Wasatch Mountain Times | 1996-05-01 | Page 8

MAY 1996 MOUNTAIN TIMES June Issue Ry Sele Crt ta LAY tote Pore eke h Pky 801-649-8046 Move Over Jurassic Park Dr. Dinosaur - Jack Horner Shakes the Dust Off ee By Mark Gerard Bir wit RM CHANGE ¥ YOUR LIFE Team Building ¢ Couples and Family Development Customized Training Programs 801-487-1391 “The sunbeams stream forward, dawn boys, with shimmering shoes of yellow.” Mescalaro Apache Song A Message from RUTH DRAPKIN 801-649-9200/ 1-800-999-7355 en Wardley Better Homes & Garden Klay Anderson Auto In, PRO AUDIO SA aU SERVIC “Good Sound is the ay of Bad We 1.800.FOR.KLAY 7054 SOUTH 2300 EAST + SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH 84121 VOICE 801.94.AUDIO + FAX [phone] Ais Main Street Beto Park City’s Fastest Finest, Quality Photofinishing 523 Main Street + One-hour Photo * Two-hour Slide Processing (E-6) * KODAK Create-A-Print™ * Black & White Processing * Custom Enlarging, Negatives or Slides * Portrait & Commercial Studio * Passport Photos * Unique Photo Frames & Accessories 649-6465 S3o million years ago, western wester North America was a dinosaur Serengeti. Herds of 10,000 duckbill dinosaurs migrated seasonally — each strutting on two legs, like elephantsized pigeons. A duckbill rookery, a colony of nests, would have sounded like the honking pandemonium of a penguin thousand population amplified one times. Mother duckbills guarding their nests filled with rubbery chicks and warm rotting leaves. We can imagine this — in scientific detail — because Dr. Jack Horner found the bones and nests to prove it Horner, curator of the Museum of the Rockies in Montana, is now famous from Alan Grant — the character modeled after him in Steven Spielberg’s movie Jurassic Park. Now consulting on the sequel, Lost World, Horner visited the University of Utah Natural History Museum this spring. The morning before his guest lecture, Horner sat at a gritty wooden desk in the basement of the Natural History Museum. Behind him stood racks holding lumpy floor-to-ceiling black petrified bones. With his Rainier Beer jacket, NBA-sized tennis shoes, and relaxed demeanor, Horner seems more like a ranch hand than a museum curator Freightening Fossil Bill But Horner is worried about pending legislation called “The Fossil Preservation Act of 1996.” The bill would allow commercial collectors to sell, to whomever can afford them, vertebrate fossils found on federal land. It's controversial because of the comparative rarity, and the importance to science, of vertebrate fossils. “As far as I’m concerned,” he said, “fossils on federal land belong to the people of the United States of America. I don’t want Americans to have to go to Japan to see them.” Horner explains that the bill would ally amateur and commercial collectors against scientists. Amateur fossil collectors, for the most part, are responsible collectors, making collections of information. Commercial collectors, on the other hand, inflate the price of fossil specimens for museums and schools. Commercial collectors have little incentive to gather and record critical scientific information with the bones. Some amateur fossil collectors have complained bitterly about current federal law. They argue that it’s illegal Failing college in 1966, Horner was drafted and sent to Vietnam. Returning two years later, he attended all the classes he thought important, then worked for Princeton University as an uncertified fossil preparer. He spent summers camping out in a tee- Ir. Jack Horner at dinosaur dig. for amateurs to keep vertebrate fossils that, when collected by scientists, will sit boxed up in basements of museums or universities. For example , Brigham tons of Young University has 250 dinosaur bones stored beneath Cougar Stadium and is laying off its only remaining fossil preparer. Amateurs argue that they would collect and display these specimens, giving them ongoing educational value. Scientific Loss Horner is sympathetic. “No one should allocate money for excavation without allocating money for preparation of the fossils they excavate,” he says. “But as soon as a specimen is Out of the ground, without carefully recording the information (that gives it scientific context), it’s useless. It could be thrown away. (And) that’s the problem, it’s unlikely commercial collectors will spend time recording information they won’t get any money for.” Besides, he grins, how many amateurs can fit a saurapod specimen in their house? The American West holds the richest and most collection of varied dinosaur fossils in the world. Thirty five varieties have been discovered in Utah alone. It’s natural that a westerner, like Horner, who grew up in Shelby, Montana and found his first fossil at age eight, would decide early to become a paleontologist. Young Horner knew fossils, but school was an obstacle. the University of Montana patiently and repeatedly flunked him because he couldn’t pass tests. Educators say he has learning disabilities. But, Horner explains that he just learns differently: “If I wrote the tests, they would be the ones with the learning disabilities.” PAGE 8 CCR pee and scouring the Montana backcountry for dinosaur bones. In 1979, Horner found the first dinosaur nest discovered in _ this hemisphere. When Princeton refused to fund excavation, he asked Rainier Beer Company — as a loyal beer consumer — for a $10,000 grant. Rainier’s positive response prompted Princeton to backtrack and fund the project. Horner’s excavation was so startling, it literally shook the dust off academic paleontology. He revealed for the first time, a dinosaur rookery, or colony of nests, and culled evidence on nurturing mothers; growth patterns common to warm blooded animals; and communal behavior. Dinosaurs were birdlike He’d found proof that dinosaurs were agile and birdlike. And nearby, he found a wall imbedded with the bones of 10,000 duckbill dinosaur individuals — evidence of herding. Horner is renown for his uncanny ability to find fossils where no one else looks, as well as for asking novel questions. Pursuing the query, “Why do we find so few baby dinosaur bones?” Horner spent dusty summers on hands and knees sifting sand for tiny pieces of bone. His finding — that dinosaurs nested in upland areas, not the swamps and coastal areas in which adult dinosaur bones are usually found — was a major breakthrough. research earned Subsequent Horner an honorary doctorate degree and a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant. He’s now researching the mechanics of evolution, itself. As Horner pieces together part of the puzzle of life on Earth, federal law protecting the West’s wealth of petrified bones makes his task easier. Horner points out that the federal government spends more on the Hubble Space Telescope project each year than for all research in life sciences. To help fund dinosaur research, the University of Utah Natural History Museum and the Museum of the Rockies offer the public a summer paleontology Montana. For field program more information, in con- tact the UofU Natural History Museum: [phone]. @