Lens to the Natural World. Kenneth H. Olson
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bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.” So goes the old spiritual that talks about “the hip bone connected to the leg bone, the leg bone connected to the knee bone,” and on and on. The song’s inspiration is, of course, that prophetic passage from Ezekiel chapter 37. The passage has inspired more than song.
Edwin H. Colbert was one of the leading paleontologists of the previous generation; for more than three decades, he was curator of dinosaurs at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. He once spoke to his research staff with a huge sauropod or “brontosaur” pelvic bone in front of him, saying: “Bones are truly fascinating things, marvels of structure and form . . . Everything about a bone has meaning: it is a structure shaped for strength or for a particular function . . . it is an integral element of a dynamic, mobile creature, the complexity of which makes our vaunted mechanical vehicles seem simple and crudely limited.”
One thinks here of the words of Walt Whitman, “The narrowest hinge of my hand puts to scorn all machinery.” Colbert continued:
The astute paleontologist sees in his fossils more than petrified bones . . . In his mind’s eye he can clothe the bones with muscles and other soft parts of living animals, and he can cover the ancient animals with skin or scales or hair and picture them as they once appeared in their native environment . . . One might think that he is akin to Ezekiel, who said: “So I prophesied . . . and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And I beheld, and lo, there were sinews upon them, and flesh came up and skin covered them above . . . and breath came into them, and they lived.” These are the undisputed remains of animals that lived great ages ago, and it is about them that we must speak. May our words never be dry.
Not every dinosaur specimen arrives at a museum or research facility, in fact, far from it. Today, fewer and fewer do, because of the dramatic increase in commercial collecting over the past two decades. Private collectors, as well as companies established for this purpose, sell specimens. A few go to museums that buy fossils (most museums do not), but many of them go to private individuals, and many go overseas without scientists ever seeing them. The situation was exacerbated when, in 1997, the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex, nicknamed “Sue,” was auctioned off for more than 8 million dollars. A number of T. rex specimens have been found since, but the incident surely contributed to the commercialization of fossils, especially dinosaurs, and the granting of permission to search for scientific purposes on private land has sharply declined since. I have been extremely fortunate to work with several landowners who have a fine concern for science in general and for the educational value of such objects.
It is a complex situation. On the one hand, some fossils are common, including many invertebrates. Entire mountain ranges are made of limestone, which means they are literally composed of uncountable trillions of organisms that flourished in ancient seas. Some vertebrate animals have left abundant fossils, also. Sharks, for instance, shed and replace their teeth continually; a single one may shed thousands in a lifetime. The same was true in prehistory, making for huge numbers of fossil shark teeth.
On the other hand, some types, such as many dinosaur fossils, are rare; indeed, some are one of a kind. These represent priceless clues to the history of life on earth and should belong to posterity, instead of becoming mere commodities that go to the highest bidder. It is sometimes to “make ends meet” that such items are sold, but not always. Some of the poorest people I know are farmers and ranchers but so are some of the richest. Where one stands on this issue seems to have little to do with wealth or the lack thereof. In response to the question, “How much is enough?” many will always answer, “Just a little more.” Some will say, “A person has to live, doesn’t he?” Yes, but the oft-unasked question is “What for?”
Thoreau wrote about a neighbor who lived on Flint’s pond, “who regarded even the wild ducks that settled in it as trespassers,” an individual who “would have drained it and sold it for the mud at its bottom.” It was “his farm where everything had its price, who would carry the landscape, who would carry his God, to market, if he could get anything for him . . . on whose farm nothing grows free, whose fields bear no crops, whose meadows no flowers, whose trees no fruits, but dollars.”
To illustrate the rarity and the scientific value of some specimens, consider the horned dinosaur Torosaurus. The first descriptions of the creature accented the fact that huge bony frill or shield extending from the back of the skull over the neck is much larger than that of its more common cousin, Triceratops, of which perhaps two hundred skulls have been found. In addition, the frill of Torosaurus has two large holes in it. The rarity of this beast can be seen by the fact that only three skulls had been found in more than one hundred years. The first two were located in 1891 by an expedition to Wyoming from Yale University. Those were approximately 50 percent complete but enough to give it a name. Nothing more showed up until 1944 when an incomplete juvenile skull was found in South Dakota by the Philadelphia Academy of Science. Then, in Montana in 1996, I excavated a huge Torosaurus skull and delivered it to the world-class Museum of the Rockies at Montana State University in Bozeman, which now houses the largest collection of American dinosaur specimens in the world. It is there that I have practiced my serious avocation as a research associate in paleontology. At nine feet long, it was the largest dinosaur skull in the world.
Rare as they are, I thought I would never see another one in the ground. Then, in 1999, I was visiting a rancher and seeking permission to explore his land, something he readily gave. As I was about to leave, he took me into his garage to show me a piece of bone he had picked up twenty-five years earlier. It was apparent to me that it was a fragment of the skull of a ceratopsian or horned dinosaur, so I was anxious to see how much more could be found. The site was located, and over the next few weeks I made seven trips there to begin exposing what would turn out to be specimen number five of Torosaurus, the most complete and best preserved one yet. The next summer, several of us from the Museum of the Rockies were involved in the remainder of the excavation at the base of a twenty-five foot cliff. Jackhammers, picks, and shovels were used to cut a pickup-sized cave in the sandstone wall and the skull was jacketed in two pieces that together weighed an estimated four thousand pounds. Another winter passed, but in the summer of 2001 the Army National Guard was available for a training exercise in which two Black Hawk helicopters would lift what could be moved in no other way. On July 21, at the crack of dawn, when the air is most still, the great skull nine feet long and over six feet wide rose into the air. (One of the pilots said later, “I don’t know why we had to get up at three-thirty in the morning to come and get something that’s been in the ground for 68 million years!”)
The event was filmed by several media outlets and carried “live” by NBC television’s Today Show, and CNN picked it up and sent it around the world. It was an event illustrating both the popularity of dinosaurs and the large number of people and the amount of resources necessary to rightly handle a specimen of this importance.
The world-renowned dinosaur specialist Jack Horner, who oversaw the excavation, was asked, “So, is this the kind of moment paleontologists live for?” “Well, it certainly is,” he replied. “The next great moment will be when we can get it to the Museum where everyone can see it.”
And that’s the point. Such things belong to the ages. The two giant skulls are now central exhibits in a new dinosaur hall, where their bones will speak to the public of the diversity of life through time. Over generations, millions of people will be able to see them and most will surely stand in awe before these, two of the largest skulls of any land animal ever.
Torosaurus has been known by that name for more than a century, but an unexpected perspective was recently provided by a scientific paper published in 2010 by Horner and one of his graduate students, in which they conclude that the few existing skulls of Torosaurus may actually be the final growth stage of very aged individuals of Triceratops. In a situation not uncommon in paleontology, a number of others disagree, illustrating the sort of debates that often take place in science. However, and in line with “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” these specimens—whatever their designation—are still of wonderful creatures from the primeval world of the dinosaurs and, as such, will continue to stir the imagination.
The word “museum” comes from the root verb “to muse,” i.e., to think, to reflect, consider,