Ooparts: An Adventure in Time

By Keith Osmond

What if you found a piece of jewelry from the 21st century embedded in a 180 million-year-old fossil? What if you were a jaded reporter, working for a backwoods newspaper, looking for a new direction in his life and career? What if you found out that the object you found led to a secret organization run by the British Government, and that certain experiments carried out during World War II led to a Nazi madman threatening the existence of present day life?

Jack Foster is that reporter. With a beautiful scientist at his side, he falls deeper and deeper into love and into a vortex of events that lead to his eventual journey back to prehistoric times in a desperate attempt to change time and prevent the love of his life from being turned to stone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jun 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781304117250

Book preview

Ooparts: An Adventure in Time

Ooparts: An Adventure in Time

Copywrite  © 2012 Keith Osmond

All rights reserved

ISBN: 978-1-304-07938-1

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attributions-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported Licence.  To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/

or send a letter to:

Creative Commons

171 Second Street, Suite 300

San Francisco, California 94105

USA

Acknowledgements

Thanks to all who encouraged me in writing this book, especially my wife, Lyn, and my son, Tim, who designed the cover.

Ooparts: Wikipedia quote

Out-of-place artifact (OOPArt) is a term coined by American naturalist and cryptozoologist Ivan T. Sanderson for an object of historical, archaeological, or paleontological interest found in a very unusual or seemingly impossible context that could challenge conventional historical chronology.

The finding of gold in a Jurassic fossil off the south coast of England sends a small town reporter on the adventure and love of his life.

Ooparts: An Adventure in Time

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1 - The Discovery June 2001

Chapter 2 - 180 million years ago

Chapter 3 - The Museum

Chapter 4 – Wolveson

Chapter 5 - Elizabeth

Chapter 6 - The Artifact

Chapter 7 - Fake

Chapter 8 - The Man in Black

Chapter 9 - The Assay

Chapter 10 - Back to Lyme

Chapter 11 - The Search

Chapter 12 - Legends, Mines and Monsters

Chapter 13 - History and Mystery

Chapter 14 - Malcolm McLaren's Story

Chapter 15 - Skunk Works in Dorset

Chapter 16 – Regroup

Chapter 17 - Hinkley Point B

Chapter 18 – Robbery

Chapter 19 – The Keep Museum

Chapter 20 – Bill’s Story

Chapter 21 – A Murder

Chapter 22 – Emergency

Chapter 23 - The Bournemouth Police

Chapter 24 - Translation

Chapter 25 – The Diary

Chapter 26 – A Witness Dies

Chapter 27 – Gunter Schook

Chapter 28 – Brian from the MoD

Chapter 29 – Dire Consequences

Chapter 30 – Unplanned Event

Chapter 31 – Into the Alley of Death

Chapter 32 - Box 850

Chapter 33 – Alone and Afraid

Chapter 34 – Baecker

Chapter 35 – The Time Pod

Chapter 36 – Lost in Time

Chapter 37 - Ghosts of the Past

Chapter 38 – The Message from the Past

Chapter 39 - Frozen Hell?

Chapter 40 - Training and Orientation

Chapter 41 – Team 42 Jurassic

Chapter 42 – Deep Into the Past

Chapter  43 – The Way Back

Chapter 44 – Recrimination

Chapter 45 - Plan B

Chapter 46 – Planning Rescue Part One

Chapter 47 – Rescue Part Two

Chapter 48 - Aftermath

Epilogue

Chapter 1 - The Discovery June 2001

Jack couldn't remember exactly where he had found the fossil.  It was years ago, when he was a teenager.  He knew it was between Lyme Regis and Charmouth, along the stretch of coast called Chippel Bay that seems to be constantly slipping into the sea looking like a grey scar on the landscape.  Every time there was a storm, it slumped and slipped, spilling rocks and rubble onto the foreshore.

These days, fossil hunters scour the rocks looking for finds that translate into found money.  There are hundreds of Ammonites, Bivalves, and Brachiopods to be found for those that have the knowledge.  Most sites these days don't allow anyone to take fossils, but when Jack was a boy, there were no such restrictions.

Jack and his friends, Brian O'Leary and Ron Richardson, used to get on their bikes in the seemingly endless summer of childhood, and ride for miles down rutted country lanes lined with high ancient hedges spattered with foxglove and daisies.  It was their way of using up the surplus energy one has at that age.  They used to cycle as far as they could go in one day.   One of their delights was to dig out the old Ordnance Survey Map from Jack's father's desk that he used to do the family accounts.  It was published in 1930, and was brown and brittle, but it showed a lot of historical sites that seemed not to be found in recent updated editions.  Jack and the boys used to pore over the map, looking for interesting places to investigate.  Deep down, they were hoping to find creepy ruins, caves, or treasure trove.  Jack remembered reading Enid Blyton stories at a young age and her characters always seemed to be involved in some story like finding hidden treasure, and he supposed that his friends and himself secretly wished they too could be part of some grand adventure.

They had heard of farmers digging up Saxon hordes, or Roman silver, and were excited by their imagined stories of buried riches that they would find.  Indeed, one time, Brian was talking to a farmer by his gate one day, and the farmer mentioned that he had found a cutlass in a ditch, not far from the site of the Battle of Sedgemoor.  Brian asked to see it and was immediately disappointed when the old farmer produced a long piece of rusted metal covered in black mud.

I think it was a piece of a tractor, he said, later.

But, undeterred, the boys rode all over Devon and Somerset, sometimes camping out in farmers fields, or staying with distant relatives.  It was at one of these great-uncle's places that they struck gold in a literal sense.  They had spent the night in the uncle's home, which was in the Blackdown Hills.  They were all sitting around for breakfast, when Brian noticed that the back garden had a structure like a low squared-off wall in the middle, about four feet wide.

Oh, yes. Said the uncle.  That's the old well.  We don't use it now as we have the water piped in from the village.

Brian was intrigued.  He was always the curious one; willing to take risks.  Does it still have water in it?  he asked.

The uncle said no.  It's dry.  Dried up when they put in the quarry down the road.

Brian was up and outside in a flash.  Uncle was worried.  You be careful, lads.  I don't want to have to call the fire brigade!

The boys knew that wells were sometimes a rich source of antique items from stories they had read.  People always threw stuff down wells.  For good luck, by accident, or to hide stuff.

Jack caught up to Brian as he leaned against the well wall, level with his waist, and peered down the hole.  Look, said Brian.  There are enough footholds to climb down using the stones lining the well.  I can see the bottom, so it's not that dangerous. 

Jack leaned over the low wall and peered into the gloom.  It smelt of moss and rot.  He had heard of stories of boys stuck in wells, and imagined his parents shock getting a phone call to say their son was lost down a well in deepest Somerset.

Ron arrived and turned on his torchlight.  He had taken it from the handlebars of his bicycle.  Looks O.K.  Off you go then, Brian!  I'm staying here.  Ron was claustrophobic.

Without any further prompting and as fearless as any young boy can be, Brian hopped over the edge of the well and started to clamber down the inside.  It was slimier and more difficult than it looked, but Brian was wiry and not a heavy person, and made it to the bottom.  Throw the torch down, Ron! he yelled up.  Ron carefully lobbed the torch to Brian who caught it and flicked it on. 

Lots of rocks and moss. he called up to the others.  Wait.  I'm going to move some of this rubbish.  There were squelching and cracking noises as Brian moved around the debris in the well bottom.  Poo!  What a stink here! he cried.  Then, Hey!  A toad!

So, no treasure? shouted Ron.

Nope.  Just a lot of shit! called up Brian.  And he started to climb back to the surface.  And stopped halfway.  Wow, what's this!  He he been searching for a handhold, and he fingers had touched something smooth and round.  He fished out the object from the crack in the rock.  Wait till you see this! he cried, and came scrambling up the side of the well, hanging on to something round and bright.

They all gathered around to look at the find.  It was a two inch gold-coloured coin with a head stamped on one side, and on the other an image of a winged angel with a shield with apparently Latin writing around it.  What made it remarkable was the lack of decay in the coin, and the fact that a small sector of the coin was missing, like a pizza slice cut right out of the rounded metal disk.  The boys had taken Roman history in school, and recognized the style from their text books.

Uncle stepped forward.  'Ere, let me 'ave a look at that.! he said, taking the coin from Brian and hefting it in his hand.  Then, to the boy's surprise, he put the coin in the side of his mouth and bit it.  Just as I thought.  Gold!

The boys were ecstatic.  They had found Roman gold.  They offered the coin to Uncle, as it was his on property that it was found, but he said, no.  They had found it.  They were to keep it.

Later in the year, when school was back, him and Brian had taken the coin to a teacher, who was a history buff, and after school, three boys and the teacher had made tracks to the Natural History Museum in Exeter.  There were three ladies working in a small laboratory in those days, under very messy and disorganized conditions.  At least that is what Jack remembers.  They were asked to leave the coin, and for a small fee, they would give them a report on it which would include its history and value.  They also said that if the coin was valuable, they would have to surrender it to the Crown under the Treasure Trove Act and the museum would probably end up keeping it.  Jack and his friends, in turn, as finders of the coin, would probably only get credit for finding it.

This last bit of news disappointed them, but were to find out that this sort of thing is fairly common around Exeter.  Due to its ancient history; the early Neolithic inhabitants, Roman occupation, Normans, etc. all had left their mark on the landscape and soil.

Later, the boys did some research and found that slices were cut from coins such as this to decrease the value, or to use the slice as exchange or an offering.  The coin was indeed Roman, and from the 3rd century, depicting winged Victory and the Emperor Constantius.

Eventually, their exploits took them to Lyme Regis, via train.  There they spend endless hours finding and collecting specimens along the beach and up in the cliffs.

These days, fossil hunters scour the rocks looking for finds that translate into found money.  There are hundreds of Ammonites, Bivalves, and Brachiopods to be found for those that have the knowledge.

That particular area, Jack knew, was famous for another discovery - the first Ichthyosaur bones were found.  Mary Anning who was born in Lyme Regis in 1799 extracted the first complete ichthyosaur.  She also found a plesiosaur and the finest flying reptile as well as many other significant finds.

Jack had been sorting through an old wooden box containing an assortment of rocks, fossils, Dinky Toys, and tin badges - the sort of thing a  boy would accumulate.  He was looking for mementos to save for his journey to Canada. 

His work as a reporter in the small market town of Bideford was reaching a turning point.  He didn't feel he had the tenacity and drive that it took to become a truly great news gatherer.  He reported on weddings, funerals, bridge openings, foot and mouth disease - all the minutiae of a small west-country town.  The paper was struggling to survive under the fiefdom of a large media conglomerate in London, and he felt it was only a matter of time before he was let go to his own devices and the paper sold off before it bled to death.  Besides, the wages were awful.  He could barely afford the rented cottage in town, let alone a few pints a week in the local.

He had few ties.  A sister in Essex, a mother in Somerset, and a few uncles and aunts.  He had had a long but unsatisfying relationship with the IT person at the paper, Islay Robinson.  She was attractive, but had no interests other than computers and work-related issues, and she would prefer to stay home on weekends watching Sci-Fi movies and reading Star Trek novels, whilst he would rather go hiking in the hills with his camera.

It was time to move on.  His life was mundane and boring.  He needed new horizons; new ideas.  A new beginning.

He had seen the ad in the Times.  A new media outlet that used web content from all over the world was looking for someone with a reporter's perspective.  It was a company with exiting ideas that was going in a different direction, the ad said.  It used cell-phone videos, blogs, whatever it could find to produce an on-line service that challenged the old models of news-gathering.  They needed someone to edit and comment on the produced and compiled content, and were looking on all continents.

That last comment did not deter Jack.  He sent in a CV and a sample of his work from the past year, and also said he was willing to accept a reduced salary for a year as part of his condition of employment.  He hoped that this would be attractive to a young developing company.

A month after he sent the package, he received a phone call from Toronto.  The Canadian accent told him to be in London for an interview in a week.

He liked Garnet Martine very much as soon as he met him.  They had lunch in a small bistro in Greenwich overlooking the Thames.  Martine's company, RBG Media, was being sponsored by a man who had made a fortune selling off his online business to a huge multinational company, and was now helping out small companies to start up.

Jack was, he found, number four of five that were being interviewed.  The more he talked to Garnet, the more he wanted the job.  New country, new city, new job - things were starting to happen.  When he found out he had been selected, he was elated.

Mum, I got the job in Canada.  He was on the phone to Somerset; his weekly call.

There was a small hesitation on the other line. Oh, dear, Jack.  Now I won't see you again. she said sadly.  Jack was in the habit of visiting her on a regular basis, and felt immediately guilty that he would be putting her under some stress.  She was in fairly good health, but her friends were dying around her, and since his father died, she had been left on her own with few hobbies, and only the television as company.

It's just a hop and a skip over the Pond to visit, Mum.  Besides, I'm fed up here in Bideford.  I'm going nowhere.  I really need to do this. I'll come up to see you before I go and spend some time with you.  We'll play Gin Rummy.

Jack felt mixed emotions after talking to his mother.  She was getting on in age, and, although in fair health, had few friends and family to fall back on should something happen to her that left her vulnerable.  What would he do if she suffered a stroke, or fell and broke a hip.  Drop everything and fly home?

And here he was, looking through that old box.

He picked up a dusty grey circular object that looked like a wheel.  Ammonite, he thought.

He rubbed it slightly to shine it up a bit.  Something caught his eye.  Some of these fossils were formed with iron pyrites embedded in the shell, known as fool's gold.

Pyrites looked like gold until you sniffed it.  Sulphur.  Plus, it crumbled and turned

black when placed in acid.  A gold fleck caught his eye.  It was embedded in the side of the fossil.  If this was a wheel, it would be where the axle was situated.  He rubbed it a little more.  It revealed itself a little more and the matrix around it crumbled away a little. 

It can't be.

It revealed a perfectly circular ring.  Gold? As in jewelry?

He turned in his chair and rifled through his mothers desk that the box sat on.  He found

a magnifying glass and had a closer look.

He looked through the lens.  The part that was exposed was semicircular and it had that manufactured look to it that natural things did not have.

What the Hell?

Chapter 2 - 180 million years ago

If we were to travel back in time 180 million years to the same spot as Chippel Bay in Charmouth occupies today, we would see a very different place from the one we see today. 

For a start we would see no land but water - the Tethys Sea stretching for miles.

Due to plate tectonic movements, this sea no longer exists. Millions of years previous to this era, the continents had been joined together as the super continent of Pangaea. For millions of years this area of southwest England had been a desert, but early in the Jurassic, water flooded the area.

For the remainder of the Jurassic period,   the Tethys sea had fluctuating levels, both encroaching and receding periodically.   Again, because of plate tectonics, the part of land we know today as Britain was much further south than it is today, about 15 degrees above the equator. The large landmass and different marine circulation of ocean currents caused the climate to be warmer.  In fact, the Earth was much warmer than today and there was no snow at the poles.  Winter saw hot and humid conditions with a lot of rain.  In summer, it was even hotter and less rain fell.  There were extensive tracts of rain forest, similar to that found in today’s Brazil that extended many latitudes higher than today, and today's temperate regions were sub-tropical.

But the Tethys sea had a deadly secret as it fluctuated with the seasons, the levels growing and declining with the amount of rainfall, plant and algae growth bloomed and declined on a regular basis.  When algae blooms in huge numbers, it creates a situation that uses up all the oxygen in the water, then cascades to algae death and decline.  The rotten plants and dead algae fall to the bottom of the sea, building up layer upon layer of detritus.  Eventually, the rotting plants and the bacteria eating them create massive amounts of methane and hydrogen sulphide gas in an anaerobic orgy beneath the surface.  A characteristic feature of hydrogen sulphide is that the gas is heavier by weight as normal air is. It is a highly toxic gas, which interferes with cellular respiration just like carbon monoxide.  Once in a while the poison gas, smelling like rotten eggs, breaks loose from the layers of rot, and makes its way to the surface.  As it is deadly to living things, it suffocates anything in its path, including anything swimming in the sea and over it.

You are in the Early Jurassic, when dinosaurs were becoming the dominant land living creatures. Whilst mammals were dwindling, dinosaurs became huge creatures.  Beneath the surface large reptiles swim.  It is 37 degrees Centigrade, 99 percent humidity.

As the morning sun rises over the calm rippling water, the smell of rotting seaweed and detritus floating on the surface fills the air.  The smell is so bad it is almost visible as a haze and causes the air above to move and distort the cloud formations above.  The sea is so shallow that sand banks are visible all around, the water lapping listlessly against their edges.  Nothing grows on the banks, as the sand shifts and changes with the storms that often sweep this part of the world.

Several black fins break the surface at tremendous speed, their wake disturbing the debris as they cut through the surface of the sea.  The Ichthyosaurs number in the hundreds as they sweep into the area looking for their favorite food, the octopus-like ammonites. 

Some of the females in the pack are pregnant, the species being unusual in the reptile world in that they give birth to their young, rather than lay eggs.

Below them, a huge school of ammonites are desperately using their water jets to escape the reptiles and are diving to lower depths in the hope of hiding behind the rocky reefs and silt near the bottom of the shallow sea.

Above, a flock of pterosaurs are gliding, hoping that the reptiles feeding on the ammonites will leave morsels for them to pick up.  They have a roost  miles away on some rocky promontory, and they come here for prey to feed their young.  They circle and scream, seeing the sleek black and blue bodies dive after the shellfish below.

Down the reptilian fish swim, flashing their tails faster and faster, sweeping down to feed their hunger, their huge yellow eyes easily spotting the waving tentacles and colourful shells of the ammonites below.  The warm water yields easily to their streamlined bodies.  They shoot down almost to the bottom, and find that what looks like sand and mud, is actually a layer of fine, black silt.  As they pass over the muck, it is disturbed by the force of their swimming and swirls around them like a black fog.  They are disoriented, for now the ammonites are no longer in sight, and their nostrils detect a terrible deathly smell.  They are suddenly overwhelmed by a huge mass of bubbles that rises around them.  The whole sea bottom seems to writhe and bulge. 

At the surface the sea starts to hiss and turn white.  The waves part and huge gas bubbles break through one after another.  The air is filled with noxious fumes.

Above the pterosaurs realize that something is wrong and attempt to flap away.  Too late. 

They are too low to escape the heavy gasses and one by one plunge into sea as their lungs fill with deadly fumes.  The Ichthyosaurs as well need air to breathe and disoriented, rise to the surface, only to find no air to breathe - just poison gas.  They thrash around at the surface, causing more gasses to be released below, expiring one by one.  One female aborts her young, a tail appearing at her rear end and the fetus almost being ejected but expiring as the gas takes its toll.

A mile away, on a sand bank, the giant crocodiles detect the commotion, and slip into the deeper water,