EXPLORERS IN DINOSAUR WORLD

On the way to the boat dock they walked through Mesozoic Mesa past the Petting Zoo, the snack stands and the Nursery. People dressed in neat Dinosaur World uniforms were hurrying this way and that.

"What do they all do?" Wendy asked.

"It takes a lot of people to run a place this big. Engineers for the T-Rex Express trains, guides for group tours—teachers are always bringing their classes here—keepers who help in the Nursery feeding the baby dinosaurs, gardeners to take care of all the plants and flowers and a staff of scientists who spend time studying the animals.”

They passed a herd of about twenty duckbill dinosaurs."Corythosaurs," Pete informed his sister about the slow-moving animals that were grazing in a grove of pine trees. The largest one was over thirty feet long and must have weighed as much as two or three elephants. Their skin was pebbly, like the surface of a football, and colored in green and brown patches that helped them blend in with the forest and hide from hungry meat-eating dinosaurs. Pete knew they were corythosaurs because of the rounded, helmet-shaped crests, like weird rooster combs, on their heads. They were making honking sounds as they ate. Two men with clipboards were standing nearby taking notes. Pete asked Jake what they were studying.

"They're monitoring the corythosaurs' diet to see if we need to move some of them to an area where there's more food.”

"How much do they eat?" asked Wendy.

Jake said, "That big guy probably needs two hundred pounds of food a day. In fact, they need so much food, eating is about all they have time for.”

Almost as though it had heard him, the giant duckbill lifted his head, snorted and then gave a trumpeting blare that made Wendy cover her ears.