Free Dinosaur Lake by Kathryn Meyer Griffith Page A

animals. They like that.”
    Inside the house, Henry led his guest into the kitchen. Flicking on the overhead light, he motioned Justin to the table. He started a pot of coffee, pulled out two mugs, sugar and cream, and carried them to the table as the java perked.
    Justin placed the stack of books and the box lunches on the table and slouched into a chair. “Last night after you left I remembered what had been bugging me about those tracks.” He had his lunch open and was devouring it as if he hadn’t eaten in days, talking between bites.
    “What?”
    “I’ve seen the tracks or something similar to them before in a book.” His glasses slid down his nose and he used a greasy finger to shove them upward in an unconscious gesture. He put the cheeseburger down and picked up a book with a strip of torn paper marking a place, and opened it.
    “I’ve studied so many dinosaurs and their habits. My favorites have always been the prehistoric sea and water creatures. I’m fascinated by the myth of Scotland’s Loch Ness monster. I’ve read everything published about Nessie and the sightings. I’ve even spent time on the Loch searching for it. Unfortunately, I never got a glimpse. But it’s made me an expert on the water breeds.”
    That’s it. He thinks he’s got a Loch Ness monster here , Henry ruminated. Good thing I didn’t tell him what I thought I saw in the water last night. He’d be camped out on the lake waiting for it right now.
    “Here.” Justin held the book out to him.
    Henry looked at the open pages. There were artist’s drawings of dinosaurs from different angles and close-ups of their limbs and feet. He was surprised to feel the same thrill of pleasure he’d experienced as a kid when he’d look at a drawing of a dinosaur. One footprint caught his eye immediately. It did look somewhat like the tracks they’d seen last night. Somewhat. Not exactly.
    As if reading Henry’s mind, Justin revealed, “I got a better look at them yesterday than you. That’s it, kind of, except the ones I found were a little different and much bigger. They had an extra webbed claw. From the depth of the imprints I’d guess that the beast that made them was quite large and heavy.”
    Nothosaur, the copy blurb under the footprint illustrations and beside the first picture described, was a marine reptile that flourished in the Triassic times. It could grow to over twenty feet in length and had a back fin and webbed feet. Water dweller. Triassic period.
    On the facing page, Justin had marked another illustration. Allosaurus. Probably had a large skull and might have been equipped with dozens of large, sharp teeth . It averaged 28 feet in length, though fragmentary remains suggest it could have reached over 39 feet. Relative to the large and powerful hind limbs, its three-fingered forelimbs were small, and the body was balanced by a long, heavy tail. It is classified as an allosaurid , a type of carnosaurian theropod dinosaur. Land dweller. Jurassic period.
    Henry examined both of the creature’s drawings. The Allosaurus had a long snake-like neck and huge gaping jaws full of razor-sharp teeth. Big head for such a slender neck. Fat slick reptilian body with stubby short legs also ended in webbed, almost clawed, feet.
    “My fellow paleontologists now believe that Nothosaurs were warm-blooded mammals, and not actually dinosaurs. A powerful swimmer who preferred cooler water, it was probably a ferocious predator that often went after other marine animals, especially short and long-necked Plesiosaurs, if it was hungry enough. It was one formidable, mean creature.”
    “Triassic was even earlier than the Jurassic period, right?”
    “It was.” Justin inclined his head. “But, none of that matters. I don’t believe the tracks we discovered actually belonged to either of those species in this book. Not totally anyway. They’re something like them, but not. Whatever made those prints is a mutant, big time, a more highly