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It's been more than 100 million years since the giant sauropod diplodocus (a large plant-eating dinosaur that was up to 80-100 feet long, according to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History) walked the earth, but it will only be another 10 before the dinosaur with the long neck is back on its feet in Utah.
Paleontologist Rick Hunter has thousands of pounds of diplodocus vertebrate and other bones in his lab at the Thanksgiving Point Museum of Ancient Life in Lehi, all waiting to be cleaned of millions of years of rock and uncovered for people to see.
And Hunter is the guy for the job. With his denim shirt, blue jeans and beard, 54-year-old Hunter looks the part of someone who would be caught digging with a shovel in the middle of a Wyoming desert.
Hunter didn't dig up this particular specimen of diplodocus, though. Western Paleo Labs, a commercial fossil company that shares the lab with the museum, donated the fairly complete fossil still encased in approximately 20 original field jackets (encased in plaster), each weighing several thousand pounds.
Opening up a 5,000-pound mound of rock and bone encased in plaster is tougher than it sounds. Hunter and his intern, Jen Sellers, have to be careful when first opening a jacket because they don't know where the bone is underneath all the rock.
It's been two months since Hunter and Sellers started preparing (the process of cleaning up the rock around fossils) the diplodocus fossils with handheld air powered scribing tools that act like delicate little jack hammers -- and they've only recently uncovered several vertebrate.
"A lot of times you don't know what you're gonna hit until you hit it," said Hunter, who is still as excited about fossils as when he was a boy growing up in American Fork.
"It's like a treasure hunt," Hunter said.
Hunter and other paleontologists spend months looking for fossils, months digging them up, months preparing them, and then months setting them up in displays. He says the work is slow and tedious, but very rewarding.
"There's a thrill to see that stuff and be the first ones to touch it," he says.
Museum visitors can witness that process as well. Large glass windows into the lab are a big attraction for kids and their parents who want to see what a real paleontologist does.
Hunter and Sellers both lean closely over giant fossils with their air scribes, chips of rock flying through the air as more and more black bone is slowly uncovered.
"That's what the guests really enjoy seeing," said Museum of Ancient Life Director Gary Hyatt.
Marci Hardy of South Jordan brings her 5-year-old, dinosaur-loving daughter Paige to the museum at least twice a week.
Hardy says her kids will run up to her and say "Let's go see Rick! Let's go see Rick!"
With wide eyes and a big smile Paige waves at Hunter, who waves back and continues to scribe away at the diplodocus fossil.
"No dolls -- dinos," Hardy said. Her daughter may have caught the dino fever. |
