Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton Read Free Book Online

the same result. Finally they started putting up tipis, which were larger inside, more comfortable, and more stable in wind. "These're Blackfoot tipis, built around four poles," Grant said. "Sioux tipis are built around three. But this used to be Blackfoot territory, so we thought . . ."
        "Uh-huh," Morris said. "Very fitting." He squinted at the desolate landscape and shook his head. "How long you been out here?"
        "About sixty cases," Grant said. When Morris looked surprised, he explained, "We measure time in beer. We start in June with a hundred cases. We've gone through about sixty so far."
        "Sixty-three, to be exact," Ellie Sattler said, as they reached the trailer. Grant was amused to see Morris gaping at her. Ellie was wearing cut-off jeans and a workshirt tied at her midriff. She was twenty-four and darkly tanned. Her blond hair was pulled back.
        "Ellie keeps us going," Grant said, introducing her. "She's very good at what she does."
        "What does she do?" Morris asked.
        "Paleobotany," Ellie said. "And I also do the standard field preps." She opened the door and they went inside.
        The air conditioning in the trailer only brought the temperature down to eighty-five degrees, but it seemed cool after the midday beat. The trailer had a series of long wooden tables, with tiny bone specimens neatly laid out, tagged and labeled. Farther along were ceramic dishes and crocks. There was a strong odor of vinegar.
        Morris glanced at the bones. "I thought dinosaurs were big," he said.
        "They were," Ellie said. "But everything you see here comes from babies. Snakewater is important primarily because of the number of dinosaur nesting sites here. Until we started this work, there were hardly any infant dinosaurs known. Only one nest had ever been found, in the Gobi Desert. We've discovered a dozen different hadrosaur nests, complete with eggs and bones of infants."
        While Grant went to the refrigerator, she showed Morris the acetic acid baths, which were used to dissolve away the limestone from the delicate bones.
        "They look like chicken bones," Morris said, peering into the ceramic dishes.
        "Yes," she said. "They're very bird-like."
        "And what about those?" Morris said, pointing through the trailer window to piles of large bones outside, wrapped in heavy plastic.
        "Rejects," Ellie said. "Bones too fragmentary when we took them out of the ground, In the old days we'd just discard them, but nowadays we send them for genetic testing."
        "Genetic testing?" Morris said.
        "Here you go," Grant said, thrusting a beer into his band. He gave another to Ellie. She chugged hers, throwing her long neck back. Morris stared.
        "We're pretty informal here," Grant said. "Want to step into my office?"
        "Sure," Morris said. Grant led him to the end of the trailer, where there was a torn couch, a sagging chair, and a battered endtable. Grant dropped onto the couch, which creaked and exhaled a cloud of chalky dust. He leaned back, thumped his boots up on the endtable, and gestured for Morris to sit in the chair. "Make yourself comfortable."
        Grant was a professor of paleontology at the University of Denver, and one of the foremost researchers in his field, but he had never been comfortable with social niceties. He saw himself as an outdoor man, and he knew that all the important work in paleontology was done outdoors, with your bands. Grant had little patience for the academics, for the museum curators, for what he called Teacup Dinosaur Hunters. And he took some pains to distance himself in dress and behavior from the Teacup Dinosaur Hunters, even delivering his lectures in jeans and sneakers.
        Grant watched as Morris primly brushed off the seat of the chair before he sat down. Morris opened his briefcase, rummaged through his papers, and glanced back at Ellie, who was lifting bones with tweezers from the acid bath at