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N OT ONE BUT DOZENS of dinosaur trails crossed the face of the stone. The creatures had come and gone in all directions. All left three-toed prints with clear claw marks. Here and there were little furrows between the footprints , tail-drag marks, but oddly rare. I wondered if they had come by singly or in groups. No way to determine this now, but I assumed they had probably passed within hours of each other, while the mud was soft. An old broom lay beside one pile of rocks, undoubtedly left behind by Brown and his assistants. I must have wandered yesterday within a hundred yards or so of this broom but hadn't caught sight of it. The strings that bound the broomstraws were rotted away, the wires holding them to the handle were loose and rusty, but it held together enough for me to sweep away the thin layer ofsand and dust that partly filled some of the tracks. I was happy to serve, thrilled to think I was a belated and unofficial part of the departed expedition. A thin layer of rock had been stripped away from an area some seventy-five feet long by thirty feet wide. Here three hundred footprints were in view ... I counted them. All were carnivores, ranging in size from three to fourteen inches, possibly four different species. I studied them so thoroughly I felt I knew each and every footprint by heart. Next morning I had to face up to a hard choice: learn to live without water or return to civilization. The return trip, made without mishap, was tedious rather than adventuresome. Back at the Cameron trading post, I decided to retrace a bit more and pick up mail at Flagstaff. The most interesting piece was a letter from Father bearing three postmarks ; it had followed me west from Laredo, Texas. Included was a clipping headed, "Dr. Barnum Brown Off To Dig Up Two Dinosaurs." It de5 35 scribed an expedition, just leaving for Greybull, Wyoming, headed by Brown. The bones of two large sauropod dinosaurs found by the eminent paleontologist the previous year, the article stated, were to be collected for the American Museum. I wondered what it would be like to dig up dinosaurs. Would the bones be encased in rock, as my odd amphibian skull had been? Or would they be in clay? It occurred to me that Brown ought to be at work right now, unless he might already have finished. The clipping was more than a month old. How long does it take for a big museum to dig up a big dinosaur? I read on, looking for an answer. The clipping was vague on this point, but a new and surprising feature about dinosaurs was mentioned by the reporter in describing his visit to Brown's office: "Dr. Brown stepped to a cabinet," he wrote, "and brought out a tray filled with well-rounded stones, about the size of hen's eggs, and wellpolished . 'These are gizzard stones,' he said. 'Some of the dinosaurs customarily picked up rocks, as chickens pick up gravel, to grind their food.'" Dinosaur gizzard stones. From away out here, I could see the polished stones from the great gizzards of the dinosaurs the Curator ofFossil Reptiles had found. I had heard some odd things in my life, but this was the oddest. I reread that part of the article, recreating the picture and establishing it in my mind. "Dr. Brown expects to add to his dinosaur gizzard stone collection this year," the article concluded. I knew my next move was to cancel my longdeferred trip to Grand Canyon. ''I'm off for Wyoming ," I told myself, "to see if I can find Brown digging up his dinosaurs." I got no rebuttal. The way led north through Cameron toward southern Utah. I was able, with my sparse and newly dug-up bits of knowledge, to trace the Tri- assic beds, laid down in dinosaur dawn times, from Cameron to Marble Canyon; beyond there I lost them under a maze of cliffs. In southern Utah the road began to climb seriously, crossing other formations that overlaid the colorful sands and clays by thousands of feet. Once my attention would have been fixed on the spectacular aspects of the scenery; now I saw everything with new eyes and every cliff wall took on new significance. In Wyoming the last miles to Greybull stretched out forever, across the flat irrigated lands of...

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