Paleontologists work to understand extinct organisms. Paleontologists use their creativity to learn about past life. Paleontology blends multiple science disciplines such as geology, biology, chemistry, and more. Paleontology also has a healthy amount of artist contributions; paleoart, which reimagines fossil organisms as living specimens, and museum exhibits require an artistic eye. The ways people can approach paleontology are as diverse as the paleontologists themselves. From hobbyist paleontologists to professors, anyone can be a paleontologist.
Given that paleontology aims to understand all life through time, it is vital that many people with different focuses work together. Science is a collaborative effort after all. Research diversity comes in many forms: ranging from the fossils studied, the type of data the researcher is collecting, and how the researcher interacts with the fossils.
Many people think of a field technician when they think of paleontologists, someone working outdoors excavating fossils from the rock. While fossil excavation is crucial to the science, it is but one part of paleontology. Fossils need to be cleaned of sediment, repaired, and reinforced in a lab setting. Fossils also must be kept safely preserved in a museum exhibit or archival collection. Additionally, fossils must be used for education and research. In order to handle all of these jobs, paleontological organizations are composed of people with differing interests and skill sets.
Paleontological work may seem limited by the fossil specimens available, but truly the main limitation is imagination. Creativity keeps paleontology moving forward. Paleontology always needs more passionate people with fresh ideas and fresh perspectives. We at The Montana Dinosaur Center would love to hear what you are most passionate about in paleontology and what great ideas you have.
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Being a Paleontologist: Types of Fossils
Typically the first question someone interested in paleontology asks themselves is “what type of fossils do I want to work with?”
First, let’s answer the question “what is a fossil?” A fossil is evidence of a previously living organism preserved as a geologic object. These range from bones turning into stone, to impressions of leaves being preserved in mud, to the sediment mold of a shell, and much more.
Fossils come in many forms which we have classified into helpful categories. Starting with the most broad umbrella terms for fossil types, we have body fossils, ichnofossils (trace fossils), and molecular fossils. Body fossils have a straightforward definition, these fossils were once physically part of an organism. Some examples are teeth, bones, shells, petrified wood, and sometimes soft tissues like muscle and feathers. Ichnofossils, also known as trace fossils, are preserved evidence of an organism interacting with its environment. Trace fossils come in many forms like body fossils, with some examples including eggshells, dung, footprints, burrows, and worm trails. Molecular fossils, which are often called biomarkers, are a bit more complicated. These are chemical signatures produced, typically by microorganisms, that are incorporated into sediments and sedimentary rocks.
From there, we can get more specific. For instance, paleontologists studying body fossils can be classified based on what type of organism they wish to study. Paleontologists who study animal fossils are typically divided into vertebrate paleontologists and invertebrate paleontologists, depending on if they want to work with animals with a bony skeleton or animals without a bony skeleton. Paleontologists who study plant fossils are called paleobotanists and if they focus on pollen fossils specifically they are palynologists. Paleontologists interested in studying fossil fungi are called paleomyconologists. And last but certainly not least are the micropaleontologists, those who work with microscopic fossils. These can belong to bacteria, archaeans, as well as microscopic remains of animals, plants, and fungi.
With such a broad field, everyone can find something they are truly passionate about. Some people love all dinosaurs equally, some people prefer specific dinosaurs, and some still prefer trilobites over all dinosaurs. There is no wrong choice regarding what fossils to love and study. What’s important is for paleontologists to work with what they love and to work well with other paleontologists, whether they have similar interests or vastly different ones.
Being a Paleontologist: Research Interests
In the early days of paleontology, paleontologists focused on collecting fossils and turning them into display pieces. Not much science was actually done. Paleontologists just wanted to find the new scariest monster and get famous from it. Now, we are more interested in doing proper science and sharing our findings with everyone. There are many ways for people to research fossils, which are typically based on their own personal passions. Being a paleontologist is about finding your passion and sharing it with others. Hopefully we can pique your interest with some examples of what people can do with fossils.
Taphonomy is the study of decay, fossilization, and the preservation/erosion of fossil material. Taphonomists look at the many factors occurring after the death of an organism which impacted the conditions of fossils. Taphonomic factors can impact the remains of an organism before they fossilize, during fossilization, and after they have fossilized.
Paleobiology aims to understand how fossil organisms behaved and functioned during its life. For instance, paleobiology can be used to find out the bite force of Tyrannosaurus rex. Suddenly Tyrannosaurus rex is a dynamic animal again with the right research. We can also look at the pathologies of individual specimens, the diseases and injuries that impacted an individual. What caused an injury, what healed, how did it heal, and what never healed? These are all questions to ask with pathology.
Paleoecology is similar to paleobiology. Paleoecology looks at fossil material in order to understand how life worked. Modern ecology looks at how living and non-living components of an environment interact with each other in order to create a dynamic ecosystem. Paleoecology aims to do the same thing. Paleoecologists have an additional challenge to completing this task. Modern ecologists can make direct observations on how ecosystems behave, paleoecologists cannot since the ecosystems they study are long gone. Paleoecologists have to use multiple environmental proxies to make inferences on what past environments might have been like.
Paleoclimatologists use similar methods as paleoecologists, but focus more so on the climate of the environment.
Paleoanthropologists combine paleontology and archeology. By looking at hominid fossils and artifacts, paleoanthropologists try to understand humanity’s past. Paleoanthropologists want to understand the long span of human history that was never recorded. Sometimes the material paleoanthropologists work with is so recent it is not fully fossilized.
Paleoartists combine science and art to better communicate and interpret paleontological findings. Science communication improves the impact of research. Many people are visual learners so effective paleoart comes in handy. It is one thing to draw a cartoon of a dinosaur with oversized teeth and random spikes everywhere. It is another matter to depict extinct animals in a scientifically meaningful way based on the data available.
And most importantly, we need the public. Public interest in paleontology is what keeps us going. It funds our work and gives us the motivation we need to keep pushing paleontology forward.
Being a Paleontologist: Working with Fossils
Paleontologists learn about the past by working with fossils and their associated rock formations. There are many ways to work with fossils which can be classified into broader categories. Typically we divide working with fossils into field work, lab work, and collections work. Regardless of what environment we work in and how we work with the fossils, it is important that we always handle them with care and respect. Fossils are non-renewable resources, meaning if we destroy one it cannot be replaced. As scientists, it is important that these precious resources are handled properly and with the public’s best interests in mind.
The field work aspect is often what people think of when they hear the word “paleontologist.” Images of Ellie Sattler and Alan Grant from Jurassic Park ™ come to mind. People with big hats, hiking boots, and sporting khaki pants crouched over a fossil find is an iconic image of a field paleontologist. Similar to these two icons, we put on our proper gear for the field and begin exposing fossils from the rock. First we have to find fossil bearing locations to set up dig sites at. This step is called prospecting, where we search for fossils eroding out of the ground. Once we determine a location has fossils and we establish a dig site, we begin carefully excavating the fossils. Depending on the type of rock the fossils are buried in and how the fossils are preserved, paleontologists will employ the use of various hand tools such as awls, dental picks, oyster knives, trowels, paintbrushes, and more. The goal is to expose enough of the fossil to document where it was found and the condition it was found in. We do not want to remove all the rock matrix from the fossil while in the field, as the rock is typically providing vital support for the fossil and also has useful environmental data. Paleontologists will remove enough rock so that the fossil is on a pedestal of stone. Finally, we place a plaster jacket around the fossil to protect it as we remove it from our dig site and transport it to our lab space and/or collections.
Once a fossil is removed from the dig site, it is either worked on in a fossil preparation lab or in a collection for research and/or educational purposes. In a lab setting, a fossil preparator works on fossils in a process called preparation. Fossil preparation involves removing the remaining rock matrix from the fossil, taking detailed lab notes, repairing broken parts of the fossil, and filling gaps made by missing pieces of the fossil. Fossil preparators use a mixture of hand tools and powered tools, like air scribes and air abraders. It is the preparator’s job to carefully clean and preserve fossil specimens, so they can be used for research and education for generations to come. Fossil preparators must be masters of patience. We need to move slowly and carefully when preparing fossils, rushing is how fossils get damaged irreparably. A rough conversion of time is that for every hour of work put into a fossil while in the field, that translates to 6-8 hours of work in the lab. Some fossil preparation projects take years to finish, but are well worth the wait.
Finally, we come to collection work. Collection management is where the fossil specimens are kept in archival settings and properly cataloged. By archiving specimens properly, we ensure that they last for as long as possible, keeping these resources available for future generations of scientists. This is an important step for determining what fossils can be safely displayed in a museum and how to properly display them. Museums keep fossils in the public trust. Museum displays are how the public can learn about the fossils. Cataloging fossils is important for researchers. This way they can access the scientific notes they need and find the fossil specimens easily in what can be a massive collection. The overall goal of keeping fossils archived is so that scientists may research them to better understand our past and share their findings with the public. From there, specimens may be carefully handled either within the collections or taken to a lab for a scientific study.
Montana Dinosaur Center Receives $9,400 for Fossil Preservation!
Hey there, fellow dinosaur enthusiasts! We’ve got some fantastic news to share with you. The Montana Dinosaur Center has recently received a $9,400 grant from the Foundation for Montana History. This generous funding will help us in two significant ways: retaining staff and purchasing materials for building custom support jackets for our precious dinosaur fossils. Let’s dive into how this grant will impact our beloved center and contribute to its ongoing mission.
A Little About the Montana Dinosaur Center:
The Montana Dinosaur Center is the only independent non-profit, non-governmental museum in the state to offer same-day, hands-on dinosaur fossil expeditions. Our gallery is home to some pretty remarkable exhibits, like the world’s first discovered dinosaur babies in a nest and the world’s longest dinosaur skeleton, Seismo the seismosaurus, as recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records.
The Foundation for Montana History:
The Foundation for Montana History is our amazing benefactor, providing support to nonprofit and tax-exempt organizations dedicated to preserving local history across Montana. Their Grants Program has awarded over $1.5 million in grants to more than 300 recipients in nearly 200 Montana communities between 2012 and 2023. We’re incredibly grateful to be part of this legacy.
How the Grant Helps:
The $9,400 grant we’ve received will have a tremendous impact on our center’s work in two main areas:
Internship Program:
We’ll be able to create and extend internships giving young professionals invaluable hands-on experience in fossil conservation and an opportunity to learn from our seasoned professionals. This investment will help shape the next generation of paleontologists and fossil conservators, ensuring the future of this amazing field of study.
Fossil Preservation:
The grant will also allow us to purchase materials to create custom support jackets for dinosaur fossils. These jackets are essential for long-term safe storage, providing additional support and protection for these fragile pieces of history. This will ensure that our fossils remain intact for future research and public display.
We’re beyond excited about this $9,400 grant from the Foundation for Montana History! With this financial boost, the Montana Dinosaur Center can continue its mission to provide hands-on educational experiences, promote research, and preserve our world’s physical and cultural heritage. The funding will create new opportunities for aspiring paleontologists and improve our ability to preserve valuable dinosaur fossils.
We’re incredibly grateful for the Foundation for Montana History’s commitment to preserving and promoting Montana’s unique history, and we’re confident that their support will have a lasting impact on the Montana Dinosaur Center and its future endeavors. Stay tuned for more updates on our progress, and as always, happy fossil hunting!
At the Montana Dinosaur Center we’re all about hands-on educational experiences. We want to make sure the public can help with actual research sites and learn from researchers. Our mission also includes promoting research and publications based on the objects and information we collect, and preserving and interpreting items relating to the physical and cultural heritage of the world for public education and enjoyment. We’re dedicated to sharing information with other organizations to advance science and make it accessible to everyone.
The Excitement of a Montana Dinosaur Dig
Are you a fan of dinosaurs? If so, you won’t want to miss the opportunity to participate in a Montana dinosaur dig! Montana is a prime location for fossil hunting, and offers a unique and exciting experience for anyone interested in paleontology.
One of the best things about a Montana dinosaur dig is that it allows you to get hands-on experience with the fossils. You’ll have the opportunity to excavate real dinosaur bones, and may even make a significant discovery. This is a great way to learn about the prehistoric world and gain a deeper understanding of the dinosaurs that once roamed the earth.
In addition to the hands-on experience, a Montana dinosaur dig also offers the chance to explore the beautiful outdoors. Montana is home to stunning natural scenery, and a fossil dig allows you to take in the sights and sounds of the natural world. You’ll have the opportunity to hike through the rugged terrain, and may even spot some of the state’s abundant wildlife.
Another great reason to visit Montana for a dinosaur dig is the expert guidance you’ll receive. The fossil dig expeditions are led by knowledgeable guides who can provide you with valuable information and insights about the fossils and the surrounding environment. You’ll have the chance to learn from the experts and expand your knowledge of paleontology.
So why not plan a trip to Montana and participate in a dinosaur dig? It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get up close and personal with prehistoric fossils, and explore the beautiful outdoors of Montana. Don’t miss out on this unique experience – book your Montana dinosaur dig today!
Montana Dinosaur Center Receives Grants
Bynum Montana, September 29, 2022 — The Montana Dinosaur Center has been awarded two grants this summer to help make their fossil collection more accessible to researchers and the public. The Association of Registrars and Collections Specialists (ARCS) awarded an Internship Stipend Grant to Maya Krygiel, intern staff at the Montana Dinosaur Center, to digitize the Center’s collection of dinosaur fossil specimens. The Montana Dinosaur Center also received a Youth Technology Grant from 3 Rivers Communications to create a pilot program for gifted and talented school children at Bynum Elementary School. The program will teach the pupils how to use a 3D scanner.
The Montana Dinosaur Center is working to digitizeit’s fossil collection, some of which were excavated almost 50 years ago. With the help of these grants, the Center has the opportunity to use a 3D scanner to upload 3D models, and to create a more accessible digitized fossil collection.
The 3D scanner can be used with a tablet when traveling or for specimens in the field, and the scans can be easily shared and viewed on other interfaces. With uploaded 3D scans of the fossils, students and researchers will be able to access the Center’s collection digitally from anywhere. The digitized collection will also be accessible by the public.
Krygiel graduated from University of Colorado, Boulder with a bachelor’s degree in 2022 and has spent the summer excavating fossils with the Montana Dinosaur Center.
The Association of Registrars and Collections Specialists (ARCS), focuses on awarding these grants to individuals in minority groups. “As an LGBTQ+ woman in science, I am honored to receive this opportunity,” Krygiel said.
The Montana Dinosaur Center is a Montana 501(c)3 nonprofit located in Bynum, Montana. They offer public fossil dig expedition which can be booked on their website, https://tmdinosaurcenter.org, or by calling 406-469-2211, or you can visit their museum gallery featuring the first baby dinosaur fossils discovered and world record largest dinosaur skeleton, gift shop, and specimen prep lab in Bynum at 120 2nd Ave S.
Find all our social media at https://tmdinosaurcenter.org/links
Podcast Episode 4, Story Time With Dave: Cracking Open the Story of Egg Mountain
In today’s episode we wrap up the “Story Time with Dave” 2018 sessions. Montana Dinosaur Center Founder Dave Trexler and now-President Stacia Coverdell talk about the origins of the “Egg Mountain” name, Fran Tannenbaum’s discovery of the first intact fossilized eggs in North America, and the issues that Egg Mountain brought to modern paleontology in north central Montana.
Podcast Episode 3, Story Time With Dave: Jack Horner, Infamy, and Starting a Museum
In Today’s episode we continue “Story Time with Dave”. Dave Trexler, our founder and resident paleontologist, talks about the fallout of publicity around the discovery of the baby dinosaur fossils, and what happened locally.
Podcast Episode 2, Story Time With Dave: Jack Horner and the Baby Bones
In this episode, Dave talks about meeting Jack Horner, realizing the discovery and significance of the baby bones, and why clear ownership matters in science.
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Episode Transcript
Stacia Coverdell: When we were sitting here last we were talking about how your mom had discovered babies and how you got into paleontology. And you know, when we left off, Jack had just entered the rock shop. What happened after that moment? Like Jack walks in and then what happened?
Dave Trexler: To I guess lead into that about three weeks before Jack walked in, we had a paleontologist, a mammal guy out of Berkeley stop in the shop by the name of Bill Clemens.
Stacia Coverdell: Okay.
Dave Trexler: And he’s actually still a emeritus paleontologist at Berkeley, but. anyway, he liked our little attempt at a museum. And as we found out later, he was headed down to a fish research project down by Lewistown. And when he showed up there Bob Makala and Jack Horner were also on the site and being Montana boys. what have you, he mentioned that they ought to come up and check out our little facility and give us a hand if they could, cuz he really thought it was cool to have a second museum out in the middle of nowhere doing something with dinosaurs.
Stacia Coverdell: And you had set this little museum up in the back half of the rock shop.
Stacia Coverdell: That’s still
Dave Trexler: across the street, still across the street. Still there today. the yeah, we had. basically turned the back third of the, the building into museum
Dave Trexler: .
Dave Trexler: And so once the fish dig was done, Bob and Jack came up and came in our little facility and we’re looking around and identifying a few things that I didn’t know exactly what were that sort of thing.
Dave Trexler: We. Lot of mammal teeth from the white river Badlands brutal formation.
Stacia Coverdell: Where’s that?
Dave Trexler: Oh, Nebraska, South Dakota.
Stacia Coverdell: Oh, okay. That’s just stuff that you and your mom had picked up?
Dave Trexler: Actually, it was stuff that my mother and dad had collected back in the twenties and thirties. Cool. So that was a whole shelf in the case.
Dave Trexler: To this day. I am not interested in dentistry.
Stacia Coverdell: Do we have those specimens?
Dave Trexler: Actually, they are in collections at the Old Trail Museum.
Stacia Coverdell: Oh, okay.
Dave Trexler: They are still, I think in their collections, we might have gotten them, but there’s some that I think they reserve for,
Stacia Coverdell: for their displays and stuff.
Dave Trexler: Look we,
Stacia Coverdell: Patrick likes teeth!
Dave Trexler: That that’s the frustration with mammal stuff is mammals are all identified by the number of ridges and, and holes that the bumps match up with on other teeth. And, and it’s just. Looking at the surfaces of teeth under microscope. And there’s so much more to an animal than that. So I like to look at the, the entire animal, the bones where the muscles attach all of that.
Dave Trexler: So yeah, mammals never did hold that much interest to me. but anyway, so there were a lot of unidentified mammals in our case. But Jack went through and, and Bob and put identifications to a lot of the ones that were missing IDs and were, seemed to be favorably impressed with what we were doing.
Dave Trexler: Happened to ask my mother she had anything else that was really cool. We had just been out on site collecting again, some of the stuff that had been brought to the surface after the last rain. And, she had a little box of them in the the shop we had brought over to the house she had, cuz we had actually just gotten back from that the night before.
Dave Trexler: Anyway she showed Jack a couple of little vertebrae that she found and he got fairly excited and said, do you have any more of this? And she says, son is working on the rest of it over at the house. So she sent them on over and the bones that we had collected for the most part are the ones that are on discipline are case currently
Dave Trexler:
Dave Trexler: And I was a little bit conceed I guess when I put that display together. Because I laid the bones out in the case, pretty much in the order that they were laid out when Jack walked into the house and saw ’em laid out on our living room table. So what you see in that case is pretty much what Jack saw when he first walked in, in. One of the things that was a problem for us is there was no internet.
Dave Trexler: The best you could do is enter library loan on books and things like that. And if you actually wanted to see dinosaur remains, as we talked about before
Dave Trexler: ,
Dave Trexler: We pretty much had to pack up and, and travel thousands of miles. And again,
Dave Trexler: ,
Dave Trexler: you know, jets back in the sixties and seventies aren’t like jets today.
Dave Trexler: It was a pretty major undertaking to get outside the state of Montana if you needed to, so what we had to go by was what we could see in books and what we could see in the, you know, modern nature. what’s going on on the earth today.
Dave Trexler: ,
Dave Trexler: Just local observation. So I had made the assumption that museums don’t have pictures of the, the babies that they found in books, because babies really aren’t very impressive.
Stacia Coverdell: They’re not, it just looks like a bunch of chalk that we’ve put in a case.
Dave Trexler: And to this day, it makes me frustrated and, and amused at the same time. I don’t know how many times that brought people back into our gallery. And of course there’s the, the big foam core model seismosaurus that we built a few years ago, standing in the gallery
Stacia Coverdell: A few years ago? It’s 2018 now!
Dave Trexler: Yeah. Well, it. 1998, a few years ago. Anyway, the response for people coming into the gallery is almost always the same. You walk in, you see this great big candle that is according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the world’s largest scientifically accurate dinosaur on display
Dave Trexler:
Dave Trexler: And you walk over to this case with.
Dave Trexler: Pile of little bones in it laid out as kind of a composite of an animal. And you tell them all about how these little bones change the way the entire world understands dinosaurs
Dave Trexler:
Dave Trexler: And they’ll almost always say, well, that’s really cool, but man, there’s this big thing amazing! You know, so that was what we thought was happening back in 1978.
Dave Trexler: We had no idea that the fossil record did not represent the modern record, you know, modern record, you get a lot of young animal dying.
Stacia Coverdell: Yeah.
Dave Trexler: You get a lot of real old animal die, not a lot in the middle. And when we were out looking around, those were the fossils we found. We found a lot of little bones. We found a lot of, you know, great big old bone. Not much in the middle. And of course you can look at a skeleton even as, a rank amateur. And if you’ve ever seen a variety of modern skeletons, you can say, okay, this is a femur, this is an upper leg bone
Dave Trexler:
Dave Trexler: And that sort of thing. And teeth, as much as I hate them, always tell. What an animal eats and are very distinctive even at the, the family level.
Dave Trexler: So if you, even as a two day person out in the field has been shown, you know, a, few dinosaur teeth of the various families. Where to stumble across a, a tooth. You could probably tell the difference between a duck built tooth and a tyrannasaur tooth. And,
Stacia Coverdell: yeah,
Dave Trexler: and because I had previously read probably everything that was readily available as far as dinosaur information, by that time
Dave Trexler: ,
Dave Trexler: the ID identification of what we had laying there. the table as baby duck, bill was not difficult. It was duck built teeth. It was little tiny teeth. It was in a little tiny jaw. We had little tiny vertebrae. The other thing is animals. As they grow start out with very soft bone. There’s no hard outside shell. If you will
Dave Trexler:
Dave Trexler: On the bone until the animal gets.
Dave Trexler: So if you find bones that are fossilized that have no hard outside shell, they’re either a baby bones or B that had some major preservational bias that eroded all the hard bone off the surface . And those two are pretty easy to tell the difference between as well. So for us, it was pretty easy to, identify. We had baby duck bill bones. And so, no mystery there. I just assumed, you know, everybody had them, they just were kind of unimpressive
Dave Trexler: ,
Dave Trexler: Jack and Bob walk into the living room and look at what I’ve got laid out and Bob’s face kind of goes white and his eyes bug out a little bit. And he looks at me and says, “do you have any idea of what you have here?” well, my response is based on your reaction, apparently not.
Stacia Coverdell: And you were 23 at this point, right?
Dave Trexler: Yeah. Yeah. And he says, these are baby dinosaur bones and. He kind of looked at him and said, yeah. So , he said, they’ve never been found before. And he looks at Bob and he shakes his head and he said, Bob, you and I have been looking for babies out here for how long, and when we find them, they’re laying on somebody’s card table in the living room. A surprise to me that baby bones weren’t preserved in quantity elsewhere. Come to find out. It’s probably because most dinosaur bones are preserved in sandstone.
Stacia Coverdell: Okay.
Dave Trexler: And Sandy soils tend to be slightly acidic. And over the years you. Even mild acid will break bone down and, and cause it to go away rather than allow it to be preserved.
Dave Trexler: This area of Montana is absolutely unique in having those big, fresh Rocky mountains built to the west of us. And they were just in the process of being built when the dinosaurs were alive here.
Stacia Coverdell: And they’re all made outta limestone, right?
Dave Trexler: Those reefs you see are all limestone. Which is calcium carbonate, which is very alkaline it’s it’s, it’s where we get alkali flats from.
Stacia Coverdell: Okay.
Dave Trexler: So what we’ve had is run off water from the mountains, very, very rich in the, the basic, you know, pH stuff rather than, rather than acidic stuff.
Dave Trexler:
Dave Trexler: So probably there has never been a time when our soils were acidic enough to break any of that down.
Stacia Coverdell: At least since the cretaceous,
Dave Trexler: At least since the cretaceous .Well, probably actually since the Mississippian, but we don’t know that much about what happened before, cuz those sediments aren’t exposed
Stacia Coverdell: No, there’s 7,000 feet under the ground.
Dave Trexler: There you do. so, anyway, maybe someday, probably not in my lifetime. Well, at least I hope
Stacia Coverdell: No comment…
Dave Trexler: I hope not in my lifetime. [laughs] Anyway the, the thing about all of that is we’ve had a unique preservation in this area and it allowed those babies to be preserved where they, there’s not many other areas around the world that have those conditions. So , , that’s the reason we have babies here
Stacia Coverdell: In China, is their water alkaline? Is that why they have so much egg preservation?
Dave Trexler: The flaming cliffs area?
Stacia Coverdell: Well, I guess Mongolia as well.
Dave Trexler: Yeah.
Stacia Coverdell: flaming cliffs
Dave Trexler: That area, I think was a unique, but fairly localized event. And it was alkaline, I think for another reason, it, okay. It was a, it, it still had a, a carbonate component that was part of the source water.
Dave Trexler: So in that respect, yeah, it was similar that way.
Stacia Coverdell: Okay.
Dave Trexler: So yeah. Yeah. It’s, it pretty much takes that. When I worked out in dinosaur provincial park, we found egg shell in two locations only in that entire park. And there were just a couple little pieces that were fairly badly eroded
Dave Trexler: ,
Dave Trexler: but the two locations where we found them were in association with [hunianic] clam shells.
Stacia Coverdell: okay. So, so there was a little pocket of alkaline water around
Dave Trexler: yeah.
Stacia Coverdell: All the acid stuff. Okay.
Dave Trexler: So that’s kind of a cool way nature has such a broad diversity through time. You, you really have to take that into consideration when you’re doing the research anyway, back to our story.
Stacia Coverdell: Anyway, so Jack’s looking at the baby on the table…
Dave Trexler: and he says, “would you mind if we did some research and wrote a paper?” of course we had no problem with that. This is what we’re all about, is furthering science and increasing knowledge. So we loaned the babies to Jack and he took them off.
Dave Trexler: anyway, Jack asked if he could borrow the bones for some research and if you put also go out and, and visit the, the site
Dave Trexler:
Dave Trexler: Well, by that time, mother had come over. And we had been visiting there for a while. When Jack asked if he could borrow the, the bones she grabbed, the only sturdy container we had in the the house at the time was a old Folger’s coffee can.
Stacia Coverdell: So this is the infamous coffee can
Dave Trexler: wrapped the bones in paper towels, put ’em in the coffee can and handed them to him. He asked. He could actually visit the site as well. And when we got him permission to go out to the site, one of the other things we showed him was actually a really badly eroded skull that Laurie had found.
Dave Trexler: And it was only, oh, like a week earlier that she had found it, but we had trying to preserve it. And of course, what we had to preserve with was Shelac and it’s not very thin. You it’s really difficult to dribble. And this bone was so powdery and eroded that any little breeze come through would blow parts of the bone away that the bone was dust
Dave Trexler: I uncovered maybe an inch of it and tried to carefully dribble a little Shelac on it. And the, the Shelac hitting, it caused a, a bubble ripple in the bone. So we had walked away from it. There’s no, there’s no use trying to collect something like that. If you don’t have the right equipment, you just ruin it.
Dave Trexler: And we knew it was a skull. What was exposed there had teeth in it, and we knew it was a duck bill. And at the time, since duck bills are the most common. And, and since it was just absolutely understood that the Two Medicine was an extension of the Old Man Formation in Canada and the animals would all be the same, Jack offered to try to collect that skull and see if there was anything preserved on the other side
Stacia Coverdell: so you could put in your little museum
Dave Trexler: and, and kind of in- trade for allowing him to borrow the baby bones and do research on them. A really cool thing was when they collected it and turned it over, it happened to be to an animal that had never been seen before. They named it maiasaura.
Stacia Coverdell: Of course that had to be taken away for research.
Dave Trexler: Of course. Yep.
Stacia Coverdell: And that skull’s in Museum of the Rockies now?
Dave Trexler: I think that’s where the skull is, but technically now Yale claims ownership of it. Cuz that’s what all their paperwork says, but
Stacia Coverdell: okay.
Dave Trexler: The problem was, you know, let Jack borrow these things. He was working for Princeton.
Stacia Coverdell: Yeah.
Dave Trexler: And basically he took them and, and just put them in, gave them a, a Princeton number so that he could list them in his publication. Well, 20 years later, when it’s time to sort all this out by then Princeton university has closed its paleontology department entirely. They have given their collections to Yale.
Dave Trexler: All of the original paperwork is, in a commotion, so Yale doing due diligence when they were, you know, asked if, the babies were ready to be returned. Said “Retruned? They’re, ours.” You know?
Stacia Coverdell: Yeah. Jack was a preparer Princeton when this was all going down in 1978.
Dave Trexler: Yes. He got the position at museum of the Rockies in 1980. So the first two years out, he was here from Princeton and the skull actually, Laurie, recognizing, holotype skulls need to be in, in places that have climate control. And what have you did donate the skull, but she donated it to Museum of the Rockies.
Dave Trexler: There’s a couple of pieces of paperwork. We’ve got one of them that says she donated it to there, but Yale’s paperwork says it was theirs from Princeton. As long as it’s in a proper collection and, and properly cared for, it really doesn’t matter.
Stacia Coverdell: As long as everyone knows where it is.
Dave Trexler: There you go. So that’s really where all of this started. Jack asked if he could go and do further research out at the site and we contacted the landowner. Landowner said so long as there’s no publicity. We don’t care. Take ’em out there. But said, you have to watch them. You know, we we’re busy running cattle.
Dave Trexler: We don’t want people just running over our place, you know, whenever. So, you know, you, you need to keep track of when they’re out there and, and make sure gates are shut and all of that sort of thing. So basically we had to be out there with them whenever they wanted to go out. And that was the way it worked until 1980. When some things changed. We’ll talk about that in a while.
Dave Trexler: So you’re gonna get two installments to put on the. This is a good place to split for part two and three.