Dinosaur 13 Page #4

and it's that sense of

deep time, real deep time,

that gives you

a sense of who you are

and how you fit in

to the scheme of things.

I first fell in love

with fossils when I was

about four years old.

I picked up this small tooth

down on my folks' ranch.

From then on,

I just was so fascinated

with fossils.

I just couldn't stop.

Every day that

the weather was good

and every day that

the weather was great

that was on a weekend

if we were going to school

or in the summertime,

Dad would always say,

"Let's go out rock hunting."

We ended up starting

this little museum,

and we'd charge the adults

in our family five cents.

We had little displays

where we set up the things

that we had collected,

and not just fossils and rocks,

but also what we thought

were antiques.

We had this horrible hobby

that started to captivate

every part of our life.

Eventually I decided

to really get into paleontology

and so went

to the South Dakota School

of Mines and Technology

in Rapid City.

Junior year, we went

to the Tucson

Gem and Mineral Show

and really saw how

specimens are purchased

by museums and purchased

by private collectors.

And by the time we graduated,

we started this business

called Black Hills Minerals

as this earth science

supply house.

Eventually

my younger brother Neal,

who was also a student

at the School of Mines,

and Bob Farrar,

one of his classmates,

started working with us as well.

With the three of us

all going

to the School of Mines,

we were problems there,

because all of us chose

not to go into industry.

The first year was terrible,

the second year was not so good,

but it was sort of

turning into a business.

As we kept going,

we kept collecting

more and more fossils

and had the idea

of it probably would work

to sell these

as display specimens.

In 1978,

we were going pretty strong.

We were selling mostly fossils.

We were going out and doing

geological exploration.

So by 1979,

we created this new entity

called Black Hills Institute of

Geological Research, Incorporated,

in the center

of the Black Hills.

We got Sue back to Hill City.

We moved the big blocks

into the warehouse,

actually built a room

around where we had put Sue,

started working

on this wonderful fossil.

When I was prepping Sue,

I was cloistered like a monk

in the back corner

of the back building.

Doing preparation, you just...

"Just leave me alone," right?

But everybody was in there.

There would be

schoolkids in there.

Or another day, there'd be,

you know, some scientist guys

coming along in there.

I mean, Pete had,

like, 30 scientists

working on a major new monograph

on Tyrannosaurus rex,

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