Time Traveler: In Search of Dinosaurs and Other Fossils from Montana to Mongolia

379 Pages·2003·7.89 MB·English

by  Michael Novacek

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