19
3-20
V.E.
He pulled one of the tent pegs from the cordon and pried at the corner of the object.
The top portion of the tin popped open to reveal its contents.
A DVD-R in an ordinary plastic jewel case. The same series of numbers and letters had been scrawled on the disk in black marker.
There was blood smeared all over the case.
PREDATORY INSTINCT
MICHAEL McBRIDE
Now available in paperback and eBook
From Delirium Books
The fossilized remains of a previously unclassified hominin species are discovered in the Altai Mountains, prompting teams of scientists from around the globe to converge upon this isolated region of Siberia in search of further evidence to corroborate the revolutionary theory that a third proto-human ancestor coexisted with Neanderthals and primitive
What awaits them is anything but extinct.
FBI Special Agent Grey Porter leads the investigation into the mysterious circumstances surrounding the appearance of a factory trawler of Russian origin off of the Washington Coast. He finds twelve bodies; all of them exsanguinated through ferocious bite wounds on their necks. According to the manifest, there should have only been eleven.
Whatever killed them is no longer on board.
Elena Sturm of the Seattle PD is assigned to patrol the waterfront renovation project on Salmon Bay. While rousting the homeless from the underground warrens of the massive construction site, she stumbles upon the corpse of a man whose wounds are identical to those of the victims aboard the ghost ship.
Something has cut a bloody swath across the Pacific.
And it's already here.
PREDATORY INSTINCT
MICHAEL McBRIDE
(An excerpt from the new novel from Delirium Books.)
June 10, 12:35 PM EDT
Fossil skull DNA identifies new human ancestor
By RADLEY DUNHILL
Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK (AP) -- Scientists have identified a previously unknown ancient human through the analysis of mitochondrial DNA from fragments of skull bones unearthed in a Siberian cave.
A team of archaeologists investigating the Seima-Turbino Phenomenon, a spontaneous rapid and massive exodus of the indigenous peoples of the Altai Mountains into distant parts of Europe and Asia during the second millennium BCE, exhumed the fossilized remains from one of twenty-two distinct layers of strata. Thermoluminescent and radiocarbon dating of the surrounding sediment suggest that this unclassified hominin (human-like creature) existed a mere 35,000 years ago at a time when both primitive humans (
Researchers at the Douglas Caldwell Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in New York extracted the mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited only through the maternal line, from the bones and compared the genetic sequence with those of modern humans and Neanderthals. The analysis revealed that the three last shared a common ancestor more than one million years ago, proving that the Altai individual, referred to publicly as the 'Siberian Hominin' and as 'Enigman' by the scientists in internal emails, represents a previously unrecognized African migration.
'Whoever carried this genome out of Africa is some new creature we never even suspected might exist,' said Dr. Geoffrey Melton of the Caldwell Institute. 'The evidence is convincing. We are dealing with a hitherto unclassified hominin, and quite possibly a new species entirely.'
Without a more complete fossil record, scientists can only speculate as to what the Siberian Hominin may have looked like or how it may have behaved or intermingled with early modern humans. However, based on the size of the skull fragments, it more closely resembles its larger and more heavily muscled Neanderthal cousins than its human contemporaries.
'Paleontologists are scouring the northern region of the Altai Mountains for further evidence of the Siberian Hominin,' Melton said. 'While the cold weather helps preserve ancient DNA, the constant presence of so much snow at the higher elevations makes it like looking for a needle in a haystack the size of Texas. We're dealing with thousands of acres of the most inhospitable terrain in the world, and it's blanketed by snow and ice year-round. We may never find any sign of this miraculous new species again.'
While archaeologists remain hopeful that their diligence will be rewarded, for now they can only look down from the sheer icy peaks like their ancestors must have done tens of thousands of years ago, and imagine a time when creatures simultaneously familiar and alien moved through the blizzarding???snow.
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