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      We acknowledge the support of The Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

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      references or credits in subsequent editions.

       J. Kirk Howard, President

      Printed and bound in Canada.

      www.dundurn.com

       For my grandsons: Charles, Thomas, Sam, Jake, Alec, and Evan

       ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      Sunni Turner deserves much of the credit for supplying the background information for this novel, and also for her firsthand accounts of activities at a dinosaur dig. She was there! I also wish to thank Michael Carroll for diligent editing and for his good-humoured approachability.

       PROLOGUE

       The great animal guards her nest. Ten eggs are snug and warm under a blanket of rotting vegetation. She turns her head sideways and lowers her ear, listening for sound from inside the egg shells. It won’t be long now — some of the nearby nests are already squirming with big-eyed, limp-bodied newborns.

       She dozes in the warm sunshine. The air is pungent with the smell of conifer sap and animal sweat.

       A long-legged birdlike creature darts in to steal an egg from her neighbour’s unguarded nest, and the mother bellows with rage and thumps her tail. She hunches in a toad-like stance, her long, flat tail and her short forelegs resting on the ground. The muscles in her powerful hind legs ripple and bulge as she moves.

       Suddenly alert, she stands. Something has changed! A huge column of black rises from a mountain on the horizon. The sky turns orange.

       A bove the usual trumpets and snorts of hundreds of her fellow creatures feeding, nesting, and foraging nearby she can hear a strange sound — a faint thunder-like reverberation. The noise grows louder. The earth trembles.

       Deep within her consciousness the mother recognizes danger, but the menace is not familiar. She moves closer to her nest and uses her snout to nudge the leaves and twigs over the eggs, then raises her head and swivels her slender neck slowly. Her huge eyes in outwardly projecting sockets scan the landscape in every direction. Nothing seems out of place — only the changing colour of the sky, the rumbling noise, and the slight tremors of the earth.

       Other animals are on the alert now. Heads are up. For a moment all is silent except for the squeaks and cries of hungry hatchlings. The ground shakes, but the mud nest holds the eggs securely in place. Rolling booms intermingle with the warning cries of animals. A gust of wind carries the smell of sulphur.

       CHAPTER 1

      Adam Zapotica knew the moment he saw the newspaper headline and article that he had to go:

      DINOSAUR NESTS FOUND ON ALBERTA’S MILK RIVER RIDGE

      Paleontologists have begun work on one of the most important discoveries in fifty years — seven clutches of Hadrosaur eggs containing perfectly preserved articulated dinosaur embryos. The eggs have been tentatively identified as those of the crested duckbill, Hypacrosaurus. These animals appear to have been nurturing parents. There is evidence that the young of the species were guarded and fed by the adults for several months after incubation.

      It was the most exciting project he could imagine: excavating nests made seventy-five million years ago by three-tonne duckbill dinosaurs. Incredibly, the egg-filled nests were in situ — in exactly the same place as when they were built. These weren’t the first eggs to be found in North America — a major nesting area had been uncovered in Montana just a year or two earlier — but these were the best because of the articulated embryos. Tiny bones and teeth and claws and tails were still connected.

      So he had to go.

      There were some problems, though. Number one: volunteers at dinosaur digs had to be at least eighteen years old, and he was only fifteen. Number two: he had a part-time job stocking shelves at the local drugstore. Number three: it was a two-day, three-hundred-kilometre bicycle ride from Calgary to Devil’s Coulee. And number four: his parents might veto the idea.

      He was pretty sure he could handle all of the problems except number one. He could trade working hours with the other part-time drugstore employee, he could work out at the gym to get in shape for the ride and arrange an overnight stop at his aunt’s house in Vulcan, and he could probably convince his parents that experience at a dinosaur dig would look great on his résumé when he was hunting for summer jobs to get himself through university.

      That still left problem number one. He wasn’t old enough. Period. And even if he were the right age, the odds against him succeeding were probably about the same as those of winning a lottery. Getting permission to go in just because he wanted to see the dinosaur eggs? Who was he kidding? There were probably thousands of people who wanted to see them, but he had to try.

      Adam tracked down Dr. James Lawson, a paleontologist who had supervised a school work experience project he’d done on the dinosaur display at the Calgary Zoo two years earlier. Lawson gave him a letter of reference, though he didn’t think it would “cut much ice,” as he put it. But the recommendation was better than nothing, and with it in hand, Adam started off in high spirits.By the afternoon of the second

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