The mist cleared away and the neighbourhood came down to drink. We had some beautiful shots of a group of Ankylosaurus moving around the waterline, struggling to drink and protect their young at the same time. A familiar green smell rose up around us. Industrial-strength farts. Even a T-rex thought twice about biting into one of these. A miracle the cameras hadn’t melted. A large herd of slow-moving Proceratops, manoeuvring their bulky bodies through the swamps gave them a wide berth. Ankylosaurus tails could shatter bones and teeth.
The Proceratops were shadowed by a small group of fast-moving Oviraptors flitting in and out of the dappled shade, looking for nests.
The quality of the shots was excellent. Colours, skin patterns, markings, all the frills, horns, cheek plates, crests, sclerotic rings, everything the well-dressed dinosaur wore those days – all crystal clear as Barclay’s team had steadied wobbly camera work, re-focused close-ups and generally sharpened up the whole thing.
The day wore on, we were past noon now. She’d managed to get our very few Triceratops shots incorporated. And a fleeting glimpse of a herd of Deinonychus (I looked away); enough to give an impression of their deadly speed and co-ordination.
The now much fewer numbers of animals at the shoreline dwindled even further. You could see everyone thinking it must be siesta time. We’d done that deliberately, so when the T-rex exploded into camera view everyone nearly wet themselves. Its prey, a half-grown, limping, exhausted Edmontosaurus turned to face the end. When we’d picked this up, we’d hardly been able to contain our excitement, but the best was yet to come. The T-rex leaped, finishing its prey with a skull-crushing bite. The Edmontosaurus’s skull cracked and it went down like a tree. Red gore splashed the T-rex’s face, jaws, and chest. The shot clearly showed its little forelegs opening and closing spasmodically. I wondered again if this was a display of excitement, supporting the argument that these little forelegs, too small even to touch each other, were for sexual tickling. Alternatively, maybe just a reflex action. Others would decide.
The successful T-rex however, made the mistake of bellowing his triumph in an echoing bellow. A red cloud of blood and flesh fragments belched from his massive jaws. Everyone stepped back. Hardly had the echoes died away when another, much bigger, T-rex erupted into shot; possibly a female this time. At this point, even Sussman had been in two minds whether to run or not.
Earsplittingly, they screamed their rage as they circled each other. Dust flew in clouds as they stamped their feet. They lashed their tails. They battered each other with their enormous heads. The bigger one, by virtue of her size, seized the smaller by the scruff of his neck. Instead of pulling away, he closed and ducking his head even lower, clamped his jaws on one of her tiny forearms. She screamed, shook him like a rat, and hurled him away from her. He cartwheeled over and over and, before he could stand, she leaped on him. She raked a hind claw across his belly and as he raised his head to get up, she went for the exposed throat. No messing. He gurgled and was dead in seconds. She strutted, roared her victory to the skies, and settled down to feed on his kill.
Professor Rapson beamed. ‘It’s not a chicken after all! Not a feather in sight! Well done, Max.’ Although how I could take the credit for disproving the theory that T-rex was nothing more than a giant, scavenging chicken was hard to see. Still, it’s good to know the image of the world’s favourite predator remained intact.
We faded from that and before anyone had time to draw breath, the hangar began to vibrate. Dust fell from the roof. Tools rattled and clattered to the floor. And from the far end of the hangar, slowly and with majesty, came a herd of Alamosaurus. The first one was colossal – fifty feet high and seventy feet long easily, with a body the size of a swimming pool. Unarmoured – they didn’t need to be. Size matters. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Others emerged from behind the leader.
Izzie gave us maybe thirty seconds worth of establishing shots. Enough to appreciate their size and proportions and then cut to shots from me and Sussman, ducking and diving like the idiots we were that afternoon. In and out, weaving around giant, slow-moving legs, getting close ups of bellies, armpits, feet, orifices, you name it – we filmed it. Bloody great haystack-sized dollops of Alamosaurus shit splatted to the ground around us. We could see the different textures of the skin, the calluses on the joints, thick skin, thin skin, the creases and folds.