Paradeisia: Origin of Paradise by B.C.CHASE Read Free Book Online

you want to know more, but you have not learned enough yet to form an opinion or belief, and you don't find it to be worth your time.  You are lazy, qey sera sera, that is all.
    “Eighth group: The implications of these 'psychic phenomena' frighten you so much that you refuse to ascribe reality to them despite being knowledgeable enough to know better.  You are in denial.  Take Richard Dawkins as an archetypal example of this.”
    He sipped some water, then continued, “In the ninth group, you are unaware, and therefore have yet to form an opinion.  Less than one percent of the population can honestly claim to be in this group.
    “If you are in group six, if you are a skeptic, I am now speaking to you.  I was also in group six.  I believed psychic phenomena were fodder for the weak-minded.
    “One day, eleven years ago, I had an experience that changed my mind.  It was the worst experience of my life, and it forced me to move into group seven; I now want to know more.  I will now relate what happened to me that induced this change.”
     
     
    Gobi Desert, Mongolia
     
    His fingers trembling with fury, Doctor Ming-Zhen growled, “This is a scientific excavation, not a party.”
    Jia Ling backed away from Chao, her head down, “Yes, Ming-Zhen jiàoshòu.  Sorry, we are just so excited.”
    Doctor Ming-Zhen nodded, “I'm sure you are.”  At least even if Chao didn't have any sense, his Jia Ling apparently yet retained some of her faculties.  He straightened his shoulders, “Now, let's see what else we can find.”
    The skeleton was lying belly up, as if it had rolled onto its back when it died.  They dug down past the coracoids to the upper ribs, and were now busy clearing out the chest cavity.  Doctor Ming-Zhen was eager to see if the spine was there, because if it was they could trace it up to the head.
    Most complete dinosaur skeletons that had been found exhibited opisthotonus, or the “death pose.”  Heads thrown back, tails raised up, as if in agony, the “death pose” occurred in any creatures that died of brain damage, asphyxiation, or drowning, including humans.
    So if they did find the head, it would probably be behind the vertebrae of the back.
    Now, though, they unexpectedly ran into a round dome-like fossil within the lower rib chamber.
    As his young students chipped away at the debris around the   domed fossil, Doctor Ming-Zhen watched closely to be sure they didn't damage it.  They were using dental picks and brushes, but fossils were very delicate and you couldn't be too careful.
    It was definitely a domed skull from something; most likely the deinocheirus' last meal.  This was exciting because it could reveal something about the extinct creature's diet, but at this moment he couldn't remotely identify what it was from.
    They continued to work, and by the time the forward facing eye sockets, nasal cavity, and top row of teeth were revealed, the truth was so obvious that Jia Ling dropped her pick with a sudden gasp, pulling away in revulsion.
    Evident even to an untrained eye, this was the skull of a mammal, a primate.  And not just any primate.  The familiar, disconcerting gaze which stared back from the gaping eye sockets conveyed the irrefutable truth to every person staring back: this was Homo sapiens.
    From his knees where he had fallen, Doctor Ming-Zhen stared at the long-dead human and was overcome with a strange horror.  Flashing through his mind was a giant, long-fingered hand clutching a man, the claws curled around to gore him through the chest, and immense jaws swooping down towards his head.
    But this was impossible, he thought.  Dinosaurs and man were separated by millions of years of evolution.
    His mind spinning, he remembered that a team of his colleagues in China had identified a cat-sized mammalian fossil that contained a tiny dinosaur in its stomach.  At the time, scientists the world over had admitted that it overturned the premise that early mammals of the