But this wasn't Banjo. This beast was big enough to hunt Banjo.
I knelt closer, ignoring the cramp in my spine. My fingers trembled as I brushed away more soil to outline the rest of the exposed mandible, trailing toward where it vanished into the clay. This skull was massive.
And unless I was delusional from too much dust and not enough sleep, this skull was whole.
I stood, needing to stretch my aching back, and retied my ponytail before surveying the dig site from this new vantage point. From ground level, focused on individual bones, I hadn't noticed the pattern. But standing here, looking at my carefully marked grid stakes and the areas I'd excavated over the past six days, the shape was unmistakable.
The entire dig site was circular.
My pulse kicked up. Twenty meters from where I stood, the land dropped away in a sheer cliff that went straight down to a dry creek bed. But I wasn't fooled by the dusty rocks at the bottom. This ravine had been formed over centuries by torrential rain that had carved a path through the harsh red earth.
That creek bed was also why this location had caught my attention. Animals were drawn to water. Even prehistoric ones.
But a circular fossil bed near a water source was unusual.
Holy shit.
This wasn't just a fossil bed. This was a pitfall.
An ancient death trap formed by soft clay over a limestone sinkhole, just like the one that had been found at Naracoorte Caves in South Australia. Over thousands of years, prey animals would have fallen into this hole, along with the predators that had chased them right into the pit, trapping both animals until they died, though one death would likely have been swift and bloody.
Animal bones would have piled up since the age of the dinosaurs. Layer after layer of skeletons could lie atop one another.
My head spun at that possibility.
This fossil pit was my shot at success. My name on a paper. My name on a discovery that could go down in history.
If only I could shake the dread that my supervisor would try to take credit for my work.
I'd been burned before. Four years ago, my previous dig supervisor, Marcus Webb, had stolen my research, and nearly destroyed my career before it started. I had no proof except my field notes.
I wasn't making that mistake again.
The sun suddenly breached the ridge, and its assault on my back was instant and fierce. It wasn't even seven o’clock in the morning, and the rocks and red dirt already radiated menace beneath the mounting heat.
I needed coffee. And I needed to document this skull before Doug emerged from the air-conditioned site office.
Professor Doug Walker, head of vertebrate paleontology at the University of Queensland, had been my academic idol for years. The man was a legend, and he was the only reason this dig had been approved. When I'd pitched the idea of investigating this remote swathe of western Queensland, the department had dismissed my request as a waste of resources. But Doug had backed me.
Trouble was, his interest in my proposed dig, which had seemed so genuine back in Brisbane, had flatlined the moment we'd pitched my tent in the scorching sun.
Doug didn't dig. He didn't even sweat. He spent most of the day holed up in our portable site office, which was a converted off-road bus parked on the far side of my mapped digging area. The generator kept the air-conditioner running while I was out here doing the actual work.
Not that I minded. This dig was my shot to finally prove I wasn't just another wannabe academic in a sea of underfunded dreamers.
I wiped a dusty arm across my brow and checked the site office again, searching for signs of movement inside. Nothing. I had maybe three hours before Doug would emerge to check if I was still alive, just like he had every day this week.
Three hours to photograph, measure, and document this skull.
My skin was gritty, my fingernails packed with soil older than Christianity, and my brain was cataloging bone fragments while half-listening to the flies buzzing around my ears. But out here, in the baked heart of western Queensland, this was my kind of church.
Some people chased history in temples. I chased it in the dirt.
I grabbed my camera from my field kit and started shooting from every angle, my excitement building with each click. The mandible was intact. The tooth structure was unlike anything I'd seen in Queensland fossils. If this skull was complete, if I could extract it without damage, this could be the find that changed everything.
No more living in a makeshift room under my best friend's house. No more hints from her husband that it was time I moved on. No more scraping together funding for digs that might lead nowhere.
One big find. That's all I needed.