related coelurosaurs ever evolved turnable eggs.
`

confusing me more, jo said in a dreading manner. "why did it have to hit the air? stupid vivus fossils," she hesitated as something started to happen to the egg in her hands "i hate this part!"
`
what could the difference between a vivus fossil and a regular fossil be when they hit the air, other then one was dead and the other was alive (okay a big difference i grant you, but 10 seconds and air shouldn't be a difference right?... well that's what i thought until)...
`

jo cringed in visible discomfort, not quite pain, but it certainly didn't look pleasant. before i could wonder why, i was hit with an all too familiar wave of dizziness and discomfort... oh no! not again...
`

i was having another of my magic episodes! professor paradigm had predicted that i'd become a "living detector" and so far he was sadly being proven right!
`
the egg in jo's hands lit up like a x-mas tree with "mystical gradient radiation" as the smart people around me had been calling it... i think the term magic gets the point across a lot better myself!!!
`
i don't think either megan or jo saw it the way i did based on their reaction...
`
jo definitely felt the magic release that's for sure. she nearly dropped the egg as though someone had given her a super powerful electric shock!

i felt it too, and i wasn't even close bu! thankfully it was a short burst. the shortest i'd ever encountered in fact. it was very intense though... on the level of whiro or the kete o te wananga.

jo, and megan too, were mystified by the phenomenon (which if you just got a huge shock from a fossil without the light show i saw, it would be very confusing), and both stated their ongoing puzzlement as to why vivus-fossils always did that when they were dug up. yet they didn't ponder on it for long. without the visual i had, it wouldn't have made sense...

i on the other hand, despite this being my first vivus-egg excavation, now had a pretty solid theory!
`
the magic had erupted off the surface of the egg, almost like a second shell... i think the magic was protecting it. protecting it from the wear and tear of millions of years! it made perfect sense, how else were things, otherwise long extinct, surviving the void of deep time into the present if not magic...
`
of course my theory had some holes big enough you could fly a dragon through them! first off i had no clue what magic actually was. from what i knew of it from the movies it could do anything, but as i'd learned from dinosaur movies what makes it too screen and what happens in real life can be drastically different!
`
more to the point how magic had gotten onto an egg millions of years ago made no sense to me... though based on the light show i'd just seen there clearly was an explanation...
`

jo wasn't as concerned with the incident as me. to her it was just a strange one off effect of finding vivus fossils.

however with its magical protection now gone the egg was as vulnerable as an ordinary egg. thus jo now handled it very carefully. "let's go put you somewhere nice, warm, and safe," she almost caringly assured the inanimate egg... i wasn't sure if she was eying it with extreme scientific curiosity or outright greed. perhaps a mix of the two i thought.

as jo went to store the egg i realized something. there were no more eggs for the two poachers to dig up... the excavation was over.

i gulped in slight dread as megan walked over to me. "well say goodbye to your old home," she instructed me. "i suspect it'll be the last time you ever see it."

"why are you doing this?" i genuinely asked... though i just meant what she was about to me.

megan seemed to think i meant my question about her chosen evil career path, which i can't help but feel was some sort of guilt complex on her part. after all why would a victim be even remotely interested in the bully's problems? "good question," she answered, which i thought meant she was reconsidering letting me go... however she was just thinking of how to word her life story all sympathetically.

"i did work for years in the name of science. i helped make many important discoveries," megan seemed to look off into the distance. perhaps in her mind down memory lane to times less illegal. i though it just looked silly... come on, a dinonapping technician yearning for the good old days... even i, who forgets TV isn't real sometimes, thinks that was cheesy!

to her credit megan snapped out of it too, and the moment ended with her rather sensibly admitting. "then i realized i wasn't being rewarded for my work on any level. the pay sucked, and worse the PHDs were getting all the credit and attention. i began wondering, would they be on the news or covers of people magazine if not for the finds i made for them? they wish! i went into business for myself when i realized how much more i could make on these 'freelance' gigs."

"that's fantastic," i sarcastically responded. so she was an accomplished fossil hunter who "snapped" under the hard pressure of not being rich or famous. i didn't have either of those thing, yet i hadn't broken down to the life of crime... so i'm not sure why she expected me to sympathize. "i meant why are you holding me against my will?"

megan just raised an eyebrow at me. "duh!" was her only reply. i guess i can appreciate that. after some of the things it sounds like she'd done along the path to selling out, pleading from me her latest victim wasn't going to turn her around to redemption.

"again i'd say goodbye to a lot of things. pretty soon you're not going to be able to enjoy them the same way again, unless you get lucky with a really nice new owner," megan warned me as she went to go collect the field notes.

i probably should have felt fear or dread or something hearing that. after all both megan and jo were making finally preparations to abandon the site with the goods and me. there wasn't anything i could do to stop them, and no one was coming to my rescue...

or so that was the situation until a minute ago. just as megan was finishing her lifestory, the wind had shifted ever so slightly. a human would never have noticed what i did off the downwind...

help had just arrived. professor paradigm was on the scene, and i was pretty sure (if his reputation as the head of palaeo-central were true) he wasn't too keen on the poaching from these badlands...

to be continued...

how i got my name...

with all the excitement going on around me during this whole trip back to drumheller i've been forgetting to blog about the most important thing to me here in all of the tyrrell.

that would be this skeleton. known to most as the huxley tyrannosaur, or to the scientific community as specimen TMP 81. 12. 1... but to me it has a much simpler name... mommy.

its hard to think that 65 million years ago, right before the great KT extinction, i had a living and breathing mother... who was probably part of some pack or social group of other tyrannosaurs. a natural "family" for my kind... a thing i've never known in the real world (though i have been part of a group of caring humans you could call my family even if we aren't remotely related!).

i of course never knew her in this form, and never will...

before you ask how do we know if this is my mom, i investigated this earlier in my trip by checking with darren tanke. the short story was that her skeleton was found right over top of the fossilized nest my egg came from. in fact she was buried while on the nest... so unless a complete stranger rex wandered onto my nest, it is a safe bet this was my mother.

based on what we've seen in other meat eating dinosaurs, it looks like she was protecting the nest... and based on her large size this would have been unusual for a tyrannosaur (as she could easily have crushed us eggs... in fact it looks like a couple of my siblings may have been squashed in the cretaceous by mom's huddling on us). what could have been threatening us eggs so much that she'd risk it i wonder?

this is the purely scientific evidence that the huxley tyrannosaur was my mommy. most palaeontologists would say there was a strong chance she was my mom (or dad, as dino genders are impossible to confirm from just the bones), but we'll never know for sure...

speaking from just the scientifically provable angle this is correct. i can't prove to you "properly" that she is my mom. yet at the same time there is no question in my mind that she is my mommy, and not my daddy or other random t-rex.

we vivus-dinosaurs (that's the proper term for us dinosaurs somehow not extinct today) have another way of IDing our long dead kind...

contrary to the common belief of the humans in my life, i don't waste my time in trying to talk to my mom or other extinct dinosaur skeletons. sure they don't strike up a complex conversation, but i have met with limited success in getting answers back from them...

the reason being, somehow all us living vivus-dinosaurs can hear echoes of dinosaurs long extinct. there is no rational explanation, but it is true. ask any of us, and we'll all agree.

no this isn't like a ghost or a conscious entity we're communicating with. in fact the communication is mostly one way. rather we can hear, what seems like anyways, the last thoughts and feelings of that dinosaur before it died. often we can even tell you what killed it because of this echo (if indeed these are the last thoughts being "preserved", mind you).
`

now the more complete a specimen the more complete the echo... for whatever reason (which as you'll see in a moment i think i've now, for the first time ever, figured out!). it also seems the more of the skull present the better the quality of the echo. words and "conversations" are possible with a skulled animal (though the conversation on your part just prompts different aspects of the echo. sort of like having a recording of someone and picking different parts of the recording to listen to).

even with the smallest fragments if you listen hard enough (if you're a dinosaur) you can catch a glimpse of an emotion or a word... but the general rule the more of the dinosaur the better the echo, and the more of the skull the more you can understand it.

so we come to my mother. complete neck to toe, but NO skull. even my vivus-dinosaur acquaintances think i'm silly for spending as much time "talking" to her as i do. she is a lot of intense emotion, but no explanation.

i've never figured out what happened to her, but i know what she felt in the last moments of her life...

mom's echo begins with the purest joy and happiness i've ever "heard" in an echo, but it only lasts a short time (she'd probably been feeling it for a while before the "recording" of her echo). this gives way to sheer panic and terror going into a moment of absolute determination (to protect i want to say, but i'm only going with my gut feeling... but it would explain why she was on the nest). it finally ends with intense fatal pain (sadly not uncommon from echos at all!), but her's is very pronounced and fast. dinosaur death's usually aren't as quick or powerful as hers (but usually as painful)...

again i can't tell you why or how any of this happened. without her skull all i can get is a "feeling" off her with no words to explain. however that is not to say nothing of her past self has managed to come through deep time to me...

she has spoken a single word to me. only the once, but this singular communication has been the most important word anyone has ever said to me...

i remember it clearly, which is saying something. it is among my first memories ever, and despite my tiny brain making remembering things hard, i'll never forget this moment for as long as i shall live.

it was the first time my legal guardian craig brought me through the museum's galleries (he'd taken me to the labs and collections many times, but this was my first public side tour). most of this i can't recall for the life of me (but if you compare this old photo of me and him there in 2003 to the modern one of my below taken this year in 2009 you'll see there are many differences!), but i certainly recall being brought into range of my mother for the first time!

as craig carried me before her, i was hit with the echo unsolicited (which never happens normally... we vivus-dinosaurs have to listen or probe to get something out of the fossils). at its conclusion, in the usual haunting whisper manner of a fossil echo i heard my mother say "traumador." i knew immediately this was my mother, and that this was her name for me.

i wasn't just imagining this either people of the web wide world! i didn't just take some random name thrown out by a fossil skeleton, and decide this was my 65 million year old name...

despite the fact i grew up like a human, and often behave more like one than a tyrannosaur, i have strong saurian instincts deep within me. this is one of the most baseline. the bond of a coelurosaur chick with its mother. we normally imprint on our mothers, but as i had extenuating circumstances preventing me to do that, this was as close as i was going to get to such an event.

this was the echo of my mother knowing me, somehow, outside of my egg... despite having never seen (or smelled, a very important sense to us tyrannosaurs) me in her lifetime, yet i tell you matter of factly, that was what she'd done. somehow, i was the most burning thing on her mind when she died...

as of such i've always felt a deep and emotional connection to my mother. we never really met, but yet we still have a bond across 65 million years. it makes me feel like in some way as a dinosaur i fit in somewhere (cause it sure isn't easy in the human world being a vivus dinosaur!).

the funny thing about it all is i said it aloud right after my mother, and craig assumed i came up with this out of thin air, and figured it would be the name he'd give me (up till then it had been "little guy" or "rex"... so i'll give him credit for still being on the market for something to call me, and not stick me with one of those!).

once i was old enough to explain where i'd gotten the name from, craig didn't entirely believe me. he thought i'd wanted so bad to "hear" my mother i made up a memory of her talking to me when i was a hatchling.

after all she hadn't ever done it again, right?... well that was true. until today!!!

today as i experienced mom's usual emotion echo, something bizarre, but sadly far from a new thing happened to me...

i suddenly felt uncontrollably dizzy. my mother's skeleton (even the cast skull attached to her) began to glow. it was another magic episode! ever since i'd overdosed myself in mystical gradient radiation (the scientific name for magic) i could detect magic (at least according to professor paradigm's findings so far i could). a long story to be sure, click on some of these links for the full details.

the general gist is that if something magic happens around me, i know about it. magic according to everyone i know has something to do with dimensions beyond our 4D world... i don't know something to do with the stringed up, or no wait, string theory. point is stuff from beyond our height, weight, depth, and time dimensions somehow get into our reality, and i can see them (where many others might miss it).

which might sound far fetched, like dinosaurs hearing echoes from our dead... only today i figured out the two are connected!

professor paradigm said after examining the magic's effect on me, he suspected we dinosaurs absorbed mystical gradient energy and retained it, unlike humans who simply get coated in it. i think this difference explains why we hear our dead ancestors, and humans can't.

prehistoric dinosaurs communicate through magic!!!

i'm not sure how or why, but that's what i sensed when my mom's echo triggered (i tested it again on a few other skeletons and the same thing every time! they triggered magic sensing episodes in me, complete with dizziness and glowing).

unlike the maori magic though, this new "fossil" magic didn't keep making me feel sick or dizzy for long. i'd only feel it for a moment, and then the magic felt more natural... dinosaur magic? as opposed to human (which may not be the case, but this was more pleasant then that other new zealand magic!).

well my mom's usual emotional barrage washed over me (in more detail then ever before... an effect of the magic i wonder?). then an odd silence. not as in the echo finishing (which it normally did after her pain) more like a blank space on a recording...

after a few minutes i started to think i was imagining the difference in the ending, and as i'd spent my time with mom for today, i turned around and began to walk away.

suddenly from behind me. "traumador," i heard in my mother's voice. the most glorious voice i'd ever heard (again). i spun around. unbelieving. in all my years seeing my mother she'd never said my name since that first time. i won't lie, occasionally i'd wondered if craig was right and my tiny brain had imagined mom giving me my name. now i knew for certainty it was true!

just before i could savour that happiness, my mother continued. "my dear sweet little traumador," mom sounded like she was talking to me now, but yet it clearly it was an echo. she had thought or said this in the cretaceous, but yet it was addressed to growup me. "be on your guard my little, danger soon shall stalk you..."

okay that was an ominous. why was my mom thinking i was in danger. more to the point why did the echo give me the distinct impression she meant for me to have this message well after i was out of my egg? i had to be imagining that interpretation (afterall echoes aren't science), she must have been thinking of me in the egg (but me above all my other unhatched siblings? why was i so special?) as the ancient danger she was protecting us from destroyed her.

that had to be it, i thought. it was the prehistoric horror that had consumed her so fast all those eons ago.

what danger could i possibly be in right now?

Elsewhere in the Museum...

(From Layla Oviraptor's personal journal)

Concealing my presence here at the Tyrrell has not been easy thus far, but what choice do I have?

The runt is still here at the museum, and has clearly been nosing around. His timing is far to convenient for his presence here to be anything but a direct affront against the Pack [of the Primordial Feather]'s operation here in Drumheller. Especially given his close ties to the "crate".

As if I needed any further reason to be concerned, but Professor Paradigm has also made his presence known in the region. If there is an organization I do not want interfering in our project it is Palaeo-Central.

Bringing matters to a head, Professor Paradigm confronted the runt yesterday, and I fear they may now be collaborating against us. If so I and the operation may be in grave danger...

I had been contemplating abandoning this whole endeavour, but that would have me returning to the pack in defeat. Something that would greatly undermine my lofty position as lieutenant to the royals [In pack lingo royal= Tyrannosaurid].

However today the tide had shifted against the runt. With such weight, it was unlikely he'd have fathomed it... Until it was too late, in any case.

My secret weapons had arrived, heralded by Desdemona Deinonychus seeking me out in the museum.

I typically do not have a fondness for Dromaeosaurs, but this was one of those rare instances where I felt great pride in knowing they were closely related to me. They were among the best of our hunters [in coelurosaur terms hunter=warrior], and definitely our most subtle. In this dire situation I needed foot soldiers of Desdemona's caliber, and now I had them.

I quickly briefed Desdemona on the development in events since I'd summoned her. Unlike me, who worried about the possible disaster that could follow a failure on our part, Desdemona kept the cold focused demeanor of a raptor prior to a hunt.

"You worry to much Oviraptor," she calmly assured me. Her eyes narrowed in focused anticipation. "This just makes my presence here all the more appropriate!"

I could not help but worry at her excitement over this delicate situation we were currently both overlooking. That was the way of the predator I suppose, to see opportunity in adversity, thrill in carnage, and to revel in overwhelming odds. It was not for me however, and I couldn't help worry I'd made a mistake bringing Desdemona in to help me.

As I followed Desdemona deeper into the museum my fears disappeared.

The rest of the Crimson Talons were restlessly gathered, ready for my and Desdemona's orders. Clearly they were antcipating the hunt as much as their matriarch.

I could see that Desdemona had brough her second in command Valor Velociraptor to assist her carry out the attack. Backing them up were a number of local Dromaeosaurus and Atrociraptors. Clever of her to not bring in too many noticible outside Dinosaurs. A nice clean local job. One that would hopefully be carried out quickly and quietly.

With a task force of raptor's poised ready to remove the runt, and any threat he represented how could my fears be anything but a thing of the past?

Next: Attack of the Raptors!!!

(Production Note: The clues in the fossil of the weekend have now been realized... "Danger soon shall stalk" Traumador indeed. For a better view of his potential danger click here.)

the check up (with a flashback!)

i think (my boss) ms. rhonwyn needs a lesson on how to throw a surprise...

don't get me wrong. the first part of her surprise was brilliant. setting up my first encounter with lillian the albertosaur for the first time in 2 years. that's a really good surprise! i got my first date ever out of it!!!

the problem is she added a second unrelated activity onto it. she also reintroduced me to professor paradigm. a palaeontologist who examined me right after i hatched nearly 5 years ago (my hatching day is this week wow!). the reason for our reunion: him doing a medical check NOW!

now i may have a brain the size of a peanut, but i STILL remember this first encounter with paradigm...

it was not pleasant. in fact to be honest people of the innerweb i hated it!

now the thing is i know why medicine and proper check ups is important, but at the same time i really really REALLY don't like getting them!

i think part of the problem is my tyrannosaurian instincts. i don't like giving up control, and more the point having things stuck in my mouth or hide. i'm supposed to be inflicting that sort of thing on other stuff not receiving it!

i also remember paradigm was rough, mean, and did not have a very nice bed side manner. he was quite aggressive on his check up 5 years ago. so much so that i've never had a check up since. my legal guardian craig tried to persuade me to get more when we still lived in canada, but i refused. than as you know since arriving in new zealand things have been a little too hectic for such activities.

so when it came to today's check up i was not for it one bit. paradigm on the other hand was equally stubborn, and was determined to examine me. it was a standoff worthy of a movie or something.

"why is it always the theropods who are the most..." paradigm grumbled just over his breath. he brought his hands to his waist in a show of massive annoyance. i matched his pose to show i wasn't giving any ground.

"i won't do it," i stated. "its too personal."

"i beg your pardon?!?" asked in a very cold manner. as though the fact i had feelings about what he'd just asked me to do was the most far fetched thing he'd ever heard. don't get me wrong people of the innerweb, most palaeontologists are really cool (in fact some among the most cool of the world!), but paradigm was coming off as one of those science above all else sorts...

"ms. rhonwyn didn't say anything about this to me," i declared. "so sorry for wasting you a trip, but i don't give you permission to examine me anywhere... that alone where you just asked!" that should put an end to this i thought... man i thought i was so clever.

"i'm not your doctor traumador. i'm a doctor of vertebrate and invertebrate palaeontology! second of all you're not human. you don't get those sorts of rights!" paradigm retorted angrily.

man this was the first time i'd dealt with the guy (last time i wasn't able to speak or even fully comprehend the world... i was only a few days old after all!) and i didn't like him at all. normally palaeontologists were among the nicest to us living dinosaurs. we're their only definite link to the past millions of years ago. this guy i could tell just thought of us as another specimen like any common fossil (technically fossils aren't common and are really amazing in that only the tiniest number of them survive into the present).

"for ceratitic lobes of the prolecanitina!" paradigm cursed... i think? "it's not like i'm asking to see anything embarrassing traumador!!! just open your mouth. that's all i need to see!!!"

"no!!!" i insisted covering my mouth with my hands.

paradigm's arms shot straight in fury. "you will open your mouth right now!"

i shook my head holding my jaws tight.

"i'm only asking you, nicely," he had to think about saying nicely too much for it to be sincere. "one more time."

i didn't yield.

suddenly paradigm lept forward, and grabbed a pressure point on my snout. he did it in a manner identical to how craig and dan used to do it in the old days funny enough.

i won't lie it hurt a lot! i can see why kung fu people use these pressure point things in combat. instinctively my jaw opened in an attempt to relieve the pain.

paradigm then thrust out a strange star treky looking device and held it in my now open maw. it made some funny noises for a few seconds, and nothing happened. maybe i'd been a little paranoid about this. than suddenly it made a humming sound, and i felt really really REALLY dizzy. just like whenever something magic had happened on the museum quest...

the professor muttered to himself in response to whatever readings he was getting. "how is that possible?" he seemed to stare at me in disbelief not that i could really see his eyes through his massive void tinted glasses. he changed something (i assume a setting) and the dizziness got so bad it hurt. the room spun, and i had flashes of random maori things... though for the life of me i couldn't remember any of it when he stopped. kinda like how you know what a dream was about but can't put your claw on it...

"i'm letting go of your jaw now," paradigm informed me. he than cautioned. "don't even think about nipping me. i know far more painful spots on a tyrannosaurid than that."

"what did you just do to me?!?" i demanded to know as the professor let go.

"i was attempting to ascertain what the effects of that massive mystical gradient raditation exposure were on you," he answered matter of factually.

"so?" i urged him on. i actually wanted to know. was i in danger?

"well its hard to say," he stalled for a moment. i couldn't tell if it was because he was going to lie to me about my condition or he just didn't know. "there have been no documented cases of an archosaur, that alone a dinosaur, being exposed to anywhere near this amount of MGR. if you were a human you'd no longer be in this dimension of reality. you'd have been transposed to one of the gradient realities. though which one, i'm not qualified to say. string theory is well outside the field of palaeontology."

"if i had to guess from what i've seen, which i hate to do without first thoroughly going over the data, you appear to have absorbed and metabolized the radiation. which is very odd," he paused as i think he was telling himself as much as me. "in mammals mystical gradient energy simply coats our outer surface. meaning we rip right through the 4th dimensional walls of our reality as we move, and thus release the contents of the upper and lower dimensional stacks."

"you on the other hand, have somehow internalized this energy, and thus have your whole body mass to disperse and buffer your MGR load. based on your accounts of what happened when a outer dimensional activity was in your proximity, i'd suggest that this makes you something of, well in terms you'd understand, a mystic detector rather than conductor which a human would be in your situation."

i simply stared at him dumbfounded. so what he was saying is that a human would have been eaten by whiro or worse disappeared into that green light like tane did. instead i'd gotten something like a spider magic sense?...

"again i can't say any of this for sure till i analyze the results," paradigm cautioned me. "now i'd like to do a quick physical examine to ensure you are healthy otherwise."

"how are you going to know if i'm okay or not?" i challenged. i hate being hit, poked and prodded. why let this guy do it, since no one is really an expert on us living dinosaurs!

"don't be insulting," paradigm retorted. "i specialize in vivusly preserved fossils," i looked at him blankly. "by the temporal fenestra of a synapsid!... the eggs you and the rest of your kind have been hatching from."

okay so something good came out of this check up. i learned the scientific term for us living prehistoric critters. vivus-fossils. i looked it up. it means (in latin. the language of science!) having dug up a living thing [vivus=living fossil=having dug up].

i also learned that paradigm's specialty was therefore, me... and all the other dinosaurs running around today. maybe that explained why larry was so freaked of this paradigm guy when i mentioned him during my cousin's visit?... i wonder now. seriously who is this guy? i'd just been pretending to know paradigm. the mere mention of his name kept my cousin from making a single bite snack out of me...

with that thought i also realized i should cooperate with the professor. i didn't want to find out first hand why a full grown t-rex could be scared of this guy!

as paradigm saw me relax a bit (i still was stressed by the idea of probes, needles, and instruments) he sounded a bit less grumpy. "good," hit some buttons on his device. "now this should only take one second."

he pointed his doohickey at me. "where's the other stuff," i fearfully inquired.

"what other 'stuff' ?" paradigm was confused.

"you know the medical thingies," i answered. not that i didn't mind the time he spent pointing this thing at me. it meant the bad part wasn't here yet.

making me hopeful he actually laughed. "oh no, no. silly dinosaur. things have been modernized since the last time i looked you over. my multi-spectrum scanner here envelops the functions of almost every test i might need to perform. now it is important you hold still for a moment."

i actually felt at ease. maybe i had been to hard on this whole modern medicine thing. all of it in one tool, and it didn't have a pointy or hammery bit to be seen. just a purple light that turned on and off. what could i possibly have to fear?

"good now don't move a muscle," paradigm commanded as he finished lining up his pen sized scanner gadget. i froze as best i could. the light on the end of the scanner turned on...

nothing. i let out a sigh. that was easy!!!

than suddenly the device made a whirring sound... and was followed by one of the most intense pains of my life. i let out a great "OWWWWWWWW!"

"the discomfort is normal," paradigm stated matter of factly, not caring about my suffering. "what do you expect from simultaneous blood works, x-ray, cat-scan, erm, mri, bone scans, and dental scans?"

with that he started to walk out of the room. "i'll go over these findings, and than bring you and ms. rhonwyn a report of your final results." with that paradigm disappeared out the door.

i simply stood at the examine table unable to move. my whole body was in pain...

and that people of the web wide world is why i STILL hate check ups!!!