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They walked toward the tiny head of the ani into the stegosaur&039;s mouth
Lex wrinkled her nose "This thing sure is big," she said "And smelly"
"Yes, it is" Ellie had already noticed the stegosaur had a peculiar odor, like rotting fish It re she knew, but couldn&039;t quite place In any case, she had never sosaur before Maybe this was its characteristic odor But she had her doubts Most herbivores did not have a strong ss It was reserved for the meat-eaters to develop a real stink
"Is that because it&039;s sick?" Lex asked
"Maybe And don&039;t forget the vet&039;s tranquilized it"
"Ellie, have a look at this tongue," Grant said
The dark purple tongue drooped liht on it so she could see the very fine silvery blisters "Microvesicles," Ellie said "Interesting"
"We&039;ve had a difficult tietting sick"
"What are the syernail A clear liquid exuded from the broken blisters
"Ugh," Lex said,
"I, andsaid "Seems to happen about once every six weeks or so"
"They feed continuously?"
"Oh yes," Harding said "Animal this size has to take in a minimum of five or six hundred pounds of plant ers"
"Then it&039;s not likely to be poisoning from a plant," Ellie said Constant browsers would be constantly sick if they were eating a toxic plant Not every six weeks
"Exactly," the vet said
"May I?" Ellie asked She took the flashlight from the vet "You have pupillary effects froosaur&039;s eye
"Yes There&039;s a miotic effect, pupils are constricted"
"But these pupils are dilated," she said
Harding looked There was no question: the stegosaur&039;s pupil was dilated, and did not contract when light shone on it "I&039;ll be daical effect"
"Yes" Ellie got back on her feet and looked around "What is the anie?"
"About five square eneral area?" she asked They were in an open meadoith scattered rocky outcrops, and interround It was late afternoon, and the sky was pink beneath the lowering gray clouds
"Their range is et sick, they&039;re usually somewhere around this particular area"
It was an interesting puzzle, she thought How to explain the periodicity of the poisoning? She pointed across the field "You see those low, delicate-looking bushes?"
"West Indian lilac" Harding nodded "We know it&039;s toxic The animals don&039;t eat it"
"You&039;re sure?"
"Yes We s just to be certain The stegos never eat the lilac bushes"
Melia azedarach, called chinaberry or West Indian lilac, contained a number of toxic alkaloids The Chinese used the plant as a fish poison
"They don&039;t eat it," the vet said
"Interesting," Ellie said "Because otherwise I would have said that this anins of Melia toxicity: stupor, blistering of the mucous membranes, and pupillary dilatation" She set off toward the field to exaround "You&039;re right," she said "Plants are healthy, no sign of being eaten None at all"
"And there&039;s the six-week interval," the vet reosaurs come here how often?"
"About once a week," he said "Stegosas they go They complete the loop in about a week"
"But they&039;re only sick once every six weeks"
"Correct," Harding said
"This is boring," Lex said
"Ssshb," Ti to think"
"Unsuccessfully," Ellie said, walking farther out into the field
Behind her, she heard Lex saying, "Anybody want to play a little pickle?"
Ellie stared at the ground The field was rocky in many places She could hear the sound of the surf, so the rocks Perhaps the ani berries But that didn&039;t make sense West Indian lilac berries were terribly bitter
"Finding anything?" Grant said, co up to join her
Ellie sighed "Just rocks," she said "We must be near the beach, because all these rocks are smooth And they&039;re in funny little piles"
"Funny little piles?" Grant said
"All over There&039;s one pile right there" She pointed
As soon as she did, she realized what she was looking at The rocks orn, but it had nothing to do with the ocean These rocks were heaped in small piles, almost as if they had been thron that way
They were piles of gizzard stones
Many birds and crocodiles sed sestive tract, called the gizzard Squeezed by the h plant food before it reached the stoht dinosaurs also had gizzard stones For one thing, dinosaur teeth were too s food It was presuizzard stones break down the plant fibers And some skeletons had been found with an associated pile of small stones in the abdominal area But it had never been verified, and-
"Gizzard stones," Grant said
"I think so, yes They s these stones, and after a feeeks the stones are worn s this little pile, and s fresh stones And when they do, they s berries as well And get sick"
"I&039;ll be daht"
He looked at the pile of stones, brushing through theist
Then he stopped
"Ellie," he said "Take a look at this"
"Put it there, babe! Right in the old mitt!" Lex cried, and Gennaro threw the ball to her
She threw it back so hard that his hand stung "Take it easy! I don&039;t have a glove!"
"You wimp!" she said contemptuously
Annoyed, he fired the ball at her, and heard it smack! in the leather "Now that&039;s more like it," she said
Standing by the dinosaur, Gennaro continued to play catch as he talked to Malcolm "How does this sick dinosaur fit into your theory?"
"It&039;s predicted," Malcolm said
Gennaro shook his head "Is anything not predicted by your theory?"
"Look," Malcol to do withto listen to the consequences of the e consequences for hu&039;s principle or G?del&039;s theorem, which everybody rattles on about Those are actually rather academic considerations Philosophical considerations But chaos theory concerns everyday life Do you knohy computers were first built?"
"No," Gennaro said
"Burn it in there," Lex yelled "Computers were built in the late 1940s because ht that if you had a computer-a machine to handle a lot of variables simultaneously-you would be able to predict the weather Weather would finally fall to hu And men believed that dream for the next forty years They believed that prediction was just a function of keeping track of things If you knew enough, you could predict anything That&039;s been a cherished scientific belief since Newton"
"And?"
"Chaos theory throws it right out theIt says that you can never predict certain phenomena at all You can never predict the weather more than a few days away All the -about half a billion dollars in the last few decades-is money wasted It&039;s a fool&039;s errand It&039;s as pointless as trying to turn lead into gold We look back at the alcheenerations will laugh at us the same way We&039;ve tried the i it Because in fact there are great categories of phenomena that are inherently unpredictable"
"Chaos says that?"
"Yes, and it is astonishing ho people care to hear it," Malcol before he broke ground on this place You&039;re going to engineer a bunch of prehistoric ani But it won&039;t go as planned It is inherently unpredictable, just as the weather is"
"You told him this?" Gennaro said
"Yes I also told him where the deviations would occur Obviously the fitness of the aniosaur is a hundred million years old It isn&039;t adapted to our world The air is different, the solar radiation is different, the land is different, the insects are different, the sounds are different, the vegetation is different Everything is different The oxygen content is decreased This poor ani at ten thousand feet altitude Listen to hi"
"And the other areas?"
"Broadly speaking, the ability of the park to control the spread of life forms Because the history of evolution is that life escapes all barriers Life breaks free Life expands to new territories Painfully, perhaps even dangerously But life finds a way" Malcolm shook his head "I don&039;t mean to be philosophical, but there it is"
Gennaro looked over Ellie and Grant were across the field, waving their ar
"Did you get my Coke?" Dennis Nedry asked, as Muldoon came back into the control room
Muldoon didn&039;t bother to answer He went directly to theOver the radio he heard Harding&039;s voice saying, "-the stego-finally-handle on-now-"
"What&039;s that about?" Muldoon said
"They&039;re down by the south point," Arnold said "That&039;s why they&039;re breaking up a little I&039;ll switch the with the stegos Eating some kind of berry"
Hammond nodded "I knee&039;d solve that sooner or later," he said
"It&039;s not very ier than a postage staht "You sure about this, Alan?"
"Absolutely sure," Grant said "What gives it away is the patterning on the interior surface, the interior curve Turn it over and you will notice a faint pattern of raised lines, ular shapes"
"Yes, I see the out two eggs with patterns like that at my site in Montana"
"You&039;re saying this is a piece of dinosaur eggshell?"
"Absolutely," Grant said
Harding shook his head "These dinosaurs can&039;t breed"
"Evidently they can," Gennaro said
"Thatsaid "We have literally dozens of species on the island"
Grant shook his head "Look at the curvature The shell is al And notice the thickness of the shell Unless you have ostriches on this island, it&039;s a dinosaur egg"
"But they can&039;t possibly breed," Harding insisted "All the animals are female"
"All I know," Grant said, "is that this is a dinosaur egg"
Malcolm said, "Can you tell the species?"
"Yes," Grant said "It&039;s a velociraptor egg"
Control
"Absolutely absurd," Ha to the report over the radio "ItThat&039;s all it can be"
The radio crackled He heard Malcolm&039;s voice "Let&039;s do a little test, shall we? Ask Mr Arnold to run one of his computer tallies"
"Now?"
"Yes, right now I understand you can trans&039;s car Do that, too, will you?"
"No problem," Arnold said A moment later, the screen in the control room printed out:
Total Animals 238____________________________________
Species Expected Found Ver
Tyrannosaurs 2 2 41
Maiasaurs 21 21 33