Six months ago, Colonel Barton Stauffer retired from activity duty to spend more time with his family. Now he has been reactivated and assigned to lead a team of time travelers in a top-secret research facility buried deep beneath Carlisle Barracks to survey the ancient prehistoric past stretching into antediluvian times, a period for which there are no written records. Our understanding of this time period is based entirely on conjecture, flavored by legend, mythology, oral history, and misunderstood archaeological activity-and Stauffer's team is out to find hard facts.

The history of...