‘Tell us everything,’ said Ethel.
‘And pass the biscuits,’ said Dot.
Jo had brought her laptop with her and was pleased to see their TV had an HDMI port on the side so she could display her computer files on their big screen. This way, Dot wouldn’t miss any of the news.
‘Okay,’ she said, pulling up a photograph of the Dirt Girls’ ‘chunk of rock’ that had started this whole process. ‘Let’s start at the beginning. About twenty years ago, the pair of you found a small femur when you were fossicking on Corley Station. When Jedda Irwin was leading a dinosaur dig over near Winton, you took it to show her and she was excited enough by it to take it with her back to the university and do some testing on it.’
‘All correct so far,’ said Ethel.
Jo grinned. ‘Thank you.’
‘Now, Jedda was hoping it was an ornithopod bone. She loves ornithopods, and it would have been a big deal, as ornithopod findings are scarce in Queensland.’
‘Remind me, pet,’ said Ethel. ‘An ornithopod being?’
‘A bipedal grazer.’ Jo flicked to another diagram where she had ornithopods, theropods and sauropods drawn alongside a human, so the scale of each could be seen. ‘So, a dinosaur that ran on its hind legs but ate grass. Ornithopod means bird feet, named so due to their footprints revealing three long-clawed toes.
‘So she came back here with a group of students to see if they could find the rest, but the team came up stumps.’
‘Because of the black soil,’ said Ethel.
‘I think so, yes. Because the team weren’t knowledgeable enough about the soil out here and the way it sifts and rotates itself as the seasons change. So then we fast forward a few years until Jedda remembers the promise she made to you two and—’
‘That’s not quite how it happened,’ said Dot. ‘She didn’t remember. Ethel rang her last year after I’d been so sick with the shingles.’
Had Jo known that? ‘All right. Well, after you prompted her, but knowing she was unwell, she asked me to take a look at the bone at the university. And I was just as excited as her, but I was excited because of—’ she felt like a magician about to unleash a dove ‘—ta-da!’
The photo on the screen was an enlarged section of the bone. It showed a series of deep serrations along the anterior ridge.
‘Your teeth marks,’ said Dot.
‘Yes. And I know it’s hard to see, but that part there near the end has a tooth embedded in it. And because my special interest area is crocodylomorphs, I suspected that’s what had made these markings and left behind that tooth. So when Jedda—at your prompting—convinced me to come back up here and look for fossil proof of an ornithopod, I was really searching for fossil proof of whatever crocodylomorph might have left these tooth indentations and tooth behind.’
‘And?’ said Ethel.
Dot sank her teeth into a biscuit. ‘Yes, and? You haven’t come all this way just to have a cup of tea with me and Ethel, I hope.’
She flicked to the next picture. ‘This is what Luke and I dug out of your pit. I took it to Brisbane with me and it’s been through the digital imaging machines that can look through the matrix to the structures within and it is, indeed, a crocodylomorph skull.’
‘Heavens above,’ said Ethel. ‘That’s good, right?’
‘That’s as good as finding Elliot or Matilda,’ Jo said. ‘It’s amazing. And guess what?’
Dot gave a little squeal. ‘There’s more? Tell us, quick.’
‘You know the tooth that was embedded in your fossil? Well … we won’t know for sure until we’ve removed the matrix, but our little guy from Corley is definitely missing some teeth. We’re also hoping there’s more of his skeleton to be found. We won’t know until we extend the dig site.’
‘We?’
She took a breath. ‘Okay. It’s early days, and so far I only have verbal assurances, but I’m hopeful that I may be getting funding—’ and a new employment contract that would save her from the wolf’s door, but that wasn’t something Ethel and Dot needed to worry about, ‘—for a joint project. There’s a lab in Sydney with imaging equipment that’s keen to come on board, and the trustees of the board at the museum I’ve been working for in Brisbane, and hopefully the lab at Winton, will be open to a joint venture. The details aren’t nutted out yet, so I’m just telling you two.’ The details were in fact as vague as fairy floss but Jo felt optimistic. ‘It’ll take a bit of organising down south before we can kick off, but I’m hoping to move up here for an extended period. In fact,’ she took a breath, ‘maybe the old homestead at Corley could be used for the site workers?’
‘But it’s in such a state, Jo,’ said Dot.
‘I’m hoping our budget will extend to some repair works there. Get the plumbing reconnected and so on. I could rent a room from you, and there’d be student volunteers from the university who’d love a cheap place to crash. Although for the lab work, I suppose I’d need somewhere not so far from Winton. Maybe Maggie would rent me her little room at the hotel on a long-term basis.’
She left the sisters sitting on their couch with their scrapbook, talking over the developments and took her mug into the little kitchen to pop it into the dishwasher. She spied a newspaper folded over beside the toaster. The bold black writing across the top said: MISSINGMANFOUNDWITHDRUGSSTREETVALUE $2MILLION.
She popped her head back in the living room. ‘Have you ladies finished with the paper?’