The Valley

It was a strange and eerie place, one that made us feel as though we had stepped through a window in time that sent us back to a time when man wasn't at the top of the food chain, a time in which the animals ruled the earth. What made it worse was the fact that a lot of the light was being blocked out by the enormous trees and the dense vegetation, which greatly lowered our visibility. It was a damp, leafy world of the carboniferous coal forest, much like our modern tropical forests, with lush, tangled foliage and a steamy atmosphere.

We no longer needed the footprints to follow this strange creature, we could see the trail in the trees and underbrush, tree limbs were broken as high as fifteen to sixteen feet above the ground and the brush was trampled down, what could this be?

"Greg, your the expert, what's your opinion of this."

"I don't know, I've came across a lot of strange things in the past, but this is here and now, this is real life."

"Give me your best guess then," I told him.

"Well, the tracks look like the ones made by a Velociraptor, a long legged dinosaur with grasping hands and is suppose to be as tall as thirteen or fourteen feet, but it didn't grow quite tall enough to break those limbs. What ever it is, you can say just its real big."

"What's the chances of it being dangerous."

"Uh, maybe sixty to one, there were a lot of different types of dinosaurs, some stuck strictly to eating the vegetation and some were ferocious meat eaters."

"Well in that case, we better find the others and get out of here, we would be much safer back at the cavern, at least until we find out what we're dealing with."

"I think you may be right, but I want to come back and take a look at the creature."

O.k. by me, lets go."

We continued to our trek deeper into the forest, but we were finding it more and more difficult to keep our bearings of where we were at, if we managed to get ourselves lost, we could be in real trouble.

It was beautiful here, there were topical flowers and vegetation that neither of us had ever seen, the flowers were in a rainbow of colors that would make any florist envious. Greg kept wanting to stop and take samples, he didn't seem much concerned with the dangers that lurked ahead. I had to keep reminding him of the urgency at hand, find the others and get back to the safety of the cavern.

Suddenly we heard a loud noise getting closer, the ground began to tremble, we ducked into the surrounding brush just in time to hide ourselves from something truly amazing. We couldn't believe we were actually seeing this.

"Greg, "what the hell is that"?

"I don't believe it", he replied, "That's is an Iguanodon, a herbivorous biped dinosaur, ate mainly leaves and other vegetation, see the small forelimbs with long thumbs, those will later evolve into spikes, at least we think they will. It's been extinct for over sixty-five million years, how can it be, how could it have survived all these years"?

"Is it dangerous," I asked him.

"I don't think so, at least that's what we have always thought, it is supposed to be a vegetarian."

"Good, we'll just let it pass and continue looking for the others."

As the Iguanodon passed by it was unbelievable, the size of it. It must have been at least twenty feet tall and about thirty feet long, it was a big sucker. Maybe this was what had made the footprints and the rest of our team wasn't in danger after all, but regardless of whether it was the one following them or not, we still didn't have an explanation for the other set of tracks we found.

Jeff was sure that this is the creature that made those prints, but if that thing has survived all these years, then there probably other types of dinosaurs roaming around with it, and that they might not be so friendly.

As we continued to dredge through the broken underbrush and the fallen tree limbs, we came upon a huge rock formation. Looking around we could see a small opening that was partially hidden by brush. Carefully we started easing our way through the opening when suddenly stopped, we could hear what sounded to be voices.

"Hello," I yelled, "is anyone in there."

"Bill," a voice answered back, "are we ever glad to see you."

It was the voice of Sam, he explained how they had decided to explore the forest. While they were trying to cut a trail through this dense area, they heard the scream of some sort of animal.