Entries From Douglas A. Lawson's Private Journal

Preface

In 1971, Douglas A. Lawson - paleontologist and at the time a graduate student at UT Austin - made a discovery that would revolutionize our understanding of the evolution of flight. The following excerpts from his private journal have survived time and oblivion, and are revealed to the public for the very first time.

Maastrichtian Javelina Formation, Big Bend National Park, TX, USA.

July 4th, 1971.

TODAY I CELEBRATE!

Our compatriots may be reveling in the Independence Day's festivities, but here at the formation, an even larger historical event is unfolding. I have unearthed a fossil unlike any the team has seen before. What's left of the forearms of an unusually large Late Cretaceous specimen was embedded in a sandstone outcropping.

I believe it belongs to some kind of pterosaur. 68 million years old, and a veritable testimony to the great passing of time! The 4th of July has suddenly become a brand new hallmark in the history of our planet.

July 29th, 1971.

Judith, Langston's brat, almost RUINED a new piece of the puzzle! I was finishing to prep what I believe to be the tip of my pterosaur's wing (an elongated fourth finger, from the looks of it) and all it took was a minute away from the outcropping to sharpen my chisel before the last blow, for the horrible 2-year old to rip the fossil out with her own careless fingers and stick it in the mouth of her guinea pig, Trevor. I heard the pet was a birthday gift from her mom, which I find highly inappropriate for such a capricious, selfish toddler. I swear, she's doing it on purpose, either to give me a heart attack or to murder her pet, or both…

If I were her dad, she wouldn't have gotten away with this! I know the divorce is hitting him hard, but still I wish Langston hadn't brought his imp with him to the excavation site. This is no place for a toddler, or a pet guinea pig for that matter.

August 13th, 1971.

There is a strange sound coming from a cave near the formation. I say cave, but really it's more like a hole, a dig. We couldn't go in to check what it was, because the entrance to is only large enough for a dog to get in. Langston said to leave it. I think there must be some predator living there, a cougar or maybe a Mexican bear, female if they're to fit in the small hole. Two days ago, I found at the entrance what looked to be the remains of some decent-sized bird, which looked eerily like an Avisaurus, except it wasn't a fossil. We're not butchers here, so I misused my small chisel (the 38mm one) to carefully remove still fresh flesh from the bones and have a good look at them. Jerry couldn't determine the species.

August 27th, 1971.

If my calculations are correct, the full wingspan of my specimen should be around 40ft long! I can barely fathom it! How massive that species must have been! I wish I had found the full wing, so that Langston would stop making fun of my imaginative paleotonlogy, or "paleo-poetry" as he calls it. He claims that no living creature this big would be able to take flight, but I'm 99% sure that's about the wingspan of my pterosaur. I can almost picture its shadow gliding over the Late Cretaceous plains, terrorizing lesser clades, dinosaurs and mosasaurs alike!

——————————————————————————————–

Jackson School of Geosciences, UT Austin.

September 3rd, 1971.

Had to go back to UTA to teach Langston's undergrads. The Late Paleozoic Glaciation, how boring. Teaching isn't exactly my forte, but it comes hand in hand with research, or so I'm told.

Meanwhile, Langston's still back at the excavation, stealing my thunder. This is the worst! I can't wait for this semester to be over so that I can go back to the formation.

PS: Judith's wandering fingers better not get anywhere near my fossil until I get back. I'm told she'll be sent back to her mom's soon, thank god!

October 22nd, 1971.

I talked with Prof. Willston about my pterosaur, and convinced him to have a look at my approximations. He was unconvinced at first, doubting like Langston that a flying creature could ever be that large, but after three weeks of back and forth, he has come to admit that this pterosaur is larger than any other flying creature, though his own simulations spit out a more modest estimate of 34 ft. We've come up with one or two theories of how flight could be possible in this case, but none of them coincide with modern-day bird flight mechanics. See my lab log for the possible explanations and their respective predictions. We'll need more than just forearms to falsify them. When I get back to the formation, I'll dig into a larger perimeter: with just enough luck, we might find a second specimen…

December 12th, 1971.

Yet another Christmas I'll be spending away from the family and in the lab instead. I don't mind so much, it's quite nice to enjoy the campus while all the students are away. I have more time to work on my theory of giant fliers, as I call them, without being distracted every other minute by a student knocking on my office door with a question.

December 23rd, 1971.

I must say, I am grateful I'm not the only graduate student sticking around campus over the holidays. Quiet is nice for a time, but after a while I need a minimum of human interaction or I start talking to my Fortran code. That's why they give us roommates on campus, I'm sure.

Yesterday, Sander spent the night explaining to me his new project idea, and it was a welcome distraction from my impossible flight simulations. Apparently, Einstein stated that time travel could be possible under some circumstances I didn't quite understand. Sander's all excited by relativity theory and the perspective of exploring some probabilities behind the existence of time-traveling portals and their spontaneous birth. Sounds more like fiction than science to me, but he's the physicist. I'm so glad I chose geology for my undergrad.

January 14th, 1972.

Grading papers is THE WORST. But here's a silver lining: in a little under a month, I'll finally be back at the formation, digging for more revolutionary fossils!

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Maastrichtian Javelina Formation, Big Bend National Park, TX, USA.

February 27th, 1972.

The excavation is looking good, Lawson and the team have made great progress in my absence. When I came back, they needed my help to identify some sauropod fossils they found North East of the sandstone outcropping. It's an Alamosaurus front leg, which one year ago I would have considered a great discovery. Now all I can think about is finding more giant pterosaur fossils.

Langston seems a bit disinterested in the whole affair these days, maybe because Judith has been back in Atlanta with her mom for some time now. It will be a short-lived respite for me however, as I understand she'll be back here next week already.

March 2nd, 1972.

Gary told me he found more strange remains by the cave. I'll go check it out again when I get a little time away from the excavation.

March 12th, 1972.

I found a half eaten cougar by the cave yesterday evening. A COUGAR! Whatever dwells in that hole must be more dangerous than I'd first imagined. It gave me nightmares all night, some strange mix of Planet of The Apes (Sander and I watched the film over Christmas) and revived fossils; I woke up earlier than the rest of the team and, armed of my lamp torch and my largest chisel, raided the cave. That is, I tried to. The entrance must be made of metamorphic rock because even my hard 60mm masonry chisel couldn't make so much as a dent into it. So I just sat there, watching the sun rise, unable to enlarge the hole to get in yet unable to turn away from the cave. Hot hair blew from inside, and with it came the heavy scent of earth after a thunder - it reminded me of our cycas-lined summer house from when I was little. From time to time, I thought I heard the animal itself, down there in its dwelling, sometimes bird-like, sometimes a roar, although now I think I must've dozed off and dreamed again.

I'm telling Langston he should keep his progeny away from that zone. Always wandering around, this one, and though she does bite occasionally, little Judith ain't no cougar.

April 1st, 1972.

THIS IS NOT A PRANK! I found 3 more specimen 25mi down from the first site! THREE! It's definitely the same species as my pterosaur (which I now call specimen 0) although Langston insists we excavate the new site before jumping to conclusions.

I just hope Judith won't get a hold of whatever bones we dig out to "feed" Trevor. I've been nervous ever since Langston brought her back from Atlanta. We actually might have a chance to assemble a full skeleton this time, and I can't bear the idea of her messing with our findings… Mark me, she hasn't been wandering around the active excavations so much lately, thank god!

I hope Langston heeded me and forbade her to go near the cave. I wonder if the predator's still dwelling there?

April 5th, 1972.

Went back to the cave today, I can't stop wondering what in Big Bend Park is mad enough to prey on a cougar. First experiment: to try and find out what else that thing eats.

I couldn't catch anything other than a sickly lizard, so I took Judith's guinea pig, Trevor, out of his cage, and sent him in the hole. Trevor's been subjected by Judith to a drastic treatment alternating between spans of intense squeezing and smoldering, then utter neglect and near-starvation. I'm always the one who ends up changing his fodder and litter. So I decided I was doing him a favor - ending his misery, in a way. Besides, it's all for Science: I want - nay, need - to know who's dwelling in the cave.

Alas, the experiment was short-lived: Trevor trotted back to camp after what must've been all of fifteen minutes in the cave, unscathed.

Tomorrow I'll try again with something bigger, and hopefully more appetizing than Trevor.

April 6th, 1972.

I caught an iguana unawares, basking in the sun on a big rock by the second excavation, and dropped it into the cave hole, just to see. The goal was to get bite marks to identify what's down there. When I went back in the evening, there was a disgusting pellet of bones and skin and flesh spewed out at the entrance, but no identifiable bite mark. I think the cave dweller is using that hole as a bone yard, a trash bin of sorts to keep the inside of its cave clean.

April 22nd, 1972.

The skeleton of specimen 1.1 is taking shape. I ran the calculations again on this one, this time extrapolating from Pterodactylus antiquus, and I am more than ever convinced that this species was massive. Prof. Willston is as excited as I am in his fax messages. We have ourselves a veritable dragon, except this one actually roamed our Earth and not only myths! We still cannot explain how a species this big could fly, but I have no doubt that once I've completed all the new skeletons, we will have a clearer idea of the mechanics.

May 8th, 1972.

I'm sending Trevor back to the cave again, except this time I'll stick around to make sure he stays in. The chubby guinea pig has lost Judith's favor (Langston successfully bought her affection with a Baby Alive doll, much easier to take care of than the live animal), so she won't notice if he's not in his little home.

***

Well, this didn't quite go as expected. I did send Trevor down the cave, he didn't show any particular reluctance then, poor thing, rather he wrinkled his tiny muzzle at me quizzically before heading straight for the hole. This time I thought ahead and tethered him to my hand with kitchen twine: if anything, I told myself, I'd know how deep and large the cave was. Trevor's first steps in were exploratory: the twine went loosely this way and that, following the pet's meandering. Quickly however, he started going straighter, quicker, faster than I've ever seen the lazy pet trot, until the twine snapped taught. I almost let go of it just then. Something was pulling at the tether, and it wasn't Trevor: it was much stronger. I started regretting sending the little thing in there, and tried to pull him back. At the other end, something pulled even harder. The cave's breath got hotter and louder then, so much I drenched my last clean shirt in sweat and almost let go of the tether to cover my ears.

Eventually, the twine snapped.

I can't believe I'm writing this down, but since no-one will ever read this… I cried over the half bit of twine I could recover. Not because my experiment failed once again, but because I thought I'd lost chubby Trevor to my own folly.

I don't know how long I stayed by the entrance of the cave, gripping the broken twine like a life line, but after a while Trevor re-emerged, like nothing happened. Well, not exactly. As I cuddled the stupid thing into my lap and teared up all over it, I noticed the limp foreleg, and the full-body trembling. His fur has grayed a little too, but maybe that's just my imagination running wild after all the emotion. One thing is certain: even after I'd put him back to the safety of his little guinea pig house, he kept trembling, so I took it upon myself to keep him in my cot. Judith won't notice anyways, engrossed that she is with the doll.

May 29th, 1972.

Trevor has been struggling to digest his hay, so I've been mixing it with fresh grass, using limestone as a mortar and my 38mm chisel as a pestle. He's slowly starting to look better, though he's still got a slight limp on the left foreleg. We've both been ignoring the cave since the incident, instead diving back head first into a strict sleep schedule for Trevor, and a strict work schedule for myself.

As we dig up other fossils, other species, on the second excavation site, I am starting to get a clearer picture of my discovery's feeding habits and its biotic community. And at the risk of paraphrasing Aristotle, the more I know, the more I realize I don't know. As it turns out, these giant fliers were creatures of the Late Cretaceous FOREST ecosystem, feeding and most likely dwelling there. How incredible is that? So now, on top of the mystery of how these pterosaurs managed to fly at all, I am left with the extra puzzle of how they managed to hunt their prey under dense canopy in spite of their bulky wings. Everything comes back to that species' astonishing body size, over and again. How could such giant fliers have ever existed?

June 21st, 1972.

As skeleton 1.1 nears completion, everything converges to confirm my early wingspan calculations for specimen 0. Specimen 1.1, slightly smaller, still reaches an impressive 31ft. I'm prepared to bet 1.2 and 1.3 will both show similar results, but Langston insists I complete them too before drawing any conclusions. He says he doesn't want to rule out specimen 0 as an anomaly, an outlier in a species of much more realistic proportions, but I know him. He just doesn't want to admit he was wrong when his graduate student was right. That's okay though, all that's left to do is to chisel out small insets from the upper vertebrae and skull, assemble them to the rest of the skeleton and compute size estimates, and then Langston will finally have no choice but yield before hard facts.

June 30th 1972.

Judith's disappeared. Whole camp's gone looking for her. I thought to stay behind, keep the excavation going (we're on fossil 1.2, a tricky one, stuck in limestone)… But that was before I discovered she'd taken Trevor with her! It must be it, because Trevor never leaves my cot since the cave incident. Why she's suddenly rekindled her interested in my little friend, beats me! It's like she's doing it on purpose, just to spite me! So I'm joining the search.

July 1st, 1972.

Came back empty handed again. Langston's turning more somber by the hour, and it's wearing out on the whole team. I'm trying to stay hopeful, for the sake of Trevor. Not much time to write, going back out there.

July 2nd, 1972.

Still no sign of Judith or Trevor. Langston looking grim. Roped Gary and a few of the interns into coming with me to look around the cave tomorrow, just in case. I'll bring my full field kit, might come in handy… Or not.

July 3rd, 1972.

We found her body, or rather, what's left of it. I sickened at the sight. It was at the cave bone yard, of course. The girl did have a knack to slip her fingers where she shouldn't have. Of Trevor however, no sign.

Langston's gone to catch his flight to Atlanta. His ex-wife must hate him even more now… I knew he shouldn't have brought the kid with him.

July 4th, 1972.

How long can a guinea pig survive in arid wilderness? Four days was probably stretching it, but I just couldn't give up on Trevor. How stupid is that? So I went to the cave again, with my strongest masonry chisel (60mm), rope, water and a handful of fragrant hay. I thought he must hungry. I didn't think much farther. Of course I couldn't get in anymore than before, however stubbornly I hit the hammer on the chisel. But I was determined to save my furry friend from the cave if he'd been trusting enough to follow Judith down there. So desperate, I plunged my whole arm inside the hole, and my head followed. Shoulders and chest prevented me from going further, thank god. It was dark and warm as an oven in there. I groped and shuffled dirt around, as if my hand would miraculously stumble upon Trevor on its own. That's when the cave groped back.

At first, it was a gentle pull, little more than a water stream guiding my hand. But then something must've opened, as hot hair blew up my sleeve. And just like that, soft fur caressed the length of my arm up to my neck, tiny paws trampled my cheek, and Trevor's characteristic smell filled my nostrils. I had found him, and now we could go back together to camp, safe and sound, or so I thought.

I managed to slip my free hand in to cradle Trevor and let him out of the cave, before starting to back up the hole myself. The cave had other plans.

Head still fully in, I tried to reclaim my hand from the hole when for the first time, I heard the cave's anger clearly: not roars, as I'd first thought, but shrieks, terrifying ones, sounds from another world. My arm got snatched by the darkness, and the tugging resumed, getting stronger by the second. I tried to withdraw, but it was too late: my bones started breaking. First my fingers snapped, one by one, then my elbow twisted in a direction I couldn't see, but certainly didn't feel natural. I strained as hard as I could to get out of the hell hole; my shoulder dislocated.

Next would be my neck, I knew it. The pull would not stop, however much strength I could muster, and the rock would not break, so it was my body that had to give way. If I didn't find a way to free myself soon, I was going to die, defeated by a cave of all things. To think I chose paleontology because the monsters we dig up don't bite back… All while I screamed, I couldn't stop thinking about my ongoing excavation, my pterosaur. I was vaguely aware of Trevor whimpering outside the cave, shaking madly between my good hand and my hip.

That same hip to which my 60mm masonry chisel was clipped, the one that could break flesh and bone as easily as rocks.

I reached for the chisel.

Postface

Quetzalcoatlus, since its discovery by Lawson in 1971, has long been thought to be the largest flying creature known to have lived, until measurements of another pterosaur's skull (Hatzegopteryx) introduced a strong contender to the throne. Still, with a wingspan going up to 36 feet, even the albatross - the largest extant flying animal with a strong 11 feet - pales in comparison to that giant flier. If you want to know more about giant fliers, you can watch Flying Monsters 3D by Sir David Attenborough. Lawson himself makes an appearance in that documentary!

Note to the reader

This story is a true story, but only in part. Yes, Quetzalcoatlus northropi was indeed a real life dragon of sorts, discovered in 1971 by Dr Douglas A. Lawson with Prof. Wann Langston, Jr. However, the story you've just read is pure fiction beyond that. Among other things, the personalities of all the characters, as well as Judith the toddler, are pure figments of my imagination, as is the phantasmagorical cave. I hope you'll sleep better tonight knowing this.

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