Jurassic Lark
Written By Rowan Jacobsen
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Erick and his dad dig that paleontology.
My son Erick was one of those 5-year-olds who could name 40 different dinosaurs before he could pronounce his l's or r's: "Actuawy, Tywannosauwus wex may have been a scavengew."
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, although it never occurred to me that a paleontologist was something to be; I thought it was something you read about in books. But what if I'd grown up in "Dinosaur Country" — a windswept, fossil-studded wedge of Wyoming, South Dakota, Montana, and Colorado? There, erosion and geology have teamed up to expose the Jurassic- and Cretaceous-era sediment beneath the surface. With little vegetation in this dusty land, there's not much masking the bones. So Erick and I decided to spend a week on a dig led by the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research, the collecting team that has unearthed hundreds of museum-quality fossils, including the famous Sue and seven other tyrannosaurs. The institute has always welcomed volunteers — including kids.
Cofounder Peter Larson's kids grew up working at the dino quarries. "This is the perfect place for kids," Larson says. "It's in the middle of nowhere, it's dirty, it's hot and sweaty, it's life. Many kids get their first glimpse of how science works because they're interested in dinosaurs. We should use that to get their attention."
Kids also make good diggers. "There aren't many businesses where kids can make a real contribution," Larson says. "They can take their friends to a museum and say, 'You see that bone? I dug that!'"
But how would an 8-year-old who gets bored putting away his Lego blocks deal with hours of digging? Could he live in a tent far from Mom and other pillars of civilization?
Scraping By
We arrive at the Wyoming hilltop where 20 adults and kids are squinting at the dirt. Erick gets his digging kit: a huge Timber Rattler knife and X-Acto (both for use only under close supervision), a scribe for scraping, a brush, and Paleo-Bond glue to stabilize bone fragments. He may as well have been knighted. We're assigned a spot and shown how to tell the shiny black bones from the crumbly gray siltstone. On our knees we fillet the hill with our knives, one centimeter at a time, in search of treasure.
Scrape, scrape, brush, brush. When the temperature hits 99, we squirt each other with the hose from the water truck.
When it hits 101, we tell ourselves that it's a dry 101.
When it hits 105, Erick says, "We have to keep working until the dinner bell rings," and scrapes his knife around the edges of a fragment. We both feel very grown-up that night around the chuckwagon listening to the pros debate the latest scientific discoveries.
We pull fragments for two more days. Sometimes the kids disappear into the woods for a game of pinecone grenades. But mostly we stay put, happy to be part of the team.
Until it happens. On our last day, we hit another "fragment." We scrape around it, expecting to find the end, but this one keeps going. We dig under it. We both feel a shudder of anticipation as it emerges into a foot-long, lustrous black, perfectly preserved bone with a big knob on each end.
Larson identifies it as a 150-million-year-old camarasaur foot bone. There isn't time for us to complete the delicate removal process, so we turn it over to a 15-year-old who can name every species of dinosaur and pronounce them flawlessly.
That last night at dinner, we tell everyone about our bone. They promise to send us a cast. Tomorrow we'll return to civilization. Maybe we won't tell Mom about the Timber Rattler knife. But she'll probably see in Erick's confidence that he's figuring out his place in a world 4 1/2 billion years young.
About the Author: Rowan Jacobsen's latest book is Fruitless Fall, about the honeybee colony collapse. He and Erick are returning to the dig this summer, along with Mom, friends, and an even bigger knife, called a "Redneck Toothpick."
Plus:
Paleo Hot Spots - Where to GoBuild Your Own Digging Kit
