As Michelle began to look through the carcass, searching for teeth from whatever had dragged the mosasaur inland, Tristan just stared at his fingers.

'It's burnt, but only partially. A forest fire would torch it completely. So what did this?'

Turning his attention to the tree line, Tristan noticed a large hole in it directly behind where the carcass was. Within the hole, instead of greenery, there were merely the burnt husks of conifers and monkey puzzles. Yet this dead zone was circular in nature, not some continuous burning. So what had caused it.

The answer lay in the heart of the dead zone. There, hidden among a few felled trunks, was a large, spherical piece of rock. Small depressions littered its surface, but it still appeared to be ball-like in shape. Surrounding it was a crater, one that went ten feet into the ground.

Clearly, this piece of rock had once been a meteorite, one that had made it to the Earth's surface. Perhaps a shard of it had been embedded in the mosasaur's body after it had been dragged here?

"Hey, what are you doing?" questioned Michelle.

"Looking at the forest. There's a meteorite in here - wiped out a bit of the tree line."

"Interesting - found a shard of metal in this corpse. It looks like its been under a lot of heat and stress. Perhaps it came from there?"

Finding more confidence in the rational expression, Tristan perked up. "Yeah, probably. Anything else you found in there?"

Michelle just held up some teeth. "I don't recognize what these belong to, though - but they aren't tyrannosaur teeth."

"...What?"

"They don't look like scrapers. If I'm being honest, they look more like carnosaur teeth."

"Maybe some of them survived late into the Cretaceous?"

"Possibly."

Tristan didn't exactly feel like that was a likely possibility.

He didn't get to respond any further to Michelle, though, because at that point, he heard a low hiss coming from behind him.

XXXXXXXX

Further inland, Nigel, Tai, and Violet had made their way into a marshland, searching for any sign of either a dryptosaur or a hadrosaur. Unfortunately for them, they weren't having much luck.

"Ugh, how much more trudging do we have to do?" wondered Violet. "I feel like I'm gonna sink into the ground at any moment!"

"Just keep going onward," remarked Tai, "we're almost out of this."

A sudden pained groaning, however, brought the group to a halt. Turning toward the sound, at first, all they saw was what appeared to be a large, worn down boulder. Then the boulder started moving. A quick removal of some plants revealed that the boulder was actually the back of a nodosaur. Nearby, several more creaturs were staring at the one the group found. At first, they couldn't tell why it sounded in pain. Then they realized it was half sunk into the ground.

Acting quickly, the team opened up the portal. First, they baited through the dinosaurs that weren't stuck. Then, once that dealt with, they started trying to excavate the trapped animal. Even with the camera crew helping, though, this still took quite a while, but eventually, the nodosaur was freed and ran into the present.

"Good job, team-"

HONK!

The sudden honking noise interrupted Nigel's compliment, and directed the team's attention toward the edge of the forest. There, to their shock, was a hadrosaur. For a moment, it stared at the group, before retreating up a nearby hill. Once they recovered from their shock, the team quickly began to follow it.

XXXXXXX

Back at the park, Bob is dealing with the new arrivals.

As the last nodosaur entered its holding pen, Bob began piling in some ferns for them to graze on.

"I've got Suzanne heading over to take a look at the one Nigel and the kids just pulled out of the mud. He doesn't look too bad, but we're not taking chances here."

A loud roar filled the air, causing the nodosaurs to go still, and Bob to sigh. "Oi, keep it, both of you!"

In a pair of nearby pens, Terence and Matilda were milling about, eating the food they were offered, scent marking the posts, and occasionally hissing at each other.

"We just found out that there are holes in their fences, probably from the storm that hit a while back. I don't know how we missed those, but its a miracle that we didn't lose any of the other creatures at the park. Any way, those two are going to stay here for the time being. Stan and Sue are getting checked by some of Suzanne's trainees, so they'll be staying at her clinic until the fences are fixed."

For the moment, it seems neither of the tyrant dinosaurs is happy about this development.

XXXXXXXXXX

Back in Prehistoric New Jersey, Tristan and Michelle are finding out that tyrannosaurs aren't the only predator they need to worry about.

Tristan and Michelle had backed away from the carcass, which now had a new set of owners. Standing on top of it were a group of large raptors, most closely resembling Dromaeosaurus in appearance. Occasionally, the raptors hissed at the duo, but for the most part, the humans were ignored in favor of the readily available meat.

Though Michelle's eyes were locked on the raptors, her attention had split between them and her partner. "You have any idea what these guys are called?"

"Nope. Raptor fossils from Appalachia have never been formally described. The only evidence they even existed was a bunch of teeth."

"Well, I guess we know what they looked like. So, how do we rescue them?"

"Still working on that."

A growling noise lifted the duo from the conversation and the raptors from their feeding. Turning to face it, both human and dinosaur found themselves staring at a group of large theropods. To some, they resembled the carnosaurs of old, with their long arms and sharp teeth. Oddly, though, each arm only had two fingers on it.

It seems the duo has found their target.

The raptors, unwilling to abandon their meal, tried to intimidate the large predators, but soon found themselves forced to fall back. As the larger carnivores arrived at the carcass, though, they found it almost picked clean, and thus mostly useless to them. Annoyed, they instead began to move inland, and both man and raptor followed. Above,, flying carnivores also tracked the dryptosaurs, waiting for the chance to scavenge a carcass...or make a kill for themselves.

XXXXXX

Further inland, Nigel and his team were still on the trail of the hadrosaur. For the past seven minutes, it had been trudging through the woodlands, occasionally stopping to browse.

Now, though, it seemed uneasy. In particular, it refused to go near one tree, which was proving to be problematic, seeing how the tree lay on the only path thorugh the thicket the dinosaur had arrived in. At first, it tried to go around, but eventually, it moved through the area, though it did so as quickly as it could, and always seemed unnerved until it left the forest.

Confused as to why it was so uneasy, the team examined the tree...and found huge gashes along it.

"So it was unnerved because something marked the tree?" asked Tai.

Violet could only nod at this. "Yeah, seems like it."

"Whatever marked it must have been big, though."

"Why do you think that, Nigel?"

"These gashes are huge - they look more like the kind you'd see from theropod foot claws. I'm not sure how a dinosaur could balance itself to cut a tree with its feet, though, and I don't think Dryptosaurus gets that large."

"...Now I'm feeling unnerved," remarked Violet. Everyone shared her sentiments, and after a moment, they left the area, leaving the gashes behind.

XXXXX

AN: Read and Review! This is Flameal15k, signing off!