Time Traveler IN SEARCH OF DINOSAURS AND ANCIENT MAMMALS FROM MONTANA TO MONGOLIA Michael Novacek FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX NEW YORK Farnir, Straus and Giroux 19 Union Square West, New York 10003 Copyright © 2002 by Michael Novacek All rights reserved Distributed in Canada by Douglas & Mclntyre Ltd. Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2002 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Pubiication Data Novacek, Michael J. Time traveler : in search of dinosaurs and ancient mammals from Montana to Mongolia / Michael Novacek. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-374-27880-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Novacek, Michael J. 2. Paleontology—Field work. 3. Paleontologists—United States— Biography. 1. Title. QE707.N68 A3 2002 560'.92—dc21 P] 2001040438 Designed by Debbie Glasserman www.fsgbooks.com 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 To my teachers—Peter Vaughn, Jay Lillegraven, Don Savage, Bill Clemens, and, most important, my mother and father One cannot choose but wonder. Will he ever return? It may be that he swept back into the past, and fell among the blood-drinking, hairy savages of the Age of Unpolished Stone; into the abysses of the Cretaceous Sea; or among the grotesque saurians, the huge reptilian brutes of the Jurassic times. He may even now—if I may use the phrase—be wandering on some plesiosaurus-haunted Oolitic coral reef, or beside the lonely saline lakes of the Triassic Age. Or did he go forward, into one of the nearer ages, in which men are still men, but with the riddles of our own time answered and its wearisome problems solved? —H. G. Wells, The Time Machine (1895), Epilogue Contents 1. DINOSAUR DREAMER 3 2. THE CANYON OF TIME 12 3. EARLY EXPEDITIONS 25 4. THE PLATEAU OF THE DRAGONS 35 5. THE ROOKIES 51 6. JOURNEY OF DEATH 57 7. THE PALEONTOLOGICAL CHAIN GANG 66 8. RED ROCKS 82 9. BACK TO THE BONES 89 10. THE PITS 95 11. THE AGE OF MAMMALS REVISITED 104 X C O N T E N TS 12. ROAD CUTS AND FOSSIL VERMIN 113 13. BADLANDS, BONES, AND BONE HUNTERS 123 14. HELL CREEK IS FOR DINOSAURS 136 15. THE CURIOUS BEASTS OF OLD BAJA 152 16. BAKING BELOW THE BUTTES 164 17. WHALES ON MOUNTAINTOPS 182 18. A MAN AND HIS HORSE 196 19. PAMPA CASTILLO 211 20. BONE HUNTERS IN PATAGONIA 224 21. ABOVE THE CLOUDS AND THE CONDORS 234 22. THE LAND OF SHEBA 250 23. To THE FOOT OF THE FLAMING CLIFFS 278 24. THE CRETACEOUS CORNUCOPIA 293 25. LAST CHANCE CANYON 314 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 323 NOTES 327 SELECTED READING LIST 351 INDEX 355 ILLUSTRATION CREDITS 367 Time Traveler