An action thriller by Jock Miller


Fossil fuel has an ageless affinity with dinosaurs. To create oil, dinosaurs died.


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The perfect energy storm is sweeping over the United States: Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown has paralyzed nuclear expansion globally, BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill has stalled deep water drilling, Arab oil countries are in turmoil causing doubt about access to future oil, the intensity of hurricanes hitting the Gulf’s oil rigs and refineries has intensified due to global warming, and the nation’s Strategic Oil Supply is riding on empty.

As the energy storm intensifies, the nation’s access to Arab oil, once supplying over sixty percent of our fossil fuel, is being threatened causing people to panic for lack of gas at the pumps, stranding cars across the country and inciting riots.

The U.S. Military is forced to cut back air, land, and sea operations sucking up 58% of every barrel of oil to protect the nation; U.S. commercial airlines are forced to limit flights for lack of jet fuel; and businesses are challenged to power up their factories, and offices as the U.S. Department of Energy desperately tries to provide a balance of electric power from the network of aged power plants and transmission lines that power up the nation.

The United States must find new sources of domestic fossil fuel urgently or face an energy crisis that will plunge the nation into a deep depression worse than 1929.

The energy storm is very real and happening this very moment. But, at the last moment of desperation, the United States discovers the world’s largest fossil fuel deposit found in a remote inaccessible mountain range within Alaska’s Noatak National Preserve surrounding six and a half million acres.

Preventing access to the oil is a colony of living fossil dinosaurs that will protect its territory to the death.

Nobody gets out alive; nobody can identify the predator--until Dr. Kimberly Fulton, Curator of Paleontology at New York’s Museum of Natural History, is flown into the inaccessible area by Scott Chandler, the Marine veteran helicopter pilot who’s the Park’s Manager of Wildlife. All hell breaks loose when Fulton’s teenage son and his girlfriend vanish into the Park.

Will the nation’s military be paralyzed for lack of mobility fuel, and will people across America run out of gas and be stranded, or will the U.S. Military succeed in penetrating this remote mountain range in northwestern Alaska to restore fossil fuel supplies in time to save the nation from the worst energy driven catastrophe in recorded history?

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Pterosaurs Took Flight on All Fours

Pterosaurs took flight using all fours, a discovery that flies in the face of previous research on the ancient reptiles, a new study says.

Two of the giant creatures' "legs" were extremely strong wings, which when folded, created "knuckles" that allowed the animals to walk and jump (above left, the pterosaur known as Hatzegotpteryx in an artist's rendering).

The way a bird lifts off—using two legs—doesn't make sense for pterosaurs, which would have had to heave their 500 pounds (227 kilograms) airborne using only their hind legs, the study says.

Instead, the "remarkably strong" animals apparently made a leaping launch in less than a second from flat ground, with no aid from wind or ledges.

"Most people are familiar with images of pterosaurs as very skinny, almost emaciated-looking things—basically a hang glider with teeth," study author Michael B. Habib, of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, told National Geographic News. "They're actually built a lot more like Arnold Schwarzenegger than Urkel."

Habib compared bone strength in 20 species of modern birds and 3 species of pterosaurs to develop the new model, announced yesterday by the journal Zitteliana.

The finding is also consistent with the idea that bigger animals require more overall brawn to power their movement, Habib added.

"We put V8 engines in our biggest, heaviest cars, not V4s, like the one in my Camry."

—Christine Dell'Amore

Illustration by Mark Witton

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