The massive herbivore snorts, making some unseen mammal chitter and scramble in alarm somewhere in the shaded depths of the woods. The dinosaur is a massive quadruped, seemingly a big, tough-skinned platform meant to support a massive head decorated with a shield-like frill jutting from the back of the skull, a long horn over each eye, a short nose horn, and a parrot-like beak great for snipping vegetation that is ground to messy pulp by the plant-eater’s cheek teeth. But a familiar face soon reminds you that this is a different time.Ī Triceratops horridus ambles along the edge of the forest, three-foot-long brow horns slightly swaying to and fro as the pudgy dinosaur shuffles its scaly, ten-ton bulk over the damp earth. Magnolias and dogwoods shoulder their way into stands of conifers, ferns, and other low-lying plants gently waving in the light breeze drifting over the open ground you now stand upon. If you didn’t know any better, you might think you were wading on the edge of a Gulf Coast swamp on a midsummer day. The ground is a bit mushy, a fetid muck saturated from recent rains that caused a nearby floodplain stream to overrun its banks. It’s a day like most any other, a sunny afternoon in the Hell Creek of ancient Montana about 66 million years ago. Picture yourself in the Cretaceous period.
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