10. Epilogue

Jasmine knew exactly what Thomas was going to say, so she said it first. “Let me guess. More teeth of the Connido?”

He nodded and carefully brushed the sand off the fossil. After each stroke, he moved his glasses again, while Jasmine rested in the cooling shade of a hastily constructed tent. “Take another picture, I guess.”

Reluctantly, she left the beige cloth, walking into scorching heat. She’d repeatedly asked if they could please do excavations that were not in the desert. Repeatedly she was told how they were the best and thus needed here.

She didn’t understand. They only found Connido teeth from the same time period, which they found everywhere. It was useful, sure. You could use them to attach the right dates to other fossils you found. That’s how they discovered when the Gosti first started hunting, and then became ape-like creatures, and then humans. That’s how they discovered that the stone dinosaur statues were probably made on that dreadful day the asteroid came.

But in this barren desert? There—

“What’s this?” Thomas whispered. He brushed ten times as quickly and let his glasses droop off his nose. It landed with a thud on a long spine, a flat spiral just below them. Jasmine crouched next to him and took pictures of each action.

“A snake’s head.”

“Undoubtably.”

“But … with legs?” He brushed away the last bits. This snake had legs. No tiny remainders of legs, but actual legs on which they must have walked.

Jasmine leaned forward and studied the head. With increasingly smaller brushes, they tried to see everything without moving or breaking anything. “Yes, there. A clear space for poison, and a clear pathway to bring it to the mouth. This was a venomous snake.”

The tiny fossil lay besides another. A much larger animal, maybe an elephant or camel. The fight between them proved fatal to both.

Thomas dug his bottom deep into the sand, his hands searching for his glasses. “This changes everything,” he said breathlessly. “Everyone is certain that snakes came from the sea and thus started with no legs. But this would suggest they had legs, and then …”

Jasmine studied the teeth. They seemed like Connido teeth, but were more advanced, and considerably less old. This could even change the time period, she thought. This is gold!

Thomas pulled their device from the tent. That was bad: you were supposed to excavate the fossil very carefully, store it, and then later, in a cool and dry place, do the analysis. But they couldn’t wait.

The device looked at the particles inside the fossil. Some particles changed into slightly different ones over time, automatically. They did this very consistently, following a formula. By checking how many particles had changed this way, they could calculate how old this fossil must be. The humans had developed far enough to create devices that did this within a few seconds.

They had expected to see the date of the Poison Belt. Their theory was that this toxic river had given the animals poison. That this event had caused most land animals to stop fishing. The belt still existed. It was far less poisonous, and humans now tried to cleanse it, but they never truly succeeded.

But everyone doubted such theories. Why could they not find proof? Proof of all those centuries between the Poison Belt and the sudden appearance of poison in many animals? Why was it a black hole? They didn’t even know what had caused the Poison Belt. More research was necessary—it was always necessary.

The date the device spit back was far, far later. And it aligned perfectly with the start of the Age of the Venomous Bite.

Jasmine hugged Thomas. “This must have been the first venomous snake! This is where it all started. This animal had the DNA that ended up in all the other animals who could be venomous too!”

Another mystery solved! And this time, our name is attached to it. She Thomas didn’t care. He seemed to enjoy being in the hot desert and digging for his little bones, just because of the work reward. Oh well, that’s why they made a great team.

He worked and discovered stuff.

She who accidentally broke a fossil when she was scared out of her mind.

“CROCODILE! CROCODILE! CROCODILE!”

Thomas looked around. He saw nothing. Except a clearer picture of what was next to the snake fossil. A few wooden blocks that, if you looked at them with some imagination, and narrowed your eyes, could be a recreation of a crocodile.

And a very odd book next to it. It shone brighter than the sun, even in the shade. It was completely undamaged, as it displayed a page with a drawing that did scare Thomas: a monster as large as an entire planet.

And so it was that life continued …