her name - captured her imagination, and still does. Scientists have never actually extracted dinosaur DNA using this method, but the mere mention of the word amber - i.e. As biting gnats buzz about everyone’s heads, she explains that for her, it began with the 1993 film “Jurassic Park.” In the movie, scientists extract prehistoric DNA from a mosquito preserved in fossilized tree resin, or amber, and use it to clone dinosaurs. That same spirit, it turns out, animates the folks who go out and look for the real thing.Īmber Stubbings, of Midvale, Utah, a 35-year-old former bureaucrat with a buzzcut and a dopamine molecule tattooed on her wrist, is one of six volunteers here for this excavation. When we hit something big and hard - likely a chunk of the limestone undergirding Florida - we were convinced we’d found a dino skull. One day during recess, my friends and I started digging a hole in front of a plastic playhouse. Back when I was somewhere in the range of pre-kindergarten through first grade, my school had a large, sandy playground. That came as a surprise to me after I moved out West. In fact, the Utah History Encyclopedia says the state boasts a “prolific fossil record that spans the entire ‘Age of Dinosaurs.’” Utah has been known as a paleontological treasure chest since the late 19th century. And the fact that it lies under 10 feet of ancient sandstone conglomerate in the Utah desert is no coincidence. This particular site, now known as T2, is the confirmed resting place of a tyrannosaur, which may be the first complete adult specimen of an incredibly rare species. A dream of so many children (myself, a few decades ago, included), realized. They’ve come here, to the Kaiparowits formation, in search of dinosaurs. They range in age from 22 to 70, and they’ve pitched their tents atop a grayish-brown soil that turns to clouds of powder with each step. Nevertheless, it persists, thanks to people willing to visit often-remote wilderness with shovels and pickaxes, playing Earth’s most elusive game.ĭeep in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, a ragtag bunch of scientists and volunteers have arrived bearing those exact tools. But it’s also because paleontology, as a science, remains fairly new. That’s in part due to accessibility many fossils are likely buried so deeply that they’re unreachable. Of those that have, only a fraction have been discovered. “Only a very tiny percentage of species that ever existed on Earth have been fossilized,” according to the U.S. Yet sometimes, when conditions are just right - either wet enough for a body to make a perfectly preserved stamp of itself or with sediments deep enough for decomposition to take place without the interference of oxygen - traces of life long-dead can endure. According to Bill Bryson’s reporting in “A Short History of Nearly Everything,” this is the case for over 99.9 percent of living organisms. Eventually, as God tells Adam in the book of Genesis, “to dust you shall return.” They vanish, leaving no trace of their existence, no record of ever having drawn breath, consumed by the recycling system that allows new life to rise. When they die, scavengers will consume their flesh and organs, while a combination of bacteria and soil acid will spoil away their bones. Most animals are destined for the same fate.
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