World-renowned museum paleontologist, Peter Marchand, goes missing while leading a dinosaur dig in the sweltering, desert badlands of Wyoming. He has made enemies from his serial womanizing, ruthless dealings, religious blasphemy, and unorthodox theories. Hired to find him, Pittsburgh private detective Harry Przewalski uncovers a tangle of sexual deceit, betrayal, and scientific fraud. He chases Marchand across 80 million years of intrigue and death, from the bone field of petrified skeletons to the bone rooms of the museum. Ultimately, he must excavate the nightmares in his own extinct past to keep from being killed.