Dinosaur 13 Page #3

this butcher paper out,

and he mapped each

and every bone one on one

that we found,

that was excavated.

Pete and I had

quite a few discussions

what would be fair.

$5,000 is the most that anybody

had ever given anyone

for a dinosaur,

for any fossil in the ground,

so Pete wrote

a check out for him

and a contract that he

wanted Maurice to sign.

And I showed it to him,

and he said,

"Well, we don't need to sign anything.

It's just something...

a handshake between friends,

and $5,000 is fine.

I'm happy with that."

And, you know, that was the most

that any landowner

had ever gotten.

We shook hands, and he

was pretty excited

about seeing it

set up in the museum.

Last phase of getting Sue

out of the ground,

we used basically

Egyptian techniques

to get this large block.

I mean, we had...

one of the blocks weighed

probably something

close to 10,000 pounds.

There was probably about

10 ton of material total

that we had to load up.

Once we had the skull

and pelvic block

and the tail vertebrae

and everything else,

we knew we could haul

a lot of the stuff

on our Bobcat trailer.

We had no idea how

we were going to be able

to get all these other things.

Well, my brother John had built

a tandem-axle trailer

earlier that year.

With that and the other

pickup truck that we had there,

we were able

to load the fossil up.

After we had built pallets

underneath the fossil,

we were able to scooch

some plywood underneath 'em

so that we could move it

with chains and come-alongs

and get it into the trailers.

It was and still is today

the most exciting,

the most wonderful excavation

we have ever done,

the most incredible thing

we have ever done.

Dinosaurs, for me, are still

one of the most amazing

creatures ever to have

lived on the planet.

You're touching something

that was alive

65, 100, or three or more

hundred million years ago.

When you pick up a fossil,

and you're

the first ever human being

to touch the remains

of that organism,

it's a remarkable feeling.

Dinosaurs are iconic animals.

They represent

paleontology in general.

They represent science.

Dinosaurs lived

for 150 million years,

and they dominated

the world for that long,

and yet humans have only been

around for three, four, or five.

What are our chances?

We seem to be approaching

these big problems.

Most of what is to be learned

about the history of life

is yet to be discovered.

What's still out there?

What's still in the ground?

What some kids might find

100 years from now

will contribute to that

greater understanding.

We know nothing about

the history of the planet

unless learning it through

a paleontologist,

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