The Bone Wars

"A remarkable combination of incredible scientific detail and convincing fabrication. History buffs and dinosaur devotees will find much to love in this science-based thriller." —Booklist

Rome, A.D. 306. Emperor Constantine converts the Roman Empire to Christianity. Over the next two decades, his armies destroy pagan idols across Europe and the Middle East.

England, A.D. 1830. Paleontologist Mary Anning writes to Sir Richard Owen, describing a fossil that she discovered in the cliffs of Lyme-Regis. She writes that the fossil is a large wing made of black bone.

Montana, A.D. 2023. Sixteen-year-old Molly Wilder discovers a mysterious fossil while on a summer internship. The fossil has a large wing structure, horned skull, and black bones. Neither famed fossil-hunter Derek Farnsworth nor renowned paleontologist Dr. Sean Oliphant can place it in a recognized dinosaur family.

For 65 million years, the Badlands of Montana have held a secret hidden in their depths...

Five thousand feet below me, situated in huge layers of rocks, pebbles, and sand—slammed together by heat, pressure, and time—is a treasure. A rare treasure, actually. One that can be overlooked if you don’t know what you’re searching for. It’s the kind of treasure that people will kill for.

Fossils.

Those of the dinosaur ilk, more precisely.

Okay, I don’t know for sure if anyone has actually murdered for dinosaur fossils. I do know that plenty of people have gotten hurt looking for them. Dehydration or sunstroke can easily kill you, and baby rattlesnakes don’t announce themselves before they strike. People also fall down slopes, gashing themselves on sharp rocks and breaking bones as they tumble down into gullies. And cell phone reception is non-existent, so just imagine walking miles in the hot sun with a broken leg, bleeding out your side.

But for dinosaur fossils, it’s worth it all.

Unless you’re living under a huge rock, you probably know that dinosaurs, a.k.a the Dinosauria, were crazy strange beasts that walked the earth millions of years ago. Of course you do. Children around the world can recite their names as easily as they can their own.

Triceratops.

Stegosaurus.

Tyrannosaurus rex.

Yet as much as we know about them, Dinosaurs are really still an ancient mystery. A huge, million-year puzzle we’re putting together piece by piece. The search for dinosaurs has drawn in all sorts of people over the years, each for their own reasons. Like those Indiana Jones types, complete with cowboy hats and cocky attitudes. For them, it’s about the hunt, the thrill of the chase. The moment when they can hold up their hand to the world and say “hey look at this really cool fossil I’ve found!” And get that pat on the back. To go viral on the internet.

See for me, it’s a bit different. While the hunt is all fine and good, it’s really about something else. Something deeper. The endgame of finding that new, revolutionary fossil. That glimpse back into a past we can now only understand through bones I’ve pulled from their burial place in the earth. A truth hidden right under our feet.

I lean my head against my window and look down through the cloudless sky towards the ground. Even on a plane thousands of feet in the sky, I can see Glasgow. It’s a small city, nothing like San Francisco. From way up here, it’s a gray-and-black sprawl.

Around it are some mounds and depressions, curving, spindling lines carved into the land by water over eons. At this point, I can picture them with my eyes closed, because we’ve been circling for what feels like eons. I squirm in my seat, desperate to be on the ground.

I steal a glance towards the only other passenger on the plane, the flight attendant.

“Oh look, it’s our VIP!” She’d chirped when I arrived at the gate. She immediately led me onto the tarmac and up the stairs to the plane. I guess even when you’re the only passenger, keeping on schedule is paramount. She’s sitting across from me to balance out the weight of the plane, not because she wants to keep me company. For someone who is managing a sunrise flight from Billings to Glasgow, she’s pretty chipper.

“Any moment now,” she says, catching my eye, her voice light. She points a perfectly manicured nail towards my window. “Probably a cow delay.”

Okay, I’ll bite. “Cow delay?” I ask. Laughing at my disbelief, she takes a swig of coffee and leans back in her seat. It creaks with the effort. “Old Mike Spencer’s ranch shares a fence line with the airport. He’s terrible at keeping it up. His cows get on the tarmac now and then...” She shrugs. “More pop?”

I shake my head, and I lift my plastic cup filled with Diet Coke. I rattle it, causing the ice to dance and splash. Using my thumb, I gently traces small arches in the condensation that is gathering on its side. After a few moments, I add some triangles to the arches, and they look like dinosaur teeth. T-Rex teeth, actually. Long, with a sharp point designed to impale flesh with sickening ease. With my nail I add little lines along one of its sides to make it look like it’s got serrations. The perfect tool for slicing and dicing.

I feel my body shift a bit; we’re turning again, and as we do the plane suddenly moves upwards violently, causing me to lurch up and my seatbelt to dig into my lap.

“You okay, young lady?” I turn back to her and give her a strained smile. Since I boarded the plane, she’s been giving me that look people give me when they see I’m alone. Especially way out here.

“I’m good,” I reply. Turning away to avoid further conversations, I look out the window again. Above us, the sun beams down, causing our little plane to create a shadow below. When I was little, I had this silly dream whenever I saw plane shadows, I thought the shadow was caused by a giant pterosaur. The flying reptiles that lived alongside dinosaurs. Some had a wingspan as long as a school bus and a pointed beak that could shred an 800-pound tuna, plus talons that could eviscerate a sheep. Not that there were any sheep back then.

As we fly, our shadow moves with the terrain and I see an outcropping. I press my nose against the window as if I could push myself through it down onto the ground. Outcroppings are landforms where erosion has uncovered a rock section. Usually sloping and exposed, they are great places to check for dinosaur fossils.

I close my eyes and lean back in my seat, my fingers toying with the gold ring on my leather necklace. Five-hundred years ago, this town didn’t exist. It was a vast, grassy prairie punctuated by Native American settlements and vast swaths of buffalo and pronghorn antelope. Ten-thousand years before that, this land was on the outer edge of the enormous Laurentide Ice Sheet. It was a cold, harsh world for the humans who survived on fifteen-foot tall mammoths that they hunted with nothing but stone-tipped spears. Sixty-six million years before that, this land was at the edge of the enormous Western Interior Seaway, a vast body of ocean water that divided North America. Dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus rex hunted in its forests and open areas for dinner while small mammals—including our ancestors—hid in terror at the possibility of being a part of that menu. All died, and some were buried under mud, silt, and sand. Their fleshy parts decomposed away, leaving their bones. Over time, those bones were slowly replaced with minerals.

Petrified into immortality. To become treasure.

And I’m here to hunt treasure. To be a dinosaur paleontologist.