01_-_The_Alchemyst

“The Taylor Trail,” Sophie said, “at the Paluxy River in Texas. There
are what look like dinosaur footprints and human prints in the same fossilized
piece of stone. And the stone is dated to one hundred million years old.”
“I have seen them,” Flamel replied, “and others like them all across the
world. I have also examined the shoe print that was found in Antelope
Springs in Utah…in rock about five hundred million years old.”
“My dad says things like that can be easily dismissed as either fakes or
misinterpretation of the facts,” Josh said quickly. He wondered what his
father would say about the things they had seen today.
Flamel shrugged. “Yes, that is true. But what science cannot understand,
it dismisses. Not everything can be so easily brushed aside. Can you dismiss
what you’ve seen and experienced today as some sort of misinterpretation of
the facts?”
Sophie shook her head.
Beside her, Josh shrugged uncomfortably. He didn’t like the direction
this conversation was taking. Dinosaurs and humans living together at the
same time was simply inconceivable. The very idea went against everything
his parents had taught them, everything they believed. But somewhere at the
back of his mind, a small voice kept reminding him that every year
archaeologists—including his parents—kept making extraordinary
discoveries. A couple of years earlier, it was Homo floresiensis, the tiny
people in Indonesia, nicknamed Hobbits; then there was the species of dwarf
dinosaur discovered in Germany, and the hundred-and-sixty-five-millionyear-old
dinosaur tracks found in Wyoming and, only recently, the eight new
prehistoric species discovered in a cave in Israel. But what Flamel was
suggesting was staggering in its implications. “You’re saying that humans and
dinosaurs existed on the earth at the same time,” Josh said, surprised that he
sounded so angry.
“I’m saying that humans have existed on the earth with creatures far
stranger, and much older than the dinosaurs,” Flamel said seriously.
“How do you know?” Sophie demanded. He claimed to have been born
in 1330, he couldn’t have seen dinosaurs…could he?