I was about five or six years old when
my parents first took me to the
nutrition Museum in London and I
remembered like any kid being dragged
into another wanna go there would have
been a boring Museum and I member
dragged in through the door and suddenly
I was faced with this vast dinosaurs
looking at going it was I still remember
I can still remember exactly that moment
and I looked at this huge Diplodocus it
was the Carnegie Diplodocus which had
been donated to the nati schmooze iam
and from that moment on I was hooked on
dinosaurs but that was when we lived
near London and we moved down to the
southwest of England and when I was
about six or seven years old and in my
garden I started finding fossils and if
you hear something you might forget it
as the old proverb say and if you see
something you might know it but by
actually doing you can really understand
and by actually finding fossils in my
dad’s garden I was beginning to
understand more and more about this trip
life on Earth and I was completely
hooked I think it’s every paleontologist
dream to work on a fossil which has that
little bit extra information and when
one of my students who is doing her
master’s with me had spent the summer
digging with Tyler she came back with
this wonderful story of a dinosaur with
skin impressions or so they thought at
the time and I drove out well flu then
drove up to North Dakota to see this
fossil for myself and it was then I
realized this was a remarkable fossil
that I had to work on I have to admit
the first time that Tyler brought me to
the mummy site in North Dakota and we’re
driven across the Badlands in this
battered noisy old Ford pickup and you
arrived at the site and when the engine
is turned off and you’re greeted with
apps
lewd silence it’s beautiful and then the
smell of the sagebrush hits you and then
you’re very aware where you’re putting
every single foot on the ground and
trying to make as much noise as possible
because you’re invading where wildlife
lives you’re the invader and I remember
the first time we went to the site this
vast rattlesnake was SAT there going oh
and it disappeared off of course because
they’re more frightened of you than we
are of them probably but we’re very
grateful when such creatures leave dig
sites because again it’s one of the
hazards of being in the field the thing
with the dinosaur mummy it opens up a
whole new area of research for
paleontology because it’s like filling
in the gaps which would be missing for
so many years when you’re trying to
reconstruct skeletons into living
animals when you have a skin covering
for instance it helps constrain the
volume of muscle groups for instance
which are critical when you’re trying to
calculate how fast a dinosaur go now in
the past we’ve had to guess where these
muscles fit how big they are whereas
when you’ve got a skin envelope which
sort of fits over the tail and you know
how big the muscle groups are which like
the main engine of the dinosaur it’s
it’s so important when you’re doing
locomotion studies and dr. bill sellers
who I work with at the University of
Manchester he’s made it an art form of
making dinosaurs walk using his
high-powered computers which have
enabled us to basically make this
hadrosaur run at something like 28 miles
per hour based upon the evidence we can
extract from this remarkable fossil
what we try to do with this study is
introduce new technologies to
paleontology because paleontology is
often perceived as a group of guys in a
hole covered in dirt digging the bones
out and what we are showing with this
research and there’s many research
programs like this across the world but
we’re applying state-of-the-art
technology and we’re trying to use
techniques which are traditionally not
used in paleontology because that’s when
you can really start that steep learning
curve discovering totally new things to
science that’s what’s excites me North
Dakota today is beautiful i love the
Badlands is weathering Hell Creek
Formation with the sort of classic sand
and muddy boots which whether a way to
reveal these beautiful dinosaur bones
and it can be quite a harsh climate
today in North Dakota from the harsh
winters to the really hot summers
however back in the times when the Hell
Creek Formation was still being
deposited it was a very very different
place it was closer to the equator then
it was a very tropical environment not
much grass around there is evidence now
the grass had actually evolved by the
end of the Cretaceous but the dominant
types of plants which have been plenty
of them would have been cycads ferns
palms and some broadleaf plants
flowering plants like magnolias for
instance it would have been quite a
dense forested area on a floodplain
which regularly this huge River which
was meandering across this blood plane
might have burst its banks due to
seasonal floods and so on and as a
result any animals on this floodplain
would have actually been carried and
buried within these flood waters so it’s
a very very different place Torres today
being in the field is a bit like boot
camp paleo boot camp you you can
actually start at five o’clock in the
morning said if you’re specially in a
really hot climate because you want to
avoid the heat of the day because you at
midday you want to be out of the Sun
unless you’re English of course does any
mad dogs and englishmen go running
around in the midday Sun I do might
account for my behavior sometimes but in
terms of the actual ha
reality of being in the field you’ve got
to be very aware of the issues of the
locality where you’re working whether it
be rattlesnakes or whether it be rock
falls or just the general health and
safety in the field is something which
you have to keep always in your mind
especially when you got a big team crew
of people working during the excavations
I’ve been doing in northern Spain for
instance many of the rock faces we’ve
been working on and lidar scanning their
vertical and you’re dealing with quite
severe rock falls sometimes and if
you’re at the bottom of this vertical
slope which you’re mapping and you’ve
got a few tons of rubble coming towards
you it can make life very entertaining
so it’s it sounds very romantic but it’s
not it’s actually quite harsh the
reality of it is is very very hard work
is one thing it does keep me as fit
because to get into the field each year
is very very physically hard work so and
that’s something I enjoy about it as
well
I don’t work for a living I live for
work I’m very lucky doing what I do and
there are millions of kids out there who
wanted to be dinosaur hunters and I was
one of them and everyone asked me why
did you become a fossil hunter because
I’m passionate about paleo I think it’s
one of the most wonderful stories on the
planet that’s why I became a
paleontologist but how I fit all the
different facets of my life into sort of
one chunk means sometimes you do end up
working 18 20 hour days seven days a
week but I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t
love it I do a lot of work at the
mansion museum at the University of
Manchester where I do quite a lot of
public lectures and outreach programs
sort of promoting science to as wide an
audience as possible and I also teach
butter at paleontology and evolution and
various other courses are for the
undergraduate program at the University
of Manchester so that’s quite a big
portion from june until well from
january till june each year however from
june until december is when I bury
myself into research and fieldwork and I
can be in the field for up to three or
maybe even four months in a year and we
have projects running in northern Spain
in Catalonia we have projects running in
North America we have other sites which
we’re looking to work on in China which
we’re hoping to collaborate on in the
future and we also have projects which
we’re looking to collaborate with folks
in Argentina as well so it makes life
very very busy but what a ride
my parents first took me to the
nutrition Museum in London and I
remembered like any kid being dragged
into another wanna go there would have
been a boring Museum and I member
dragged in through the door and suddenly
I was faced with this vast dinosaurs
looking at going it was I still remember
I can still remember exactly that moment
and I looked at this huge Diplodocus it
was the Carnegie Diplodocus which had
been donated to the nati schmooze iam
and from that moment on I was hooked on
dinosaurs but that was when we lived
near London and we moved down to the
southwest of England and when I was
about six or seven years old and in my
garden I started finding fossils and if
you hear something you might forget it
as the old proverb say and if you see
something you might know it but by
actually doing you can really understand
and by actually finding fossils in my
dad’s garden I was beginning to
understand more and more about this trip
life on Earth and I was completely
hooked I think it’s every paleontologist
dream to work on a fossil which has that
little bit extra information and when
one of my students who is doing her
master’s with me had spent the summer
digging with Tyler she came back with
this wonderful story of a dinosaur with
skin impressions or so they thought at
the time and I drove out well flu then
drove up to North Dakota to see this
fossil for myself and it was then I
realized this was a remarkable fossil
that I had to work on I have to admit
the first time that Tyler brought me to
the mummy site in North Dakota and we’re
driven across the Badlands in this
battered noisy old Ford pickup and you
arrived at the site and when the engine
is turned off and you’re greeted with
apps
lewd silence it’s beautiful and then the
smell of the sagebrush hits you and then
you’re very aware where you’re putting
every single foot on the ground and
trying to make as much noise as possible
because you’re invading where wildlife
lives you’re the invader and I remember
the first time we went to the site this
vast rattlesnake was SAT there going oh
and it disappeared off of course because
they’re more frightened of you than we
are of them probably but we’re very
grateful when such creatures leave dig
sites because again it’s one of the
hazards of being in the field the thing
with the dinosaur mummy it opens up a
whole new area of research for
paleontology because it’s like filling
in the gaps which would be missing for
so many years when you’re trying to
reconstruct skeletons into living
animals when you have a skin covering
for instance it helps constrain the
volume of muscle groups for instance
which are critical when you’re trying to
calculate how fast a dinosaur go now in
the past we’ve had to guess where these
muscles fit how big they are whereas
when you’ve got a skin envelope which
sort of fits over the tail and you know
how big the muscle groups are which like
the main engine of the dinosaur it’s
it’s so important when you’re doing
locomotion studies and dr. bill sellers
who I work with at the University of
Manchester he’s made it an art form of
making dinosaurs walk using his
high-powered computers which have
enabled us to basically make this
hadrosaur run at something like 28 miles
per hour based upon the evidence we can
extract from this remarkable fossil
what we try to do with this study is
introduce new technologies to
paleontology because paleontology is
often perceived as a group of guys in a
hole covered in dirt digging the bones
out and what we are showing with this
research and there’s many research
programs like this across the world but
we’re applying state-of-the-art
technology and we’re trying to use
techniques which are traditionally not
used in paleontology because that’s when
you can really start that steep learning
curve discovering totally new things to
science that’s what’s excites me North
Dakota today is beautiful i love the
Badlands is weathering Hell Creek
Formation with the sort of classic sand
and muddy boots which whether a way to
reveal these beautiful dinosaur bones
and it can be quite a harsh climate
today in North Dakota from the harsh
winters to the really hot summers
however back in the times when the Hell
Creek Formation was still being
deposited it was a very very different
place it was closer to the equator then
it was a very tropical environment not
much grass around there is evidence now
the grass had actually evolved by the
end of the Cretaceous but the dominant
types of plants which have been plenty
of them would have been cycads ferns
palms and some broadleaf plants
flowering plants like magnolias for
instance it would have been quite a
dense forested area on a floodplain
which regularly this huge River which
was meandering across this blood plane
might have burst its banks due to
seasonal floods and so on and as a
result any animals on this floodplain
would have actually been carried and
buried within these flood waters so it’s
a very very different place Torres today
being in the field is a bit like boot
camp paleo boot camp you you can
actually start at five o’clock in the
morning said if you’re specially in a
really hot climate because you want to
avoid the heat of the day because you at
midday you want to be out of the Sun
unless you’re English of course does any
mad dogs and englishmen go running
around in the midday Sun I do might
account for my behavior sometimes but in
terms of the actual ha
reality of being in the field you’ve got
to be very aware of the issues of the
locality where you’re working whether it
be rattlesnakes or whether it be rock
falls or just the general health and
safety in the field is something which
you have to keep always in your mind
especially when you got a big team crew
of people working during the excavations
I’ve been doing in northern Spain for
instance many of the rock faces we’ve
been working on and lidar scanning their
vertical and you’re dealing with quite
severe rock falls sometimes and if
you’re at the bottom of this vertical
slope which you’re mapping and you’ve
got a few tons of rubble coming towards
you it can make life very entertaining
so it’s it sounds very romantic but it’s
not it’s actually quite harsh the
reality of it is is very very hard work
is one thing it does keep me as fit
because to get into the field each year
is very very physically hard work so and
that’s something I enjoy about it as
well
I don’t work for a living I live for
work I’m very lucky doing what I do and
there are millions of kids out there who
wanted to be dinosaur hunters and I was
one of them and everyone asked me why
did you become a fossil hunter because
I’m passionate about paleo I think it’s
one of the most wonderful stories on the
planet that’s why I became a
paleontologist but how I fit all the
different facets of my life into sort of
one chunk means sometimes you do end up
working 18 20 hour days seven days a
week but I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t
love it I do a lot of work at the
mansion museum at the University of
Manchester where I do quite a lot of
public lectures and outreach programs
sort of promoting science to as wide an
audience as possible and I also teach
butter at paleontology and evolution and
various other courses are for the
undergraduate program at the University
of Manchester so that’s quite a big
portion from june until well from
january till june each year however from
june until december is when I bury
myself into research and fieldwork and I
can be in the field for up to three or
maybe even four months in a year and we
have projects running in northern Spain
in Catalonia we have projects running in
North America we have other sites which
we’re looking to work on in China which
we’re hoping to collaborate on in the
future and we also have projects which
we’re looking to collaborate with folks
in Argentina as well so it makes life
very very busy but what a ride
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