"Six thousand million!" murmured Bud in an awed voice.
"And maybe more," said Professor Wright. "So you see it is pretty hard to set any estimate on just when an animal lived who may have passed away six billion years ago—it really isn't worth while. All we can say is that they lived many, many ages ago, and we are lucky if we can come upon any slight remains of them."
"Do you really think you'll find some fossil bones?" asked Dick.
"I'm sure of it!" was the answer. "Hello! That looks as if they had found something over there!" he cried, as some excitement was manifest amid a group of laboring Greasers some distance away.
The professor hurried there, followed by the boys. They saw where some men, down in a shale pit had uncovered what at first looked to be a tree-trunk.
"It is part of the hind leg of the great Brontosaurus!" cried Professor Wright, in intense excitement. "That's what it is—the Brontosaurus!"
"But you want a Brontotherium," insisted one of the helpers, a professor in the making.
"I don't care what I get, as long as they are fossil bones!" cried Mr. Wright. "But I shall yet find a Brontotherium here—of that I am certain. Careful now, men!"
"Say, he's really found something!" cried Dick.
But alas for the hopes of the professor! When the object was taken out it proved to be only part of the skeleton of a long dead buffalo, the bones being so encrusted with clay or mud as to appear much larger than they really were.