{"id":131,"date":"2009-08-20T18:18:32","date_gmt":"2009-08-21T01:18:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jeffwallach.com\/?p=131"},"modified":"2011-06-22T17:28:04","modified_gmt":"2011-06-23T00:28:04","slug":"dino-might","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/adventure-travel\/131\/dino-might","title":{"rendered":"Dino Might"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>\"Jack<\/p>\n

After hunting dinosaur bones all morning with paleontologist Jack Horner and his wife Celeste in the badlands of eastern Montana\u2014 tramping through slick gullies and across crumbling plains silly with prickly pear cactus, sagebrush, and rattlesnakes– we stopped for lunch and a geology lesson atop a high escarpment.\u00a0 As I dug into my sandwich, Horner pulled a rib out of his battered green army pack and commenced gnawing.<\/p>\n

Although this particular rib did not originate in the Cretaceous period (it was from last night\u2019s barbecue), Horner considered it thoughtfully between bites.\u00a0 \u201cEe-yup,\u201d he said– an indication that he was thinking deeply.\u00a0 \u201cYup yup yup,\u201d he added, as if to clarify.\u00a0 It turned out that he was thinking about why the Hell Creek Formation stretching before us seemed to contain more dinosaur bones than a strip bar contains drunks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was a lowland area of river flooding where sediments covered things,\u201c Horner said, picking clean the rib bone.\u00a0 \u201cThey stayed covered for 65 million years– long enough that they haven\u2019t eroded.\u00a0 But erosion had to begin so that the right level is weathering out right now.\u201d\u00a0 Lucky for Horner he grew up in the right place at the right time.\u00a0 Eastern Montana has proven to be a mother lode for uncovering dinosaur bones, especially those of T-Rex.\u00a0 Finding them\u2014as I learned from watching him and Celeste in the field– often involves walking slowly through the badlands, traversing steep ridges, and looking down at the ground as if you\u2019re inconsolably sad.<\/p>\n

\"JackA veritable dino divining rod, Jack Horner has uncovered more dinosaur fossils than anyone else in history. The uniqueness of his finds (a bone bed containing more than 10,000 duckbill dinosaurs; the world\u2019s first dinosaur embryos, e.g.) and the theories he\u2019s drawn from them have led us to begin looking at dinos as more than just big, clumsy, often-violent creatures who were too dumb or too unlucky to survive.\u00a0 It is astounding what Horner has deduced from dinosaur bones\u2014that they were social animals that traveled in herds; that they raised their own young; that T-Rex was a scavenger, not the fearsome predator it\u2019s been miscast as in popular culture.\u00a0 Horner has also contradicted accepted theory by hypothesizing that dinos were warm-blooded and could shift their metabolic rates as they grew older, which may account for their tremendous size.<\/p>\n

I traveled to this godforsaken locale not far from where the radical Freemen cult made their stand years ago to spend a couple of days with this Master, who each summer welcomes 30-50 dedicated volunteers to help with his research.\u00a0 Why would you go?\u00a0 Because dinosaurs are cool, huge, and gone, and working a dig combines the adventure of a camping trip with the chance to play detective in a case that\u2019s gone unsolved for millions of years.<\/p>\n

But volunteers must prove themselves self-motivated, fast learning, and physically fit\u2014and that\u2019s just to reach the site, which in this case is a long and lonely drive even from the remote city of Billings.\u00a0 In addition to my hunting dinos with Horner and Celeste, I also helped a handful of other volunteers and staffers excavate one of the project\u2019s more recent finds– a 40-foot Tyrannosaurus Rex.\"Mapping<\/p>\n

In a field where academic credentials are like a secret handshake, Jack Horner can offer only the high-five of a high school diploma.\u00a0 Yet even without the degrees he\u2019s a Regent\u2019s Professor of biology at Montana State University; Curator of Paleontology at Bozeman\u2019s Museum of the Rockies; author of many books including \u201cDigging Dinosaurs\u201d and \u201cDinosaurs Under the Big Sky\u201d; and recipient of the prestigious MacArthur \u201cgenius\u201d grant.\u00a0 He\u2019s also consulted on the three Jurassic Park movies (and admits to rooting for the dinosaurs).\u00a0 Not bad for a guy who describes himself as \u201ca glorified ditch digger, squatter, and beggar.\u201d\u00a0 Physically, his beard and sunglasses make him look both scholarly and dangerous.\u00a0 One of his colleagues calls Horner \u201cthe Hank Williams Jr. of paleontology\u201d– and not just because of the resemblance.\u00a0 In his earlier years, Horner earned a reputation as camp wildman.\u00a0 But these days, Horner\u2019s young staff and visiting volunteers ratchet up the beer drinking and dissonant country singing when Horner\u2019s not<\/span> in camp.<\/p>\n

On the day I spent with him in the field, Jack kicked off our afternoon adventure by exclaiming– like one of the Hardy Boys– \u201cLet\u2019s go explorin\u2019!\u201d<\/p>\n

Not knowing exactly what to look for at first, every rock, stone, pebble, and twig appeared to be a dinosaur to me.\u00a0 When I picked up what I thought was a gorgeous fossil, Horner identified it immediately.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a really<\/span> nice rock,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cYou could take it home . . . and make believe it\u2019s a Triceratops horn.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the course of the day, I learned to discern between bones and stones after Horner pointed out that any \u201crock\u201d above a certain size had to be a bone because there were no big rocks here, and that bones have texture\u2014marrow space\u2014whereas rocks don\u2019t.\u00a0 Each time I presented a genuine specimen, Horner quickly nailed it– a champosaur rib; a prehistoric turtle shell; a bone fragment from a modern buffalo.<\/p>\n

But we were looking for more than scattered fragments.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m not interested in single bones,\u201d Horner said.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cI want to find more than one bone weathering out in the same place.\u201d\u00a0 That afternoon, dragging packs full of water, snacks, picks, brushes, shovels, a portable GPS system, and other gear that volunteers will grow familiar with,\u00a0 we (Jack, that is) stumbled upon three new dinosaur skeletons\u2014\u201cassociations of bones,\u201d– although he appeared to be simply wandering absent minded through the topography.\u00a0 But I knew that he was thinking about what the climate was like here millions of years ago, asking himself how bones might have come to rest in a particular place or position, at a specific angle.\u00a0 Had water moved them here?\u00a0 Had they been scavenged?\u00a0 He pursued his forensic detective work silently as he picked at the dirt around them.\u00a0 Volunteers\u2014who mostly work the sites that Horner now devotes most of his time to finding– have even more time to decode stories as they spend hours communing with bones.<\/p>\n

I tried to walk out in front of Horner for awhile so I\u2019d be likely to spot a juicy find first.\u00a0 But where a hillside looked like a hillside to me, Horner spied a black rock poking out ten feet up the slope.\u00a0 When he finished examining it he said, \u201cYup.\u00a0 I\u2019m beginning to think Tyrannosaurs are a dime a dozen.\u201d\u00a0 Soon after, he also spotted three ribs from a triceratops lying on the ground imitating rubble and stones.\u00a0 Horner asked me to name the site, which I called \u201cTriceratropolis.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next day I experienced what occurs after Horner finds a worthwhile specimen– by spending eight hours on my knees with one of his crews of about eight people essentially chipping away ground like hard-frozen chocolate ice cream using a chisel, awl, and paint brush, and being extremely careful not to hit any part of the Tyrannosaurus that lay buried in the hill.\u00a0 Which is what most volunteers will find themselves doing most of the time.\u00a0 The field crew chief on this excavation also taught me to mix plaster and water into a gooey paste to apply protective casts around bones for when they\u2019re carried out to a museum for further study– and possible reassembly into a threatening museum dinosaur.\u00a0 Horner\u2019s more permanent workers\u2014grad students, mostly\u2014demonstrate a technique once and hope you\u2019ll catch on.\u00a0 Horner currently trains all his crew chiefs who then train inexperienced volunteers such as myself.<\/p>\n

When I asked Horner how he\u2019s managed to find so many more dinosaurs than anyone else (he\u2019s uncovered fully one third of all the Tyrannosaurs ever discovered), several geologic epochs seemed to pass before he responded.\u00a0 \u201cMaybe nobody went looking, or they didn\u2019t know what they were seeing,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cDinosaurs might be everywhere.\u00a0 There could be T. Rexes all over the place.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to predict.\u00a0 I just go out and find stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Wankel\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After hunting dinosaur bones all morning with paleontologist Jack Horner and his wife Celeste in the badlands of eastern Montana\u2014… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,19164],"tags":[25,27,5855,5856,5857,5858,5859,5860,944165],"class_list":["post-131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adventure-travel","category-offcourse","tag-profile","tag-montana","tag-tyranosaurs","tag-jack-horner","tag-dinosaur-hunting","tag-hell-creek-formation","tag-t-rex","tag-museum-of-the-rockies","tag-adventure-travel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2009\/08\/Jack-Deinonychus.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2607,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131\/revisions\/2607"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}