Where are the Dinosaurs?
300 Million Years Ago
As Zack and Alice walked on, the green plants on the edge of the sea grew taller and spread inland over the rocks. It became harder to walk near the water as the vegetation grew thicker, so they headed inland. A forest began to grow up around them and before long they were walking in a silent green world of strange fernlike plants and towering trees with broad leaves that blocked out the sky above them. It was dark in the forest.
"Where are the dinosaurs?" asked Zack, peering into the shadows.
"We're not in the dinosaur time yet," replied his sister. "This is the Carboniferous period. We should see some insects soon, though." That last statement was followed by a wide grin.
"I don't know . . . " said Zack doubtfully. He knew his sister really liked bugs. She let the spiders crawl on her hands and she talked to them like other people talked to babies. She had walked into the playground on her first day of kindergarten with a cicada riding on her shoulder. Zack wasn't nearly that comfortable with bugs. Last summer he had squished more than a few, because it made his sister cry, and that was worth a few minutes entertainment on a slow summer afternoon.
The ground was getting softer and water seeped up from the moss, soaking their sneakers. In the distance something splashed.
"Dinosaurs?" asked Zack again, hurrying forward. He was getting tired of walking, but he wanted to see the dinosaurs.
Suddenly something huge came buzzing out of a clump of ferns straight toward them. Zack cried out in surprise and threw his arms up over his face. It passed close over their heads, wings beating the air.
"It's a dragonfly!" shouted Alice in delight.
Zack started to cry a little. He'd been badly startled. Whatever it was had been larger than he was. "I don't want a dragon!"
"No silly, that was an insect. A dragon-FLY. Just like the little ones we saw at the park last summer. Only, bigger."
Zack sniffled, rubbed his face on the front of his shirt, and looked around. They were near the edge of a small creek now, and he could see insects of all shapes and sizes buzzing around the water. A spindly-legged spider spun its web in a clump of reeds. A tiny snail made its slimy slow way up the bank. A flat brown thing with a smooth beetle-like shell and long antennae launched itself suddenly from a branch and beat its way over to a log that just as suddenly sprouted legs and slid down into the water with hardly a ripple. The bug launched itself back into the air and landed near the children.
"Aw, look at the cute little cockroach . . . " cooed Alice.
"That's not little," objected Zack.
"It is compared to all the other insects around here - look at that centipede!" Alice pointed to something trundling away into the trees on the other side of the creek. It looked big enough to be someone's couch, except of course it had all those legs.
Zack tugged on Alice's arm, "C'mon!"
She was still looking at the cockroach which seemed to be preparing to launch itself into the air again, as it unfurled two see-through pairs of wings from under its brown wing covers. "Maybe it's a baby cockroach!"
"C'mon!"
Alice finally started walking backwards, waving, "Bye-bye, baby cockroach! Take care!"
A lizard suddenly ran across the path at their feet and Alice's attention was diverted.
"Hey, Zack," she pulled him ahead. "Maybe we can find a Microsaur!"
"Is that a dinosaur?"
"No, it's actually an ancestor of the dinosaurs. It was a little creature that laid its eggs in the water, but lived on the land. 'Micro' means tiny and 'saur' means lizard. So it's called the 'tiny lizard', even though it isn't really a lizard. It's more like an amphibian, because they live on the land and lay their eggs in the water, while real lizards do everything on land. They lay their eggs there, everything."
But the Microsaur must have been hiding that day, or else they ran past it in Time, because suddenly the trees opened up and the children found themselves looking down into a broad flat river plain which was dotted with the shapes of many huge sail-backed beasts.
"Dinosaurs!" shouted Zack happily.
But Alice said, "No, those aren't dinosaurs. Not yet!"
They sure looked like dinosaurs. They were as big as cows and horses, but fatter and with short stubby legs. Many of them had tall flat sails sticking up out of their backs, just like the dinosaurs in Zack's picture books. Others had frills around their necks, also like dinosaurs. One even had a long neck and tail and looked a little like the toy dinosaur Zack's Daddy had bought for him the last time they went to McDonald's.
"These aren't dinosaurs," said Alice, again. "We're in the Permian Period now and these are the ancestors, the great grand-daddies of dinosaurs. You wait until we get to the real dinosaurs. These guys look pretty big, but the real dinosaurs are HUGE."
"Ok," said Zack. "I want to see the real dinosaurs, then. Let's go!" And he started off running down the slope into the river valley, with Alice scrambling to keep up. She definitely did not want to be left behind in time!