EDITOR:
Naturally, after discovering a dinosaur bone, I wanted to find out more. How could I be sure it was a dinosaur bone? I went back into the zone on a Thursday like a detective looking for more clues. I arrived shortly after 11 a.m. and began working toward the center of the zone, skimming, sinking into the soft dirt. Near the middle of the zone, I decided to set up base camp. From there I inspected the grounds for anything unusual.
I came up with what appeared to be a petrified, striated fossil shaped in part like a femur - the heaviest part of the leg bone. But I couldn't be sure. Nevertheless, I brought it back to the lab to get a closer look and found out that the striations of the specimen had the same characteristics of the Haversian canals - long cylinders, pointed at both ends, where bone mineral had been dissolved and then redeposited in concentric layers.
Cut lengthwise, they resemble tiny, multi-layered electrical cables found in both dinosaurs and mammals.
Impetuously, I returned to the original discovery site and marked the spot with rocks. On my way back down I picked up a stone which looked like it may have been a bone at one time because it had numerous tiny craters in it. I couldn't be sure. Nevertheless, I kept it for reference.
As I was making my exit from the bottom of the bed, I noticed a similar looking object to the one I had discovered on Feb. 23. It was half-buried in the sand. Indeed, it was the same type of bone; for it, too, had many tiny craters and ridges like the surface of the moon.
In fact, it resembled the stone that I had previously picked up in every way except that the stone was as hard and heavy as any rock. This indicated to me that the stone may have been a bone at one time.
It doesn't take an expert to know it takes many many years for bone substance to become petrified into rock.
Therefore, I think it is conceivable that some of the rocks were once dinosaur or mammal bones.
I was streaming south on East Valley Road in utter darkness on a Tuesday night around 8 p.m. when apparently a car was about to run up on me from behind.
"Man! Turn your high beams off! Moron."
But when I looked in the mirror, there wasn't a car within miles.
Unfortunately, I didn't have time to figure out where the light was coming from since I was preoccupied with trying to get out from underneath the low cloud cover which had mysteriously moved in early on that evening.
After two days of reflecting upon that encounter, I reasoned intuitively that the light hadn't come from any car at all.
I vividly recalled that a section to the left and off to the side of the road had suddenly lit up with an intense, focused light, illuminating everything within its domain which otherwise could not be seen at night.
Dean Mark
Gardnerville
