Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Cretaceous
Park
neath the wavetops and found himself trying to see the smaller life forms
around him, wishing he had some way to look at the plankton and search for
the juveniles or larvas of creatures whose adult forms were familiar to him.
He knew that tiny ammonites, clams, snails, urchins, crabs, and at least a
thousand other species surrounded him in these highest portion of the sea,
but he could see only particulate matter floating by. Out of excuses now, and
nearly out of ait, he surfaced, seeing once again the blue-green sky, the scud-
ding clouds, and the diverse and spectacular reptilian and avian pilots soar-
ing over his head.
He was well out to sea from his boat, which was just visible in the dis-
tance, a winking reminder of his othet life, his real life. He began to swim
toward it and looked up at the sun. It was far lower in the sky and was de-
scending toward the ocean to his . . . west? He stopped, pulled out his com-
pass, and laughed through his snorkel. According to his instrument, the
sun, now plummeting toward the horizon, was sinking into the east. "First
time a human has seen that," he thought to himself, remembering that this
was a time of reversed magnetic polarity. North was south here, and east
was west.
When he finally reached the tethered boat, he was exhausted from the
long dive and the longer swim. He released straps and slid out of his tank
harness, free now and unfettered. After resting several minutes, just for good
measure he lay prone, hyperventilated, and piked at the waist. He slid down-
ward once again, free-diving without a tank, the first marine mammal in this
world, and cranked off a 30-foot dive in spite of his fatigue. He got a last
glimpse of the Cretaceous sea bottom and was rewarded with the sight of a
last ammonite, a heavily ornamented
Hoplitoplacenticeras.
Coming up, he
again passed through the zone of plankton, and he paused only a meter
below the surface to look more closely at the thick plankton soup. Near his
face mask were unnumbered small round shells, a millimeter or two in diam-
eter, with tiny tentacle faces extending out of the apertures. With a shock of
recognition, he realized he was in a sea of newly hatched ammonites, thou-
sands living in the top few meters of the sea at this early stage of their lives.
Lungs burning, he returned to the surface.
