EVERYTHING PREHISTORIC
The Final Installment of The Jurassic Journals

At the end of our long week of dinosaur-digging, Greg, Chuck, Brandon, Zack, and I said our fond farewells to everyone at the Waugh dig and returned to the Black Hills Institute in Rapid City, South Dakota. Having toiled for hours in the dirt and sun for every fragment of bone, the colossal skeletons in the museum took on a whole new meaning. I can only imagine what it must feel like to find something as large and awesome as a rex skull.

Pete Larson took us behind the scenes to the BHI's fossil workshop. We watched him clean-up Greg's Camarasaurus claw and he let us go through drawers and drawers of dino-bits including specimens of Camarasaurus, Brachiosaurus, Stegosaurus, Hypsilophodon, Allosaurus, Barosaurus, Triceratops, T. rex, and (my favorite) Apatosaurus. I love how the fossil cleaning stations (seen below) could totally double as animation desks; I'm getting ideas for my future home.

While in South Dakota, we did the obligatory Mt. Rushmore trip. To be honest, it was kind of a let-down after all the prehistoric hijinks.

Our last stop more than made up for Rushmore's lameness. Matt Seney (remember the snake-handler from Journal Six?) used to work at this local attraction called Reptile Gardens. He wanted to give us a backstage tour of the joint, but due to a flash storm (more on that later) he was stuck back at the dig site in Hulett. Fortuitously, the waitress we had at lunch knew a guy who worked at the Gardens, so she hooked us up with a backstage tour anyway!

There was something poetic about ending our dinosaur trip with a visit to their descendents. This komodo dragon certainly bore a striking resemblance to his ancestors. He was pretty relaxed, but his head would perk up every time children came up to the glass.

Our tour guide introduced us to a baby alligator who quickly became my new best friend.

There was a croc handler who gave a presentation in a pen with an assortment of fifteen crocs and alligators. He'd drag em out of the water by their tail and wrestle them to the ground. Amazingly enough, he still had both arms and legs; I don't think he'd have had as much success in a pen with Deinosuchus (whose name means terrible croc). Just for reference, here's a picture Zack took of a modern man-eating croc's skull inside the jaws of the dino-eating Deinosuchus.

Meanwhile, back at the dig site...

Remember that storm I mentioned? Well, while I was cuddling up with my new gator pal, our friends at the Waugh ranch were being slammed by a massive hail storm. We had seen the storm front amassing earlier in the day, before we left camp. Since the only road out of camp was a two-mile dirt road, we said some hastey good-byes to all our friends so we could hit the road before the storm made it impassable.

A mere two hours after we sped off, hail the size of softballs began pelting the camp, smashing nine of ten car windshields.

We heard of one family who also decided to hit the dirt road before the storm washed away. They packed up their tent, their digging gear, bone fragments and dog. But they forgot one thing as they zipped away from the camp in their RV: their eight year-old son! He was still at the camp site in the hail! Everything turned out alright; they went back for him and no real harm was done. But imagine being abandoned by your family and left in this (thanks to my buddy Amar for the great footage!):

Thus ended our first great dinosaur hunt. As you can see, it was an amazing time, and we all made some fantastic friends with dino-lovers from all over the world. For any of you,who are interested in going on a dinosaur dig yourself, I highly recommend contacting the fine folks at the Black Hills Institute and volunteering for next year's Waugh Dig. You don't need any experience (heck, I'd never been camping!), just a love for everything prehistoric.

From left: Holly Barden, Oguchi Shota, Zack Keller, Amar Dosanj, Greg Dykstra, Chuck Waite, yours truly, and Brandon Hyman.

Previous Jurassic Journals
Part One: The Black Hills Institute
Part Two: Devil's Tower
Part Three: The Waugh Ranch
Part Four: The Actual Jurassic Journal
Part Five: F Quarry
Part Six: A Quarry

A QUARRY
Part Six of The Jurassic Journals

The last two days of the dig, Pete reassigned us from the gruelingly fruitless F Quarry to the bountiful A Quarry. My first assignment was cleaning up a bit of camarasaurus vertebra recently unearthed by the bobcat tractor.

The Faileontologists' response to being reassigned to A Quarry:

One day, after returning to the mess hall after a long day of digging, we came upon a crowd gathered around Matt Seney (the dude facing camera, in front of the van).

He had found a baby rattlesnake and was handling it with a hook in one hand while smoking a cigarette in the other. Matt used to work at a local theme park called Reptile Gardens. He informed us that, while baby rattlers are dangerous, it is a myth that they inject more venom than an adult. They inject a higher percentage of their venom, but because they have smaller venom reserves to begin with, a high percentage of their venom is about as much as a small percent of the adults'.

Matt also caught a scorpion. He showed us how the dromopods glow in the dark under a black light. Matt was quickly becoming my hero. Later, while a group of us were playing paleo-poker in the mess hall, we heard Matt utter, "Oops." We turned around to find him holding an empty cup and squinting at the gravel on the ground. We played the rest of the hand standing on our benches.

Every bench, table, outhouse, and shower stall was covered in graffiti. Here's my contribution.

Zack, Brandon, UK students Holly and Amar, and I decided to take a break from the dig and head into Hulett, Wyoming for some R'n'R. Our first stop was a local dive called the Ponderosa Bar. We played Thriller on the juke box in Michael Jackson's honor, and were amused to see two of the older local gals doing the zombie dance at the bar.

Zack and I tought the brits how to play Purple Rain, the greatest game since Telephone Pictionary.

We decided to visit Devil's Tower at night in hopes of spotting a spacecraft. We brought some Wild Blue, a blueberry-flavored beer and local favorite. After your first sip of Wild Blue, you smile and exclaim, "Tastes like a muffin!" By the end of the bottle, you're frowning and staring at the remaining dregs of beer as you mutter, "Tastes like a muffin." Honestly, when's the last time you felt the urge to dunk your blueberry muffin in beer? Despite the other-worldly flavor of our booze, there were no extra-terrestrials to be found. Still, it was an awesome experience, I could almost hear the John Williams.

Back to business! I make my most important discovery on the dig: a small theropod toe bone! Since theropods (being carnivores) are rarer than herbivores, and a toe-bone indicating the possibility of a body close-at-hand, Pete said this find earned me "the right to come back next year."

And Greg finds a ginormous camarasaurus toe claw, which makes him an instant legend. Pete says Greg definitely earned the right to come back next year as well. A Quarry rocks.

"Don't mess with me, man. I'm a scientist."

Tune in next week for the stunning conclusion of The Jurassic Journals:
Everything Prehistoric
OR
The Storm

F QUARRY
Part Five of The Jurassic Journals

"Grant's like me...he's a digger."

The Waugh dig is a collection of quarries working their way into the Morrison formation, hunting the titans of the Jurassic Era. These quarries are labeled A-K, and carefully plotted on a map as each site is developed. Pictured above are the Pixar paleontologists (from left): Chuck Waite, Brandon Hyman, Greg Dykstra, Zack Keller, and me. We were assigned to F Quarry, where we were supervized by seventeen year-old veteran dino hunter Kyle Lindsey. Below, Kyle (left) helps Zack uncover a new find.

While Greg got straight to work, Kyle taught us rookies how to 1) know a fossil when we saw one, and 2) carefully excavate said fossil from the surrounding rock matrix using exactoblades, brushes, and paleo-bond (a sort of superglue used to repair fractured fossils). Below are (from left to right): BHI staffer Matt Seney, Greg Dykstra, Kyle Linsdey, Chuck Waite, BHI staffer Sam (I forget his last name), Oguchi Shota, and (on the ground in front), me and Brandon Hyman.

After hours of toil with no bones to show for our efforts, we began to come up with new F-names for our quarry (Fruitless-, Frustrating-, and just plain Fucked Quarry were among the favorites).

We were also lovingly christened as "Faileontologists" by the other diggers, particularly those in A Quarry, who were unearthing all the good stuff. I'm pretty sure the A stood for Astounding-, Awesome-, Amazing-, and Allosaur-Teeth-Everywhere Quarry. Here Pete Larson is uncovering another Admirable A-Quarry find. His daughter, Ella, doesn't seem as impressed as we are.

This gorgeous allosaurus tooth is an example of the fine specimens A Quarry would be uncovering on an hourly basis.

Meanwhile, over at F(ractured fossil) Quarry, we were brushing as carefully as possible around this brittle, oxidized fractured camarasaur bone. Note the bottle to the left; that's paleo-bond, which we kept pouring onto our constantly-breaking bones. On several occassions, Sam even told us not to use the adhesive, that it was worth more (at $10 a bottle) than the specimens we were laboring to recover.

Here I am staring longingly at A Quarry as UK students Holly and Amar dig away.

Greg mentioned that it was the first time at the Waugh dig that he hadn't been assigned to A Quarry, but he dug dutifully with the rest of us faileontologists and shared in our small victories, like Chuck's croc tooth.

The croc tooth was our first flag-able find; diggers flag areas where complete bones are found so that they can be carefully mapped and excavated. Here we are, striking the Iwo Jima pose in honor of our first flag.

And, once again, A Quarry for contrast.

Here's another of F Quarry's small victories, Zack's hypsilophodontid claw.

Zack and I immediately start digging where the hypsolophodontid claw was found. Twelve hours of digging later (I kid you not), after having found absolutely nothing else, we cut our losses, abandon the site, and return to our original dig positions.

At the end of every day, though, we'd be all smiles as we trekked back to the camp site. Covered in dirt, sweat, blisters, and sunburns, but laughing about the endeavors of the day and our small successes. Here we are after the first day when we were too tired to hike and took the truck back.

But don't worry, the Faileontologists had a chance to get even with the A-Diggers every night when we sat down for paleo-poker. Instead of chips, we used belemnites (squid fossils) that we found in the gravel around the mess hall. I came away each week with pockets full of belemnites, feeling quite vindicated.

Next Journal: the faileontologists graduate to A Quarry. Will we find our fortune and glory or remain as empty-handed as before? Stay tuned to the Jurassic Journals to find out!

THE ACTUAL JURASSIC JOURNAL
Part Four of The Jurassic Journals

I'm not much of a journaler. In fact, I've never kept an on-going journal in my entire life (other than reading journals required in English class). However, my memory is lousy and extremely unreliable, and I wanted to remember everything about my first dino trip. So, I decided to keep a journal of my adventure into fossil country. My sketchbook doubled quite nicely as a dino-diary and I was able to catalogue, not only all of my frustrations of finding nothing but dirt for hours on end, but also great quotes from my fellow diggers.

One fella in particular, a fellow newbie named David Bourke, had the greatest quotes and stories. His anecdotes would start with these amazing hooks like, "So I was drinking moonshine at a fiddler's convention..." My favorite quote of David's was when he and I were talking about Disney's Fantasia:

David: "Fantasia was one that I went back and saw in the sixties in a whole different light."

Me: "Because of your appreciation for music?"

David nods, thoughtfully.

David: "Plus I was really high."

The nearly illegible notes on this spread are from a conversation I had with Pete Larson about whether or not dinosaurs reached REM state of sleep and were capable of dreaming. Pete reckons they could based on the fact that birds do.

Most of these sketches are me copying out of Robert Bakker's book The Dinosaur Heresies in an attempt to learn actual dinosaur anatomy.

And, just for fun, here's a picture of a female wolf spider covered with her babies taken by my buddy and fellow digger, Amar Dosanj. Sorta brings a tear to your eye, doesn't it?

THE WAUGH RANCH
Part Three of The Jurassic Journals

Tuesday, July 7

After our short stop at Devil's Tower, Greg, Chuck, Zack, and I high-tailed it on down to Hulett, WY where we were to make our fortunes as bona fide paleontologists at the Waugh Dig.

The first thing that struck me about the dig was the scenery, and in particular the greenery. I expected a dinosaur dig to look a bit more like the one's I'd seen on Jurassic Park and Nova specials: dusty, dry, and treeless. The Waugh ranch, however, was beautiful. Because it sat on a hill, we had a fantastic view of the unspoiled region that spread for miles in each direction. The ponderosas filled the air with the fresh smell of pine and, more importantly, provided ample shade for diggers who needed a break from the heat.

Our mess hall, which quickly became my favorite area of the dig since it meant food and shade.



Here's our camp, which one of the diggers affectionately named "Pixar Plaza."

After Zack had set up his tent, Chuck noticed this little beauty nestled in her hole, just a meter away from his tent-opening. She's a funnel-web, the species of spider Return of the King's monster Schelob is modeled after.

Here's the head of the dig, master dinosaur hunter Pete Larson. You may remember Pete's brother Neil in the first installment of The Jurassic Journals. Fossil hunting runs in the Larson family, Neil's two sons Tim and Matt are also seasoned paleontologists and BHI staff members. We calculated our arrival at the ranch to co-incide with lunchtime, so we got to know Pete and the other diggers for a while before they put us to work for the afternoon.

Our first day of work consisted of training our eyes to spot fossils. Not all of them are as clearly defined as this gorgeous Allosaur tooth (one of many found throughout the week by our new friend, Bob Lindsey). We were assigned to dig through the talus piles (mounds of excess dirt set aside by other diggers) for any fossils the previous diggers might have missed. As you can see, fossils are darker than the dirt around them. They're also smoother, and often have imprints of fibrous marrow-like texture.

Here's a look at the skull this Allosaur tooth belongs to: