The predator tries to drag its victim back to the bank, but the mud is too soft. He staggers and topples, and sinks belly-down in the mud. Buried together, their bodies decompose. The mud hardens around them, the hip of the predator pressed to the spine of its prey. Africa tears itself away, heading east.
Time piles up layers on layers of stone.
A nd then one day in September 1994, Brian Coffey, an undergraduate geology student at Carolina, strolls around in a brick quarry somewhere south of Durham, studying ancient river deposits. He s brought along his roommate, Marco Brewer, an anthropology major. They hike up and down the undulating bedding horizons, where a bulldozer has shaved off chunks of the sandstone. The afternoon wears on, and they are just about to leave when they cross a dried-up wash, and Coffey, already the sort of geologist who reads the earth s fine print as he goes, spots a grayish speck of bone. He finds another, and another a trail of them like bread crumbs, scattered up the wash.