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Shortly before I graduated high school, I met Jack Horner and he invited me to dig with the Museum of the Rockies. Although I've been digging for many enjoyable years since then, 2001 remains the best summer of my entire life. Not only was I in Montana, digging up a T. rex, but I also met some incredible people who are still some of my closest friends. Sadly, I had not yet gone digital, so there are very few scanned pictures from that summer. Someday I'll break out the scanner again. Someday.

These were the glory days of the Hell Creek Project (Phase I). Over 30 people in camp, multiple dig sites, visiting researchers, and of course, media everywhere. With the premiere of Jurassic Park III only a month away, everyone wanted a piece of the action. Discover Magazine sent out photographers, a German news crew stayed with us for weeks, and I made a brief and fuzzy appearance on the NBC nightly news. My mom was so proud.










C-rex, my first quarry. Noted for its articulated gastralia and being larger than Sue. Aside from a partial dentary and a scapula, it was mostly just ribs and articulated vertebrae. Lots and lots of ribs. Big ribs.

From left to right:
Discover Magazine photographer: Trevor? Trevin?
Kari Baker- still comes back to visit & volunteer. Has developed a fondness for Triceratops.
The man, the myth, the legend: Joe Cooley. He got Laura and I addicted to fieldwork. Will be forever remembered for making bone rain from the sky.
Laura Wilson - master of the universe
Sam - MIT student. Seen here uncovering a scapula.

Kari undercutting one of the many rib jackets.

Here's Laura proving that she is more than willing to sacrifice her dignity for paleontology. Give her a job!

The vert jackets from C-rex were over 6 feet long and 2 or 3 feet wide, which meant tunnels were big enough to crawl through - important when you need to plaster the underside of a tunnel, but not so good when the wet burlap falls on your face...















I also spent a day helping with overburden at X-rex. Originally named the Portuguese Death March Site after the Portugirls (3 students from Portugal), Jack said the toe bone looked like another T. rex. It turned out to be a huge hadrosaur tail (hence the new name X-rex) with some rather nice skin impressions. The C-rex crew took the long boat ride and hellish hike out to the X-rex satellite camp to knock the hill back a few feet so they could get the tip of the tail. The next day they discovered the tail took a 90 degree bend straight into the quarry wall. We didn't help them again.