The Great Dinosaur of 2155 or Please Don’t Eat the Paleontologist

by Mike Mayak

It was early in the Winter evening at the Carmine-Gardner Museum and the tall, silver-haired museum guide was glad this was the last group of schoolchildren for the day.

“Over here, children,” he said. “Step this way! Don’t touch that! All here? Good.”

The grade-schoolers crowded around the display. The guide indicated a small glass case where a discolored bone sat on a purple pillow.

“This bone,” he said with the dignity and drama of the Shakespearean actor he had been in his youth, “is a relic of the Plesiosaurs. Large aquatic reptiles that swam the Earth’s oceans back when there was even more ocean than there is today and who disappeared over sixty-five million years ago.”

He smiled to himself. Some of the children at least seemed interested. He went on.

“One man who could have told you much more was Professor Thomas Parker. His specialty was that bygone age of reptiles as well as the more recent ecological calamities which have altered the climate since the late Twentieth Century.”

A boy in the back row raised his hand. The guide sighed. “It means a world-wide problem that affected the weather for the worse.”

“Oh,” the boy said, lowering his hand.

“Several decades ago,” the guide said. “Professor Parker was camped-out on one of the small regions of rapidly disappearing Antarctic ice.” He paused, seeing puzzled looks. “That’s the Southern one.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, the professor, as was his want, was eating his lunch and watching what is left of the gigantic ice walls break apart and crumble when a huge chunk of ice bobbed up from below the surface, sloshing water everywhere.”

The children giggled. The guide smiled.

“In that ice, perfectly preserved, was a Plesiosaur. As the professor groped in his pockets for his trusty camera app, the ice broke open and the creature plopped into the water, shaking its head to clear it.” He paused for dramatic effect. “Yes, the Plesiosaur was alive!”

The children gasped. The guide went on.

“The Plesiosaur looked around, and sniffed the air and the Professor was typing out a note to himself that such reptiles had, or rather, have a sense of smell when the creature lunged at him!”

More gasps from the kids.

“The Plesiosaur’s long neck had stretched out but in another instant it slipped back into the water, turning to spit out something and then it swam away.”

The guide was satisfied. The story had produced the desired effect: looks of awe.

“And Parker’s papers and this relic were donated to our museum.”

One of the kids raised her hand.

“But Mr. Wells, if the Plesiosaur escaped and so did Professor Parker, whose bone is that?”

Museum guide Wells smiled. “This, if you didn’t know, was part of Professor Parker’s lunch on that fateful day. Look closely.” Mr. Wells pointed at the bone. “And you can see the tooth marks from a living relic of sixty-five million years ago.”

—end—