Still, she was willing to entertain it as a valid and testable hypothesis. In truth, she'd privately admit to herself, Helen's residual animosity toward the Alvarez Hypothesis was emotional rather than intellectual. Like most paleontologists, she was often rankled by the overbearing arrogance of many of the physicists who were so charmed by the hypothesis and took it as Revealed Truth. When they pontificated on the subject, physicists tended to dismiss the inconvenient facts paleontologists kept bringing up, much like an exasperated adult brushes aside the foolish questions of little children.

One of those facts, however, was that there was no evidence that any dinosaur had survived till the end of the Cretaceous. But now…

It looked as if they'd found the evidence.

"Yes, where the comet," she repeated.

She dusted her hands off on her jeans, and straightened up. "It's going to be a hike back and it'll be getting dark in a few hours. Even if it weren't, we can't do anything yet. This is on your folks' land, Jackie. We'll have to get their permission to dig here, and I've absolutely got to call the Museum of the Rockies. Probably a few other people."

She took a long, slow breath. "This is going to be a big dig, Jackie. Whatever your funny fossil is, it's led us to the mother lode."

That night, on the telephone from her motel room, she conveyed her excitement to the director of the Museum of the Rockies. It wasn't hard, actually. Ever since the days of Jack Horner, the museum had prided itself on its eminence in the world of paleontology, especially dinosaur paleontology. Director Bonds immediately grasped the significance of finding what appeared to be an articulated velociraptor skeleton on the very edge of the K-T boundary. He promised to give her the full support of the museum.