Imagine a vast beach studded with pearls guarded by a sole protector, and you get a sense of paleontologist Barbara Beasley's hopeless task. Based in the Nebraska National Forest, she is charged with protecting the more than five million acres of public land in the Northern Great Plains from fossil poachers. As the only such paleontologist on staff (or on the federal payroll, for that matter), her job is to investigate sites that have been vandal-ized, estimate the damage done, and help law enforcement catch thieves of the park's cache of bones. She's just plain outgunned.
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