not where you'd expect a vivus to be...

so there i was enjoying a leisurely visit to the calgary zoo, when my trip was suddenly interupted.

turning around from one of the exhibits (the tigers, if you must know) i was confronted by the most unexpected sight at a zoo... a full grown bull ceratopsian!!!

now you'd think we living vivus-dinosaurs (vivus being the fancy scientific term for we non-extinct extinct critters) would be in high demand by zoos and similar places. no such luck for us sadly. for whatever reason these sorts of institutions typically insist on only modern animals as a rule... though this centrosaur would seem to be quite the extreme example of an exception to this otherwise standard rule...

it (a he actually, i could tell based on the bright colours... female ceratopsians are dull and drab in comparison) angrily addressed me by name "traumador the tyrannosaur," the centrosaur paused dramatically before continuing. "you've got a lot of nerve, showing up at my zoo unannounced!!!"

normally i'd have been intimidated. first off this guy was a lot bigger than me, had me corned at, and more to the "point" (pun intended) was adapted at hurting things like me for a living.

so you might ask why i replied like so... "i'd have called ahead to let you know i was coming, only i was worried that your inferior herbivore brain won't have processed more than my hello."

the centrosaur was quite taken aback. "my brain the inferior one?" it stated unimpressed. "you have taken a look in the mirror right?"

"yeah this morning. or at least i hope it was this morning, cause if i'm looking into one right now i'm really ugly," i countered. "what with those horns, frill, beak, and... and, uh." i stalled out on the insult... oh man! i hate it when i do that. i had it up until the "and". if i'd just thought to put in with the beak i'd have been fine...

the centrosaur just shook its head in a very human fashion. "same old traumador," it said disappointed. "you never could get an insult right."

we stood there for a minute coldly staring at each other...

till finally the happiness within me snapped the fake hostile charade, and i sprinted up to the horned ornithischian and sprang a full on hug at his snout. "NORMAN!" i happily screamed.

"how you been pea brain?" norman a. centrosaur greeted me back.

i couldn't believe my good luck... i'd been meaning to track down all my friends in calgary, but the only ones i'd been able to organize things were my human friends.

not that i didn't want to see norman. i just hadn't been able to track him down. which i explained to him.

i'd known he'd been sent to the zoo a few years ago, but when i called them from drumheller the zoo people had no idea who or what i was talking about.

"yeah, there not as vivus aware down here in the big city," norman dismissed the zoo. "none of them understand, that alone speak, any saurian languages, so we're not what you might call close. not a single person who works here even knows my name is norman!"

when i asked what they do call him. "most of them just refer to me as 'dinosaur'. a few of the sharper ones have figured out i'm like a 'triceratops', and the three who pay attention have caught on that i'm a centrosaurus just like the one in the prehistoric park."

"it doesn't really surprise me the people answering the phones wouldn't know it was me you were talking about," norman off handily acknowledged. "thanks for trying though," he paused. "it really is good to see you again traumador!"

i asked norman how he'd been since the last time i saw him... which was a long time ago.

"there's not much to relate," norman reflected. "i was in drumheller, and then i was sent here."

i looked at him waiting for more information. he just stared at me like i was silly. "what? that's what happened. what more can i say?"

well norman, you could have mentioned why you got axed from the tyrrell and sent here to a zoo... a place that really isn't that cut out for a horned dinosaur as cool as you... but i didn't say that out loud.

instead i explained how i'd come to be fired, and how the pack of the primordial feather had been behind it. in their effort to get to lillian.

"ah i see," norman replied understanding the type of gossip i was looking for. "well the herd was, and still to this day, getting more and more annoyed at me as i make more friends outside our 'oh so sacred' kind."

"the herd" was the unofficial (yet official) title for all the vivus-ceratopsians living in canada. ceratopsians were pretty social animals back in the cretaceous, and so the instinct to form into a herd is still pretty strong in them to this day.

however as there is so few of them alive today every last one of them, regardless of their genus or species, hangout together in one big group. this is not like the good old days millions of years ago! back then they'd have stuck to their own kinds literally, but one has to make due in tough times i guess.

there was rumours that "the herd" was bigger then the alberta region, and that it had branches so to speak anywhere ceratopsian fossils are found (well at least vivus-fossils!). in fact thinking about it all they sound a lot like the pack of the primordial feather! only just a lot less carnivorous, more pointy, and a whole lot tastier!

norman carried on. "anyways, so the museum approached the herd about a member who would like to volunteer to be sent down here. as the whole lot of them would melt if any single one of them were to be left on their own, none jumped at the 'opportunity'. so instead, the bulls decided to volunteer the least popular horner [saurian slang for ceratopsian]. which happened to be me."

"wow," i let out in response to this harsh treatment of my friend. "sorry you had to go through all that on account of me."

"don't go giving yourself all the credit!" norman laughed. "leave it to a tyrannosaur to think he is the king of the problems! no, they didn't like the fact i was friends with anyone or anything that wasn't a fellow horner. though i guess to be fair you and zendin were at the top of their hate list." norman winked... a very human thing he'd picked up ages ago. no normal ceratopsian would be caught dead showing this much emotion. that alone a big tough bull.

"so yeah i ended up here at the zoo. supposedly as a walking billboard for the tyrrell," norman stated. "only no one bothered to work out exactly how that was going to work beyond me living and working here..."

norman didn't speak any english (there are few dinosaurs who can... i'm the only theropod i know of who can... mind you, he like MOST dinos can understand human speak, he just can't answer verbally), and the museum didn't see it fit to expend someone to stay with norman and translate. meaning he and the zoo's staff couldn't really communicate beyond anything nods and gestures would convey.

not that norman minded all that much. it meant there were no big expectations of him in this job. he just got to wander around interacting with people all day.

"i love the job itself," norman concluded. "i just get lonely sometimes is all. not that the staff aren't great to me. i just never have anyone i can actually talk too."

"in fact this is the first time i've talked to anyone who could understand me all year!" he stated excitedly realizing this depressing fact.

norman then turned to me and demanded. "enough with my sob story. what is your deal. from the few tendrils of the grape vine i have left, you left the museum just after i did. where have you been managing to hide that no one has heard or seen you in all that time?!?"

where to begin? i have this whole blog worth of adventures since then... so i told me for the better part of 3 hours my various stories and tales... though he didn't much believe me on the museum quest part.

"so you finally got fired of all things over that whole crush thing of yours on lillian," norman fathomed after my whole blog-era life story. that is weird, after all i told him, norman went back to the beginning of it all. i guess out of it all, it was the only part of the story he had any real context with.

i nodded. he then asked. "well has there been anyone to replace her, as the sole reason for your existence?" he made fun of my younger obsessive feelings towards the albertosaur goddess.

right, i hadn't mentioned my melbourne trip... i'd mostly focused on my new life in new zealand, not the vacation i'd been on, for what seems like years... ;P

"funny you should ask," i braced norman before telling him all about my recent dealings with lillian, and my financing her and my talent agent peter bond's current trip around the world.

"you my friend take teenage crushes to a whole new level!" norman marvelled. "after only one kiss... man, if i won't lose what little face i have with the world, i might consider laying one on you to get a trip around the world too!"

norman interupted our random wandering around the zoo, we must have done the whole thing 3 or 4 times... "want to go to my favourite spot in this whole place?" he asked.

"totally!" i answered.

norman led me into a section of the african rainforest building. "this is it," he declared stopping us in the middle of a neat but devoid of animals or displays area.

"okay," i said kind of disappointed. "and this place is so special why?"

"it reminds me of the good old days," norman said with a hint of genuine sadness. "back when the world was just you, me, and zendin. when the only thing that mattered was having fun... which seemed to follow you guys around."

i looked around unable to see it. "how does this remind you of us?"

norman too looked around, though clearly knowing what he was looking for. "wait for it," he urged. a minute later he finally answered, well sort of. "it reminds me of you, and the only thing you did well at the tyrrell."

"what was that?" i probed keen on the setup for a compliment.

i was of course talking to norman, i should have known better. "standing in a bunch of plants getting soaked!" just then the sprinkler system shot into action...

i suddenly followed norman's line of logic, as the tropical garden was misted. it was just like my old home in the tyrrell, the cretaceous garden. which of course had been an odd time for me. much like norman, i'd loved hanging with him and zendin, but i'd found work very unchallenging and depressing. my job was to stand in the garden and pretend to be a statue, and thus get soaked everyday during the dozen similar mistings of the garden...

norman started to chuckle when my expression betrayed my annoyance at this flashback. "what you don't miss this?"

like i had to answer.

norman then hit me with the most painful question of the day (for both of us) by accident. "so mr. international man of mystery, after tracking down the wayward girl of your dreams, you must have figured out where old zendin disappeared too?"

the look on my face must have betrayed the answer. "no huh," norman sounded like they'd cancelled x-mas. neither of us said anything for a while... what could you add really.

the third crucial member of our old gang, and he was missing. after a bit i added how i was pretty sure it was the primordial feathers who no doubt had made him vanish. yet it was of little comfort. the day in the olden days zendin went missing was the day both me and norman's childhoods ended... even if i'd had found him, it won't have changed that. just not knowing for sure what had happened to him added a sting to that memory.

we once again started walking the zoo, passing the "backgate" section once more. only this time i decided to stop and check out the sign display about the calgary zoo's long ago prehistoric park.

this first set of dinosaur statues dated back to years and years before the current version of prehistoric park, just after the great canadian dinosaur rush had ended...

despite the fact alberta's many great and numerous dinosaurs were enjoying fame elsewhere in the world at that time, you won't have known they existed living here. there were no museums or monuments to mark my kinds presence here millions of years ago, that alone that one of the greatest graveyards of our kind was to be found in the area. so a bunch of locals banded together and raised the funds to build a "fleshed out" park in the zoo.

sadly, none (well none but one) remain today, but man those old skool dinosaurs would have been worth seeing!

looking over the plaque they put up to commemorate this first long gone park, i noticed a very familiar name! the legendary fossil hunter and palaeontologist charlie m. sternberg, son of the great charles, more to the point the discoverer of my mother, was one of the main forces behind this first park!!! (his is the third name from the top... if you can't open it to see the big version). now i really wish more of this first park was here for me to see...

at least there was one last remnant of this park still standing. dinny the "brontosaurus", one of calgary's most famous landmarks. mind you he was installed later in this old park's history (well after charlie's involvement), but by the zoo's (and calgary's for that matter) standards dinny was one old trooper.

so to finish off my day with norman, i handed my camera off to a nice lady, and had this photo of the two of us snapped to remember the day... though the lady was very confused by two dinosaurs asking for their picture to be taken by another dinosaur. at least she took it in the end, even if she was very confused the whole time.

norman walked me up to the entrance at closing time, and we said our farewells... for the day.

we made it clear that no matter what, before i left town me and norman would meet up again. so i was hardly unhappy to leave...

minus missing half the zoo for my review, but i hope you'll take my excuse as a good reason to miss out on the rest...

next: one last surprise at the zoo...

the great canadian dinosaur rush

the early days of palaeontology are full of cool stories of adventure, hardship, and of course amazing finds. it was a romantic era of true explorers wandering into totally unknown places, returning to civilization with the remains of creatures unfathomed. it is a time that has sadly gone away.

there are many classic epics from this early period of palaeontology. the one i'm most concerned with at moment though, that which occurred here in my neck of the woods, alberta.

that would have to be none other than the great canadian dinosaur rush.

before i go into detail, the basic story of the dinosaur rush went something like this...

canada was not overly eager or engaged in exploring its abundant and important fossil fields in the west initially. it was the americans who first made a serious effort to collect dinosaurs from alberta starting in 1909, and had several summers working alberta all to themselves.

by 1912 the canadians realized if they didn't get in on the digging, all the dinosaurs would wind up everywhere but here! however because no one had been collecting on a large scale, there were no local canadians who could do the work. a family of professional fossil hunters from america had to be hired on behalf of canada to collect for fossils. now with two teams operating in the area a sort of competition broke out between them (that stayed furious but friendly)

okay now for the details...

before the rush...

though dinosaur bones were known to be present in canada since 1845, there had been no serious efforts to collect them. mind you, again, i said serious.

there was of course the famous coal mapping expedition of joseph burr tyrrell that unearthed the first albertosaurus. before tyrrell's 1884 discovery, many from the geological survey of canada (in particular william dawson and thomas weston) had noted dinosaurs in alberta, but had only collected scraps and tidbits (they were too busy doing the first formal maps of the terrain and geology of the area to take time to do serious fossil collecting!).

_

canada's first domestic palaeontologist lawrence lambe did what collecting he could in a series of expeditions between 1897 and 1901. however his limited manpower and resources meant at best he could only collect fragmented and partial material. even the few times he encountered complete specimens, due to his lack of proper transport, they had to be left in the ground.

even more sad, despite what could be at best called a limited interest in its own dinosaurs up till this point, as of 1902 the geological survey suspended any further fossil hunting due to having, apparently used up this limited interest. meaning if it had been left up to the canadians of this time (minus one very unhappy lambe) we would have had no further work done on our amazing dinosaur fields...

fortunately an outside element would be brought in to fix this situation!

the beginning of the rush...

legend has it all started as a result of a mere vacation...

albertan rancher john l. wagner went to new york city in 1909, and while in the big apple he paid a fateful visit to the museum of natural history. he was intrigued by the dinosaur hall, and the story goes that wagner exited the display laughing.

the curator of palaeontology henry osborn happened to be in the public hall at the time, and slightly alarmed that anyone could laugh at his world class exhibit he stormed over to confront the canadian rancher. when asked why he found the dinosaurs so amusing, wagner said it was amazing how people thought so much of these old bones. on his ranch back in canada the bones were so common his cattle tripped over them all the time.

osborn was amazed by this tale, and so sent his number one collector to check out this rancher's claim. when it was found he was telling the truth, osborn decided to collect from canada to grow new york's already amazing collection of dinosaurs...

remember this is JUST a story! in reality events were a little less sitcom.

john l. wagner did indeed goto new york, and he and osborn did exchange words, but in reality osborn had been long aware of the dinosaurs in alberta due to his correspondence and training of lawrence lambe (after all canada's first palaeontologist had to be trained somewhere!). however now with an invitation from the eager wagner to host a museum scouting effort, osborn decided that finally the time had come to send his own people to investigate the potential palaeontologic bounty in canada himself. so he sent his best man...

the legendary barnum brown (mind you, as you'll see all the players in the canadian dinosaur rush were already or would become legends!). now i could do many posts on brown (in fact i may very well do so), but for now i'll mostly focus on his exploits relevant to his time in alberta.

brown had up until this point been engaged in rather long run of successful series of digs (nearly a decade), just south of alberta, in montana. during this montana era in his career, brown had already secured his place in palaeontologic history by discovering, in 1902, the first two tyrannosaurus rexs ever...

at the end of 1908 (his last in montana for a while), he received word from osborn in new york to take a detour home through alberta, and check out the area around wagner's ranch.

in this brief excursion barnum saw enough fossil material to convince him, and thus osborn, that indeed a full on expedition was warranted. so in 1909 he set off to alberta, and the great dinosaur rush began!

1909-1911 the american monopoly...

when brown arrived to start work in alberta, he came prepared with a battle plan. improving on canadian thomas weston's method of exploring the badlands by canoe, barnum constructed a large floating platform which would serve as his mobile command centre. from here he could lazily cruise the red deer river searching its banks and shores for dinosaurs, and once they were collected he could load them onto his barge to be taken back to civilization and transported back to new york.

(Production Note: Photo courtesy of Darren Tanke)

by the end of brown's third field season in 1911 his success had not gone unnoticed by the canadians. with some of his material now going up on display in new york (some of the most complete dinosaur skeletons ever collected!), with a lot of publicity, many in canada grew uneasy and annoyed about the government's lack of effort to keep canadian dinosaurs in canada.

rather than see people keep getting upset over the issue the government decided to take action. initially they wondered about simply barring brown from working in canada. fortunately they quickly realized this was an unfriendly move, and certainly not one that fostered good scientific relations (especially since at the time the national museum of canada was working in montana!). instead the government insisted that the geological survey take action to collect some of these dinosaurs themselves.

the problem was that the survey did not have anyone on staff with either the experience or the time. lawrence lambe had been promoted, and was not disposable for summers at a time. in fact there was no one in the country with the know how to pull off a successful expedition of this scale, that alone compete with the professional barnum brown.

a novel idea was reached. the survey would hire private fossil hunters on its behalf. it just so happened just this sort of man was doing business with the survey at the time...

charles hazelius sternberg, a fossil hunter of skill and ability that easily matched barnum brown's. sternberg now had a long track record and reputation as a professional, despite not being a university trained palaeontologist. he'd been one edward cope's assistants during the famous american bone war in the previous century (which may also partial explain why the canadian dinosaur rush remained a friendly affair), and had continued collecting and selling fossils for museums all over the world since.

charles was also famous for having brought all three of his sons up to be fossil hunters as well. so if the geologic survey hired charles, they'd also acquired the services of his very talented sons(though one of these sons as we'll see was a late addition to the canadian team). a pretty good deal if you ask me.

1912 tension on the red deer river...

barnum brown set off for alberta in 1912 unaware that anything was going to be different than the previous three field seasons. it came as quite a shock to him that suddenly there was another party not only working the same area by boat, but that they were related to one of his own crew members!

for the natural history museum had hired the eldest sternberg son, george, as a member of barnum's team. this put poor george in a tight spot during the field season of 1912. his coworkers were less than thrilled that the sudden competition was being caused by the rest of george's family! as we'll see though george's story straightened out a year later...

(Production Note: Photo courtesy of Darren Tanke)

up until 1912 barnum brown had been collecting dinosaurs near drumheller. he had scouted out the area around the town of steveville (what is now dinosaur provincial park), and noted its greater abundance of material, but had felt no reason to rush into the area and dig. however with another party in the area he suddenly felt some pressure, and as of such he pushed on south to DPP.

initially the sternberg's worked the area around drumheller, seeking leads from the local coal miners to find new specimens. they met with great success using this strategy. however at the end of the season hearing george's accounts of the DPP area, they decided to follow brown into the area the next year.

brown was very annoyed to find the sternberg's had followed him down the river in 1913. he wrote many angry letters back to new york complaining they should find their own area to work. it was at this point that george's life must have become the most difficult, and it was so bad he quit in the field and swapped over to his fathers crew.

despite their rivalry, the teams were very civil to each other in encounters, and would even visit each other on sundays (the only day taken off during the week). there was none of the active spying, stealing, or vandalism of the american bone war's from 40 years previous (which the 60 year old charles had dealt with at the start of his career with cope).

1914 territory dispute...

(Production Note: Photo courtesy of Darren Tanke)

the biggest threat to this peaceful coexistence occurred in 1914. barnum brown was delayed in heading out into the field, and so his assistant peter kaisen went out before him. he established camp in the heart of DPP, and when the sternberg's arrived he informed them that the american party had claim to all badlands within proximity of this camp. meaning in essence the sternberg's were restricted to just a fraction of the periphery of the area (mostly the eastern end).

due to a consultation with lambe back in ottawa, and his knowing there were no guidelines for palaeontologic competitions, sternberg decided to ignore this territorial claim and freely entered and dug at his whim. much to the annoyance of the americans. who remained silent at first.

however when george sternberg found a ceratopsian skeleton missed by barnum (his footprints passed within 2 metres of the fossil) it was the straw that broke the camels back. the americans confronted the canadian team. tensions lowered when it was pointed out that the sternberg's had gone to great lengths not to excavate any fossils the american's had clearly marked, and more to the point that there were plenty of dinosaurs to go around.

both teams were finding far more than they could ever hope to dig up in a season. they were often making choices about which fossils to leave in the ground... rather than be forced to keep scrambling ahead of their rivals to make finds. fighting made no sense at all...

1915 the height of the rush...

(Production Note: Photo courtesy of Darren Tanke)

a year later tensions had disappeared. there were indeed enough dinosaurs for one hundred field parties that alone two. even if the sternberg's had worked at DPP again that year...

ottawa noted there were plenty of other badlands throughout alberta that had not been properly explored, and since they had 4 capable fossil hunters at their disposal they decided to split them to cover this ground.

george was given his own team, and was sent to explore the area around big valley (north of drumheller), while the rest of the sternberg's ventured to the far south of the province along the milk river. both made discoveries, but not in the numbers of dinosaur park. at the same time as these rocks were younger (milk river) and older (big valley) than DPP's formations, the dinosaurs these two teams found were scientifically important and unique.

barnum brown spent one more summer in DPP, and was rewarded with plenty more skeletons (many of animals he'd been finding the previous 2 years, but also some new ones too). this would be his last year spent in alberta.

at the same time this wasn't the end of barnum brown. he'd go on digging elsewhere for decades still. though he'd never physically return to alberta, he'd come back to its dinosaurs for the rest of his career, as his tons and tons of collections were prepared and in need of a scientist to study them...

with brown's departure the canadian dinosaur rush had reached its peak. from here on in it would slowly come to a close.

1916 the rush slows down...

in 1914 the first world war had begun. by 1916 its cost was beginning to hit canada (who had entered at the start of the war). with barnum brown now departed from alberta and unlikely to return, and canada now having a fine collection of dinosaurs of its own, the government was less keen on palaeontology than it had been four years previously.

_

the survey was given the budget to keep the sternberg's on in the lab cleaning off the prehistoric treasures they'd collected, but not to return to the field. upon hearing there was no fieldwork charles left the survey, and so did the youngest son levi (pictured above).

this was no problem for charles, the majority of his career he'd worked as an independent. he and levi worked the dinosaur park area one last summer. they made many discoveries, and he found that the british museum of natural history in london was very eager to add complete dinosaurs to its exhibits.

_

all seemed well with this arrangement. the first shipment arrived safe and sound. the british were pleased enough to pay for more. however in late 1916 disaster struck charles' efforts.

the second shipment onboard the freighter ss mount temple were sunk at sea by the german raider moewe. sending not only 3 perfectly good specimens (including a COMPLETE parasaurolophus!), but also charles finincial security! as a result of the loss the british were no longer willing to pay for any additional specimens. it would take charles 2 years to recover from the loss of this money.

_

despite this set back charles and levi would head out for one last limited field season in 1917, but have to abandon it as their money ran out (which in the end was regained from the sale of their finds from this short but productive year). it would be charles' last in alberta. levi would later return under the employ of the royal ontario museum.

_

george would lead a small geological survey of canada team on a small expedition (funded by the savings on salaries due to the loss of 2 sternbergs) back to north of drumheller in 1916 as well. he too met with some success, but it would be his last dig during the dinosaur rush. he would return in the 1920's start up the impressive teaching collections of the university of alberta in edmonton.

_

1917 the rush stops...

the geologic survey was looking to send another expedition. having sent george as the leader of the previous years effort, lambe opted to give the other sternberg on staff some experience. george was not pleased by this, and left the survey like his brother and father the year before.

this last expedition of the canadian dinosaur rush would be lead by charles sternberg jr. , though he was commonly called charlie. this expedition like the others of his family in 1916 was small, and though successful not of the scale of his earlier work in the province between 1912 and 1915.

unlike the rest of his family however, charlie would stay on with the geologic survey the rest of his career and do further fieldwork and groundbreaking research on albertan dinosaurs well into the 1970's...

as a result of the great canadian dinosaur rush, albertan dinosaurs would become some of the best known in the world (pick up any dinosaur picture book before 2000 and i gurantee more than half the cretaceous dinos are from alberta!), even to this day...

the dinosaurs collected during this era still adore the halls of the natural history museums in new york and london (among the most visited in the world!). this was also where palaeontology finally took off from a fledgling science in canada, and expand into one of the world's hot beds for the study of fossils.

it too was one of the last great adventures of early palaeontology (mind you not THE last, but nearly). the sort of adventure you just can't find anymore in the modern world...

a complex story (origins part 2)

(Production Note: Much of the content of this post is fictional, and not actually research Darren Tanke is engaging in. Please take this made up stuff in the spirit it is meant (and not harass or blame Mr. Tanke over OUR artistic license). We will be covering Darren's real research (which the fiction in this post is an exaggeration of) very shortly in the continuation of this storyline. Prehistoric Insanity)

with no obvious point behind the present that has returned me home, i've decided to create a purpose for the trip.

while i currently have access to one of the world's greatest palaeontologic institutions, i'm going to find out everything i can about how my egg was found and hatched.

now, there's a lot of details one can look into about any specific fossil...

• where was it found?


• who found it?


• how did they find it?


• how long until it was dug up?


• who was on the field team that did the digging?


• how long did the dig take?


• how long till the fossil was prepared (that's a fancy word for cleaned off)?


• who did the preparing?


• who studied the fossil?

etc.

and this is only when you don't have a personal stake or connection to the fossil... which in this case i think i would have!

if there was one man at the museum who could help me with these questions, it was technician extraordinaire darren tanke. who thought i was just popping by his nook in the preparation lab to say hi... boy was he in for a surprise. i had like a million questions for him!

after the necessary catch up (like everyone darren was very interested to hear about my new zealand adventures... in particular my encounters with professor paradigm for some reason) i tried to present my current quest in a rational manner... which sadly with my brain capacity, and how excited i was to maybe get some answers wasn't so rational, but darren being the really clever guy he is figured out what i wanted to ask him.

now for those of you who haven't heard of darren tanke, well how to put it? as far as dinosaurs and palaeontology are concerned he is kinda a big deal!

darren started working at the tyrrell musuem a couple years before there technical WAS a museum (the alberta government had decided it was starting it up, but assembled the staff before the building was completed), and is now the longest serving staff member at the museum!

though he technically isn't a true palaeontologist (in that he never got a PHD) i think saying this, even though it is a fact, is kinda insulting. darren publishes more papers and articles a year than 2 or 3 of your average palaeontologists combined! he is an expert on ceratopsians, dinosaur pathology (that's fancy wording for dino injuries and illness), and the history of alberta's palaeontology. on top of that he is among the best of the best when it comes to digging up and/or preparing fossils.

_

it was darren's expertise in the history of alberta's fossil hunting in particular that i thought would help me the most at moment though. darren has made it his mission to try and track down every scientific dig site located in alberta. it helps that he has been on like half of them (well not really, but a lot). however making the job harder for him is that most of the early fossil hunters in the province didn't really record where they dug beyond vague references of general regions.

_

to solve this darren has become a quarry hunter. using clues such as pictures taken of these old digs, garbage left behind, and their old camp sites darren has been tracking down 5-10 of these old dig sites a year. along the way he has become an expert on not only who was working in alberta, but what has been dug up as well!

_

before talking to darren and having him fill in many of the gaps in the story, here is what i knew about my own discovery...

back sometime in the 1946 my mother (pictured here) was found by someone near the town of huxley alberta (about an hour north of drumheller). however due to the extreme nature of the site mommy was found at, they couldn't excavate (that's fancy wording for dug up) her at the time. so she was just left there. it wasn't till the early 80's when the tyrrell museum started active field expeditions that she was finally dug up. a team under the legendary phil currie (including darren!) finally rescued her from millions of years burial...

_

however this is only part of the story. afterall i'm not my mom. she was cleaned off and put up in the museum a good decade before i too was unearthed...

_

i know that my legal guardian craig discovered me by going back to my mom's site, and found my egg just below where she'd been taken out. the thing is though, that's about all i know...

_

i have reason to believe it is a way more interesting story though. my main clue is this old photo. it is labelled as being taken the day before i was found. you'll note not only is craig in the photo, but also my JERK! of a cousin, larry... what larry is doing there i have no clue...

_

this was the key part of the story i was very keen to learn. which i was hoping darren could help me with.

_

"the huxley site," darren seemed off put when i asked him. not by me mind you, rather the site i asked for. "it's just been a while since i actively looked into that one. it's not your normal site that one... just let me get my files on it."

_

darren went to work on his puter, and next thing you know i had all sorts of other facts to flesh out the story of my discovery.

_

to start off with in the museum's records, me and my mom are not known by our names. rather we have special collection numbers assigned to us. these as so that the museum can keep track of us in their huge collections, and scientists can refer to us specially and everyone will know what they mean (though why our names don't work for this purpose i'm not sure??).

_

my mom is TMP 81. 12. 1. which doesn't make a lot of sense if you don't know the tyrrell's numbering system. all museums have different cataloguing systems, but they usually involve numbers.

_

in the tyrrell's case these numbers mean something. TMP stands for tyrrell museum of palaeontology (the museum hadn't gotten the royal retitle when they started their collections so hence the lack of an R on the front). the 81 means mom was dug up in 1981, and this way you know when anything at the museum was dug up immediately. the 12 indicates that huxley was the 12th location the museum dug at, as the museum gives their fossil sites numbers to help keep track of where fossils are found. finally the 1 means mom was the first fossil found at the site.

_

i already knew this, but for you on the innerweb my number is TMP-2003. 12. 7. see if you can figure out what that means?

_

the right answer is i was found in 2003, august. 16 to be precise (my hatching day!) though the number won't tell you that. i was found at the 12th quarry in alberta aka. huxley, and i was the 7th specimen extracted (i was egg 6 out of 10... so as mom was number one, the last of those eggs in the nest was TMP- 2003. 12. 11).

_

next i got all sorts of facts about how mom was dug up. she was fossilized in the layer just below the KT boundary itself!... meaning both of us were literally among the last of the tyrannosaurs ever!...

fun fact this spot in huxley is one of the ONLY sites in all of alberta where the KT boundary is exposed! so it was really lucky we were buried there and not somewhere else...

_

(Production Note: Photo from Royal Tyrrell Museum Finders: A Century of Fossil Hunting in Alberta)

_

in the present, she was exposed halfway up a sheer cliff, and was only noticed due to some broken off chunks that had tumbled to the bottom through erosion. the height and steepness of this cliff proved too much for the limited field crew of mom's discoverer charles mortram sternberg, and she had to be left where they found her.

fortunately she was encased in solid ironstone so erosion was considerable slowed down, meaning mom could be left for quite sometime without too much worry of lose or damage to her skeleton. sternberg recorded this find, and hoped someone would return when the resources and manpower were available.

_

sadly this didn't happen till nearly 45 years later, when in 1981 phil currie of the tyrrell noted the find in sternberg's notes and organized a sizeable dig team. it was an ordeal, as the crew had to dig from the top of the cliff down nearly 30 metres to her skeleton (all this cliff material being called over burden as it was over top of the fossil in question and naturally a burden to remove!).

_

with this rather deep quarry there was constant danger of the cliff collapsing on the dig team, and with the majority of her body safely removed dr. currie reluctantly had to leave mom's head in the side of the hill. his worries proved correct as a few years later the quarry did slump, and had anyone been digging there they'd have been buried along with my mom's head!

_

poor mom though. i don't know what i'd do without my head. fortunately they were able to lend her a cast skull of another t-rex from montana!

_

this ended the clear part of the story, and the transition into the weirder part was marked by darren drawing out an annoyed "right," i looked at him puzzled. he turned to me with a slightly serious face. "remember how i said there were some weird things about huxley? that's because they tie into the commission."

_

"the what?" i asked.

_

"the dominion's palaeontologic commission," darren stated. than he threw a glance to the door, as though to make sure no one was listening in. "the precursor to palaeo central."

_

"you know about palaeo central?!?" i almost yelled in excitement.

_

darren shushed me with his finger. "no i don't know about them," he stated in a rather formal manner. he once again looked to the door, than satisfied no one was listening whispered. "no one knows about them. they officially don't exist, but if you've been working in palaeontology as long as me their activities become pretty obvious."

_

man did i have a ton of questions for darren now, but he refused to answer any of them. "look traumador, i understand if you just learned about them you'll want to know all about the, but trust me you don't really. the more you know the more you could risk compromising them and their operations. the palaeo central initiative is the only sure line of defense fossils have at the moment."

_

despite this slightly downer of a warning, darren winked at me "at the same time you can start to figure out some things about them, the same way i did," darren offered, and reached into one of his filing cabinets.

"i can even give you these without arising too much suspicion," darren assured himself. "as these documents pertain to your discovery."

_

which brought us back on tangent with why i was here. only now it had a hint of super spy excitement. what did my discovery have to do with palaeo central?

_

well it turns out it wasn't a direct link, and didn't have to do with palaeo central of professor paradigm really at all.

rather these documents came from way back in the early days of alberta palaeontology. the 1910's to be exact.

_

that was the time of great fossil hunters seriously prospecting and collecting in the badlands of alberta for fossils (though not the first time, it was just the first big effort to do so). in an era known as the great canadian dinosaur rush. back than teams from new york and ottawa competed (in a friendly manner mind you) to find and collect dinosaurs from the red deer river valley. as the rush is a big topic, my next post will be on it so i can stay on subject here. so stay tuned.

_

that's the general story though. two crews working the badlands, and finding lots of canadian dinosaurs. or at least that's the general official story. my heart started to race as i read on in darren's papers to find out it wasn't the whole story...

_

in the documents a whole new chapter to this era of palaeo history was added. while the famous exploits of the two teams were going on in the public eye, on the fringe there was something more ominous going down. in 1912 the canadian geologic survey detected activities by a third player. an european aristocrat by the name of lord antonin annex.

_

darren was able to track down some letters from the survey to the british colonel office. the letters claimed this annex guy had his own agents working in alberta, who were digging up fossils and than smuggling them back to central europe to his private collect. the survey implored the british to assist them.

_

it was at this point the story ended. well at least in the papers in front of me... "hey what happened next?" i demanded of papers, not darren mind you. i was just annoyed as though i'd only gotten half a book, and it cut out at the best part.

_

darren grinned at me. "officially nothing," he typed something into the computer. "the british colonel office never replied, and these 'accusations' against annex were never proven."

_

"however try and look anything up from this period in the geologic survey's database and," darren explained as he hit a key. instead of access to the database, he got an access denied pop up requesting a user name and password. "kinda funny don't you think. what with this being a public database and all. i never would have found out a thing if i hadn't tracked down those hardcopies. "
_

"here is what happened next in 1912, as best i can put together," darren offered.

_

the colonial office did respond. though they were unable to take direct action against annex or his country due to the growing tensions that would explode into world war 1. however they were able to give the survey the resources it needed to deal with the situation internally. thus was born the dominion's (canada was called the dominion back than) palaeontologic commission.

_

"that sounds just like..." i started to say, meaning to say palaeo central.

_

darren cut me off agreeing with me. "yes, it does doesn't it."

_

darren flipped to what looked like some boring notes in a geologic survey manifest. they weren't boring at all on closer inspection though! they were chronological notes of the palaeontologic commission activities for the years 1912 through 1917...

_

"again, someone went to a lot of trouble to bury or cover up this organization," darren cautioned me. i could just picture professor paradigm with a big vault or something like one, stuffed full of books and paper. "i was just lucky enough to stumble across these summary notes taken by a secretary during a meeting somewhere. they weren't supposed to be taken. i suspect they were written as reminders for a bigger summary."

_

according to the notes, there'd been a secret battle going on in the back ground of the dinosaur rush. as the legitimate fossil hunters scoured the badlands, covertly so were people working for this lord annex. these "annex" agents got away with a lot in the first two years of the dinosaur rush...

_

lord annex had 14 skeletons dug up and smuggled to him (none of which have yet been accounted for). his agents sabotaged the legitimate crew's efforts, tried to play the them off each other, and even on occasion stole their fossils from under their own noses. that is till this palaeontologic commission began operations.

_

suddenly there was a counter-attack against annex's people in the badlands. there were a lot of exploits by the commission, but sadly these were only recorded in darren's book as one sentence summaries. many were very tantalizing, but of course lacking any details. after a couple of minutes the records for july 1914 caught my attention.

_

annex's men had been driven away from what would one day be dinosaur provincial park, and so they moved their operations up north. the society followed him, and this took them to around huxley!

_

"well done," darren smiled when i shoved the page with the reference in his face. "i wondered if you'd find that part."

_

darren handed me an official geologic field report with this photo attached. there was something about the picture that i found funny. i couldn't put my finger on it, but i'm sure i stared at it, as darren asked. "recognize it?"

_

"should i?" i answered with a question not looking up. the picture had me enthralled. i did feel as though it was familiar...

"you tell me," darren responded. "it is where you were born."

i looked up at darren and i'm sure my jaw dropped. that made no sense! how was it there was a photo of people working at my egg site almost a hundred years ago?!?

"remember how i told you a second ago charlie sternberg found this site in 1946. well i know as a matter of a fact that is almost the truth," darren clarified. "charlie did technically find it on his own, but he knew roughly where he should be looking... because of this." darren pointed to the report. "a field report written by member of the commission 32 years earlier."

"i thought you said that the palaeontologic commission was a secret," i challenged. "why would they have put out an official field report?"

_

"not report," darren corrected me. he pulled out the drawer this one had come from to show me it was full of similar documents. "but reports!"

_

"funny you should ask that, traumador," darren continued. "i wondered the same thing. at first it looked as though the geologic survey was trying to publish the findings of, but yet hide, the commission's scientific activities by claiming them as actions of some of sternberg's people (who were the canadian team in the rush)."

_

"wouldn't that ruin a cover up?" i wondered out loud. i would make the worst super spy ever people of the innerweb... i can hardly keep track of what's going on around me right now, that alone around other people. that alone try to picture what WILL happen to all these variables. yet even i knew publishing these field reports would catch someone's attention! as was clear by darren knowing about them...

_

"exactly," darren agreed with me. "in fact in 1918 there was a massive uproar within the geologic survey when these field reports were brought to the administrations’ attention."

_

darren pulled me out another larger photo. it looked like one of the men from the dig picture of my birth site, but i couldn't tell what he looked like. where his face should have been there was a hole.

_

"it turned out these reports had all be filed and published by this man. francis slate. a key agent of the commission, possibly THE key agent! by the time the survey found out what he'd been doing it was too late. too many copies of the reports had been printed and distributed. for them to get all of the copies back they'd have raised immediate attention to their contents. instead they just left them mixed in with the sternberg's reports where they went largely unnoticed for years," darren informed me.

"why would he want them published in the first place?" i asked. "won't that break his cover?"

"i don't know," darren confessed. "it's only one of the many things i'd like to know about this man!"

"if i had to guess, as the reports are only on scientifically important sites, i think he just wanted them to be known by other people," darren informed. "slate seldom ever collected things himself. on occasion he did alert the american and canadian teams to skeletons, but many of his sites were well outside their operating area! if he hadn't recorded these other sites they might have remained unknown forever."

_

"for example he records, though rather cryptically, at your site... the presence of eggshell!" darren pointed to the report. holly smokes! he was right!!! this predated the first official discovery of dinosaur eggs in canada, at devil's coulee, by well over three quarters of a century!

_

"did he get in a lot of trouble?" i hesitantly asked, thinking how much trouble i'd gotten into for when i screwed up. i figured messing up a big conspiracy would lead to way worse punishments.

_
"no," darren said matter of factly. before i could ask he added. "he'd been dead nearly a year before the survey discovered the reports."

_

"slate died at the end of the dinosaur rush. with the withdraw of all the fossil hunters, annex didn't have the same cover he'd enjoyed up till than, and the outbreak of world war one made it difficult to ship to europe anyways. the lord pulled out of canada. due to this the geologic survey shut down the commission. all a few months after slate died." darren said sadly, as though this francis slate was a friend of his.

_

"you okay?" i sympathized.

_

"yes," darren said putting on a fake smile. "i just think it's tragic that the exploits of this man have been deliberately forgotten. in fact his whole life has been wiped out. there are no records of him before 1912," darren pointed to the photo i held in my claws. "there isn't even a good photo of him. any closeups of him have had his face destroyed or distorted on purpose. i'm sure for security purposes back than, but now that just means he is spectre of history."

_

there was a sombre silence between us for a minute. "anyways about 6 years ago i made a real effort to try and find out as much about francis slate as i could. him, and this lord annex, are the biggest unknown players in alberta's palaeontology left. to do this i recruited as much help as i could get to try and find francis' field report sites," darren told me.

_

"among this help was a person and a dinosaur you know. craig and larry," he emphasised.

_

"craig had been helping me with my lost quarry project [post on this ubber soon promise!] for a while. so i gave him your site's field report to check out that week. as for larry i have no idea why he suddenly took interest in field work, but when he heard we were checking around huxley he insisted that he was coming to help. i needed all the help i could get, and i wasn't not arguing with a fully grown tyrannosaur," darren levelled with me. "so we all went our seperate ways in the morning, and by the end of the day next thing i knew craig came back to field camp with 9 field jacketed eggs, and you hatched and wrapped up in his hoodie."

if a tyrannosaur could cry i would have shed a tear there. fortunately for me we don't actually cry tears... though due to my hanging around humans i have picked up some of your emotional expressions, and i gave away my vulnerability by sniffling.

_

trying to change subjects to distract from my emotional moment i asked. "did you find out anything more about slate?"

"nope," darren said slightly resigned. "you and this drawer hold everything i was ever able to find out about francis slate. i gave up a few years ago, and am sticking with lost quarries that won't led to dead ends," with that he took back the papers from me, and put them back into the drawer which i than noticed he had double locking on.

_

well i had a few more answers about where i came from. at the same time i had some way bigger questions too. i was not feeling too chipper, as darren started to plug away at his puter.

_

i took this as my cue to leave. just as i was about to head out the door from behind me darren offered. "i have a free morning tomorrow," he had loaded a map onto the screen. "would you like to go see the site?" which i pointed to...

would i!?!?!

before you knew it i saying thank you over and over again, while shaking his hand so hard his voice came out funny when he asked me to stop.

it was set! tomorrow i'd have the master of finding lost dig sites take me to where i was dug up! though i knew in the small logic part of my head it won't answer all my questions, i still felt like tomorrow i'd finally know where i came from...

to be continued... where it ALL began!

(Production Note: Much of this post is fictional. References to Traumador's egg, the Palaeotolgic Commission, and Francis Slate are not real. Information on the Huxley Tyrannosaur IS factual though, and based on real events. The only fiction around this Tyrannosaur's history is Francis Slate's involvement with its discovery. In reality it WAS discovered by Charlie Sternberg in 1946 and dug up as described.)