“As the plate descends, it heats up; then melting mantle mixed with melting oceanic crust rises toward the surface to form a volcano, like in Japan and Mount St. Helens. When two continental plates collide, the collision causes an upward thrust producing mountains like the Himalayas. When there’s lateral movement of two plates, stresses build up in fits and starts. When the stress gets too great, it releases quickly. We feel that as an earthquake. The greater the buildup of stress, the bigger the resulting action, the stronger the earthquake. As soon as the earthquake happens, stress starts building up again.
“With all these forces at work, pushing, pulling, colliding, you can begin to see how the earth is ceaselessly, though imperceptibly changing.”
“Talk about that.”
“My favorite part. For a time it was all fused together. One mega continent comprised of all Earth’s land. As a matter of fact, stick around. Computer models tracking continental shift predict they’ll come closer together again in another one hundred fifty to two hundred million years, then split apart. Over and over.”
“So it never holds in one place?”
“Never. The geologist who first proposed the supercontinent theory, the one way back, was Alfred Wegener. He named it Pangaea, Greek for ‘all the land.’ It wasn’t that long ago either.”
“When?” asked the WBZ radio host.
“1915.
“No, when did the Pangaea exist?”
“Oh, sorry. 1915 for Wegener’s theory. Some three hundred million years ago for Pangaea, but that wasn’t even the first supercontinent! Far from it. Go back billions of years earlier for other supercontinents. But Pangaea was significant for the way it rotated and split, then drifted apart during the Middle Jurassic period, first into two smaller supercontinents, Gondwana and Laurasia. Later, by the end of the Cretaceous period, it was beginning to look more like the map we have today.”
“And, as you said, it’s not over yet.”
“Never will be,” McCauley said.
“And we came along when?”
“I like to put it this way. Consider 4.6 billion years in terms of the second and minute hands sweeping across sixty minutes on a clock. The earth’s crust was formed in one one-hundredth of the first second of the hour. The oldest preserved rocks on the surface occurred at 10:27. The earliest fossil evidence of life, algae cells, shows up at thirteen minutes and bacteria four and a half minutes later. For the very first cells with a nucleus, jump ahead to 40:26. Look how late into the hour we are and we haven’t hit multi-celled organisms.”
“When did that begin?”
“After the fifty-one minute mark. Fish at 53:15; bugs at almost fifty-five minutes.”
“I’m getting the picture.”
“It speeds up even more, Jordan. The dinosaurs we’ve been talking about begin showing up at 57:01 on the hour clock.”
“So I have to ask. Humans?”
“Our upright ancestors around 59:58 and the first modern man—59:59.9.”
“One tenth of a second ago, Quinn?”
“Converting 4.6 billion years into an hour, yes, just one tenth of one second ago.”
Ten
McCauley wished that his teaching assistant was with him for the summer, or even just through orientation. Because DeMeo wasn’t, the first job — airport pickup — was all his. Seven students; seven different trips over two days. He didn’t look forward to repeating himself and missing the opportunity to run his dog and pony act, or as DeMeo called it, his Dilophosaurus and Pentaceratops act, for everyone at the same time. However, the multiple airport runs actually gave him the opportunity to spend individual time, quality time, with his new students. He’d tailor his group orientation differently based on knowing his cast of characters.
Every greeting started the same. The students landing at Dawson Community Airport, four miles northwest of Glendive, looked around and wondered what planet they’d landed on. Everything was dwarfed by the expanse of Big Sky country. There was no comprehensible scale to the topography.
“Incredible, isn’t it?” It was easy from there.
First came Rich Tamburro from the University of Michigan. He had a bright smile and an open face. His long, dark hair almost went to his shoulders, making him look more like a rock star than a rock hound. “You had a hell of a winter in Ann Arbor,” McCauley said using the always handy weather fallback.
Tamburro parlayed the discussion into weather patterns during the Cretaceous periods, apparently a specialty of his. McCauley was impressed. He was a great get.
The second trip, he picked up Leslie Cohen, one of two students from Penn State. She was five-seven, with shoulder-length black curly hair and a warm, open smile. She wore shorts, checkered Vans, and a university t-shirt that fit absolutely perfectly. Attractive, he thought.
Cohen noted where his eyes traveled. “Dr. McCauley, don’t think I’m concerned about getting my nails, dirty. I’m here to dig. I want this to be my life’s work.”
“Ms. Cohen, you may lead the charge.”
“Thanks. I do have a favor to ask, though.”
“Sure.”
“My boyfriend is due in an hour. He’s part of the same program.”
“Mr. Lobel?”
She nodded. “Would it be okay to wait for him?”
“Sure.”
There wasn’t much real food to purchase from the machines in the small single story terminal, so they settled on chips and water. While they waited, Cohen talked about the Penn State paleo program, one of the best in the country. The way things were going for him at Yale, he might need to look for another job.
Adam Lobel arrived on time with a guitar slung over his back. He was close to six feet tall and muscular. However, his red hair and light complexion were going to be a challenge.
“Hope you bought out SPF 50 sunblock,” McCauley said shaking his hand.
“Matter of fact, I did. And lots of hats.”
McCauley felt Lobel and Cohen seemed to complete each other; a matched pair. But they were still young. Considering the hard work ahead, the summer might be a good test of their relationship.
As they walked to the team vehicle, Cohen said that they’d prefer to bunk together as long as it didn’t cause any problems. He could divide them up any way he wanted during the day, but they hoped they’d be able to sleep together at night.
McCauley agreed, but he’d make them pitch their own tent.
Tom Trent, a solid five-feet-ten with short, cropped black hair and deep dark eyebrows, followed later in the day. The Northwestern University PhD candidate got off the plane in a burst of energy. So far, he appeared to be the most serious of the group, offering up his services as camp scribe to catalogue findings and chart progress. McCauley was more than willing to give him the job.
On day two, the first to arrive was Anna Chohany. She had bright brown eyes, light brown hair, a slim, athletic figure and a look that would never grow old. Just as he thought, the Harvard student was definitely DeMeo’s kind of woman. But his teaching assistant was off on his own quest.