It was a hot day, a day with absolutly no wind. The great valley was eerily silent, there were no sounds echoing off the walls of the canyon. Suddently, the silence was broken by the thumping blades of a helicopter. The sound grew steadily louder until the aircraft could be seen through the haze. The dark green helicopter slowed down, and began to descend into the valley.
On the ground, Dr. Tom Frost watched the aproaching helicopter. His brow was covered in sweet, but not from the consiterable heat. Dr. Frost was very, very nervous. Two years of his hard work lay in the hands of the helicopter pilot. And Dr Frost did not trust the pilot one bit. "Tom!" a voice called from several yards away. Dr. Frost turned, and saw David calling too him. Dr. Frost was proffesor of Paleontology at Arizona State University. He and his carfully selected team of students came down to this valley in South Eastern China every summer. Today was a very special day. For two years the team had been working to get a large Iguanadont skeleton out of the rocks. Although there were extrodinary quantities of fossils in this location, the rocks were soft and brittle, and so were the bones. The result was that extracting them was a very difficult task, paticurally for such a large skeleton. The Iguanodont was fully unearthed just last week, and after it was covered in a coating of plaster, Dr. Frost sent for a helicopter to pick it up and bring it back to the University. "Tom, can you hold this rope here?" David said to him. Dr. Frost nodded and did so. The team was in the proccess of creating the harness the fossils would rest in while they were being flown away, and it had to be very sturdy. This part was not Dr. Frost's expertise, and he ussually kept his distance.
David made some final adjustments, then gave the thumbs up. There was nothing more the team could do. Slowly, ever so slowly, the helicopter lifted up, the cable that connected it to the harness becoming taught. Then the fossil started to lift, and it was suddently off the ground, rising higher and higher into the air. David led the group in a cheer, and out of the corner of his eye Dr. Frost saw Harold racing to the trailer for a beer to toast with.
Dr. Frost patted the sand out of his vest and beard nervously. This was quite stressful to watch. The fossil was now swinging to and fro high above his head. Dr. Frost watched as the helicopter turned, and started to depart. Behind him, the students cheered as they watched the departing aircraft, carrying the precious, precious cargo.
Suddently, a gust of wind from the helicopter's chopping blades swept over Dr. Frost, and took his hat with it. "Hey!" he called in surprise, and turned to see his hat blowing away. He turned and chased after the hat, that was rapidly acending in the wind. He pounced on it and caught it, then fell to the sand and rolled down the hill. Dr. Frost slowly rolled to his feet and brushed the sand out of his eyes. He really did like his hat. Then he gasped. Lying several yards before him in the sand was what apeared to be a complete skeleton of a dinosaur. For a moment Dr. Frost wondered how he could have ever missed this, then realized that the wind created by the helicopter must have uncovered it. This was a truley amazing find. The skeleton seemed to have nearly every bone, and each one was in the exact position it had been when the animal died.
Dr. Frost called the others over, then began to inspect the ancient bones. From the looks of it, the animal was a therizinosaur of some sort, a group of theropod dinosaurs that were thought the be herbivores evolved from carnivores. Very little was known about these most bizare dinosaurs, and if Dr. Frost was correct then this would be the most complete by far. And also the largest. By the looks of it, this specimen was at least 50 feet long.
