The Cowboy dinosaur sits at an old table in the dusty basement of the ranch where he grew up, dressed in a denim blouse and blue jeans, his fine brown hair has the impression of his black Stetson, which he left up in the locker room. Behind him, searching over his shoulder from his position aloft of an ancient safe, lies the fearsome dragon-shaped head of a horned Stygimoloch, a reproduction of a vital fossil he once found. turns out to smile, captured in a moment of prehistoric joy.
The dinosaur cowboy smiles too. You’ll probably say it’s an ironic smile or a grimace. His genuine call is Clayton Phipps. De 44 years old, with a skated but mischievous face, lives on the ranch with his wife, two children, some horses and 80 cows. in the unincorporated network of Brusett, Montana. Located at the northern end of the state, near the edge of the Missouri River ruptures, is almost impassable in winter; The nearest mall is 180 miles southwest in Billings. When it comes to spreading, Phipps likes to say, “It’s big enough not to starve. “
Phipps is a great-grandson of farmers, pioneers who were entitled to claim and buy land at costs that challenged all competition. Most have become farm animal herders, the only logical selection in this ruthless region. They did not know that the land they had claimed was located in the most sensitive of the Hell Creek Formation, a bed of sandstone and lutita 300 feet thick dating back an era between 66 million and 67. 5 million years, just before the extinction of dinosaurs. Dakotas and Montana (in Wyoming, known as Lance), the formation, one of the richest fossil deposits in the world, is the remnant of giant rivers that once flowed east into an inland sea.
Before his father’s death, and the farm divided between 4 descendant families, adding Phipps and his two brothers, Phipps lived as a ranch on a nearby ranch. He and his wife, Lisa, a training assistant at the local school, lived in a day in 1998, Phipps says, a guy showed up and asked the owner for permission to hunt the fossils. Having agreed to roam the assets over a weekend, the guy returned Monday morning and showed Phipps a piece of Triceratops Guide Wheel: a shield-shaped design component that grew around the head of the huge plant eater.
“He said to me, “This coin is worth around $500,” Phipps recalls. “And I thought, ‘That’s it, did you do this while you were walking?»
From that day on, every time Phipps didn’t work on a ranch, he looked for fossils, what he found, prepared it in the basement workshop or entrusted it to others to prepare, to sell it in industry exhibits and museums. and personal creditors. In 2003, he unearthed the head of the horned Stygimoloch (Greek and Hebrew approximately for “demon of the Styx River”), a bipedal dinosaur, from the length of an American sheep, appreciated by creditors for its large ornamentation Phipps sold the fossil for more than $100,000 to a personal collector, who placed the specimen in a museum in Long Island, New York.
Then, on a hot day in 2006, Phipps and some partners made the discovery of their lives: experts say it could be one of the largest fossil specimens ever discovered or, more precisely, two specimens. The remains of a 22-foot-long theropod and a 28-foot-long ceratopsian eded from a dry hill. Locked in a fatal war when they were immediately buried in sandstone, perhaps along a sandy riverbed, the incredibly well-preserved couple is caught at a time in time more than 66 million years ago. “There’s a total skin wrap around the two dinosaurs,” Phipps says. “They’re necessarily mummies. There may only be fluffy tissue inside. If this is true, the specimen gives the option for scientists to recover tissue cells or even ancient DNA.
Montana’s precise species of Bereavement dinosaurs, as specimens are known, are still in the race. The largest of the two appears to be a ceratopsian, from the circle of relatives of the beak eaters and bird eaters that are enjoyed from the young by its However, the lifestyle of other horns on the facade of the animal has led to the hypothesis that it may be a new or rare species. The smallest specimen appears to be a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex or a Nanotyrannus, an un documented dwarf species, which some scientists dispute.
Scott Sampson, paleontologist and president of Science World, an educational and non-profit study establishment in Vancouver, is one of the few academics, museum managers, and advertising creditors who have noticed the specimen. “The Dueling Dinosaurs is one of the most remarkable fossil discoveries ever made,” he says. It’s the closest thing I’ve ever noticed to large-scale dinosaur fights. If that’s what we think it is, it’s an ancient habit taken from the fossil record. We’ve been researching America for over a hundred years and no one has discovered a specimen like this. “
And yet there is a possibility that the public will never see it.
We can speculate romantically about the distance between our hominid ancestors and the collection of dinosaur fossils, however, the study of dinosaurs is a relatively new science. The deep thinkers of ancient Greece and Rome identified fossils as remnants of the bureaucracy of life from earlier eras. da Vinci proposed that fossils of sea creatures such as molluscs discovered in the Italian countryside deserve to be evidence of ancient seas that once covered the earth, but for the most part, fossils were thought to be remnants of gods or demons. they had special powers of healing or destruction; others, who were abandoned by The Flood of Noah, a perception that is still maintained through creationists, who deny evolution.
Dinosaurs inhabited much of the earth, however, their fossils are not easy to locate in peak locations. The western United States is a treasure trove due to a mixture of factors: we live in a privileged time when layers of rock were deposited at the end of the Cretaceous. have exhibited after erosion eons, a procedure accentuated through the harsh environment, lack of plant life and excessive climatic situations that continually reveal new layers of ancient rock. clay in which they are buried, take a look.
In the early 20th century, universities and museums used advertising bone researchers to excavate dinosaur fossils. Many of the oldest specimens on display in museums in the United States and Europe have been discovered and collected through these “professional amateurs”. While federal lands can only be searched through authorized academics, dinosaur bones discovered in personal lands are personal property: anyone can dig with the owner’s permission.
In 1990, an organization of paleontologists digging in the Cheyenne River Indian Reserve in South Dakota unearthed an incredibly well-preserved massive T. rex. Later, called ‘Sue’, it is the largest and highest complete specimen ever found, with more than 90% Sue being sold at auction in 1997 for $7. 6 million at chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History, the highest-paid dinosaur fossil.
The sale of records spread all over the world and began a kind of “gold rush” of dinosaur bones. Dozens of seekers have descended in Hell Creek and other fossil deposits in the West, provoking the wrath of academics, who argue that fossils should be extracted according to clinical protocols and not extracted from the ground by amateurs in search of profit. For scientists, each site comprises much more than fossil trophies: plant, pollen and mineral records, along with the precise location of the find, are vitally important to understanding the history of our planet. Over the next decade, dinosaur bone mania was boosted by the popularity of videos such as Jurassic Park, a booming wealth in Asia, where fossils have become ultra chic for house decoration and attention. from the media to famous creditors like Leonardo DiCaprio and Nicolas. Cage, at the height of bone fever, maybe there were a lot of seekers digging thousands of square miles, from Dakota to Texas.
One of them Cowboy Phipps.
It’s a typical day in early June, transparent with mercury in the 3 digits, when Phipps discovered the dinosaurs in a duel.
He is conducting surveys with his cousin Chad O’Connor, 49, and a friend and fellow bone researcher named Mark Eatman, 45. O’Connor, strong and in a good mood, is partially disabled because of cerebral palsy. been looking for dinosaur bones. He later said he had accompanied his cousin on the expedition hoping to “find something that could replace my life. “
Eatman had been a full-time prospector for many years before falling demand for fossils and prices, along with an era of unlucky three years, forced him out of the game. “His wife told him it was time to get a job,” Phipps says.
Eatman was assigned the task of promoting carpets for Billings. Occasionally, he would enroll in Phipps on an expedition, and infrequently camped for a few days at a time. Bone researchers from all walks of life (commercial, academic, amateur) would probably agree that hunting is as vital as discovery, an opportunity to go out into the wild and collaborate with other like-minded people under the same ancient stars as dinosaurs.
Phipps and its components were exploring a domain about 60 miles north of Phipps Ranch. Because he used “a small map of a giant domain,” Phipps says, he believed they were on the land his brother rented, in the Judith River Formation, which predated Hell Creek for at least ten million years. Later, Phipps discovered that they were doing surveys about ten miles north of where he thought they were, in the domain phipps, like most locals, calls Hell Crik. 25,000-acre ranch owned by Mary Ann and Lige Murray.
The men made their way through the sunburnt environment, the soil is an aggregate of eroded clay, slate and sand. The topography is covered with broken and broken canyons, interspersed with striped mounds, curled up under the sky without clouds like silent messengers. During the dinosaur era, the dominance of Hell Creek was subtropical, with a warm and humid climate. The marshy lowlands were rich in plants with flowers, palms and ferns. At the upper elevations were shrub forests and a variety of wider, coniferous trees.
About 66 million years ago, an asteroid collided with Earth, killing dinosaurs and much of Earth’s fauna and paving the way for the evolution of fashionable mammals and plants. Today, Hell Creek is stark, hot, and probably desert. growing cactus, through spiny and aromatic sage, on wild tuffs. Phipps riding a small off-road motorcycle. The other two men were on foot.
Along the way, they encountered a series of sun-bleached bones, vanquished from a grazing cow or some other inhabitant: prairie puppy, bura deer, antelope, coyote.
Around 11 a. m. , Eatman saw what looked like a piece of forged bone that excelled from a sandstone bank. Phipps approached the hill for additional inspection. He immediately said: “We knew we had a pool, maybe a ceratopsian. they had the femur articulated in the pelvis, we might just see the head of the femur. What they didn’t know if the creature was still buried under the sand or if the rest of the dinosaur had already been eliminated by erosion.
Phipps carefully marked the position in his mind, and then he and the organization headed home. The answers to those mysteries await at a later time.
“I had to cut 260 acres of hay,” he says.
From T. rex’s remarkable skeletons to a 66-million-year-old mummy, here are 10 prominent fossils discovered in Hell Creek (Map Credit: Guilbert Gates; Research Credit: Ginny Mohler)
Later that summer, after hay was cut, rolled and placed (food for his farm animals during the long winter), Phipps returned to the secret spot, this time with Lige Murray, the landowner.
Now Phipps discovered pieces of ceratops that had already disappeared from the shore. You may also see a line of vertebrae leading to a skull. It most likely seemed that the dinosaur’s back was buried on the hill, meaning there is a clever possibility that it is still intact.
Murray gave his approval and Phipps began the thorough excavation procedure, starting with a brush and knife. In the meantime, trading partners have united; Contracts have been signed. A $150. 000. Se has been made and built a path to the site.
Most of the arduous extraction paintings were made through Phipps and O’Connor. “He doesn’t move very well, but he has a wonderful sense of humor,” Phipps says of his cousin, who helped ease the burden of his long, hot days. . Eatman came here over the weekend to help, as did a small organization of confidants and colleagues, who lent their elbow and experience. The discovery kept the process a secret. ” I didn’t even tell my family circle just before I finished the excavation,” Phipps says.
After two weeks, Phipps had established a perimeter around the ceratopsian from head to tail. “We practically had each and every bone in his body drawn at the time,” he said. One day, I was sitting in the cockpit of a backhoe. he had borrowed from his uncle, who used to remove the land and around the specimen to prepare the domain for fossil removal.
“I went to empty my bucket; as usual, I looked very carefully,” Phipps recalls. “Suddenly, I see those bone fragments. The bones were easy to distinguish from light-colored sand because they were dark in color, like dark chocolate.
Phipps came out of the backhoe and began sifting the contents of the bucket with their hand. That’s when he saw it: “There’s a claw, ” he said. ” And it’s a carnivorous claw. It’s not a bone that goes with a ceratopsian. “
Phipps smiled as he remembered it. ” Dude, my hat rose in the air,” he recalls. “And then I had to bend down and think, like, what’s going on?Here’s this meat eater with this plant eater, and dazzlingly they weren’t friends. What are the chances that some other dinosaur is there?”
Phipps and his partners took 3 months to extract the specimens from the remote site, and Phipps lost 15 pounds in the process. Railroad travies were inserted under grieving dinosaurs to maintain their position and integrity; plaster covers were placed around the exposed bone, a popular procedure among paleontologists. 20 tons. The ground segment containing only theropods the length of a small car, which weighs about 12,000 pounds.
Phipps sought the help of friends at CK Preparations, led by a teacher named Chris Morrow and paleoartist Katie Busch. The multi-ton blocks were transported to a facility in northeastern Montana, where Phipps and his partners got rid of the jackets. the specimens were “cleaned to the edge of the bones, so it is possible to see everything there, how each animal is organized”, phipps explains. Approximately 30% of the fossils were exposed, the bones bright and dark.
In situ, Phipps explains, a style he holds on his lap, the skeletons overlap, with the tail of the theropod, which was approximately the length of a polar bear, resting under the rear leg of the elephant-length ceratopsian. in about 17 feet of sand, they are fully articulated, meaning that their skeletons are intact from the nose to the tail.
Phipps assumes that on the day in question, tens of millions of years ago, one or more Nanotyrannus attacked the ceratopsian. Several theropod teeth were discovered around the site, and at least two were embedded in the fleshy spaces of the ceratopsian, one in the throat and one near the pelvis. Scientists who theropods lose teeth and regenerate them quickly, such as sharks. In this case, Phipps says, some of the theropod’s teeth are damaged in two, indicating a violent fight.
An orderly war followed. ” Ceratopsian is almost in a position to die,” Phipps says, resuming the narrative and returning to life. “It’s hot, it’s tired, it’s whipped, it’s bleeding from all the bite marks on it. By the time the ceratopsian is about to overturn, it wobbles and walks on the nano’s tail. Well, it hurts, doesn’t it? Then the nano bites the ceratopsian’s leg. And what’s ceratopsian going to do? Instinctively, it hits the nano in the face. The nano skull is broken. When the ceratopsian collapsed on the appearance of the nano’s head, the force hit it against a loose sandbank and the sand wall fell, burying them instantly.
“There’s so much science in those dinosaurs!” Phipps exclaims, a rare show of emotion from a boy who likes to wear his black cowboy hat on his forehead. “Possibly there would be the last meals, possibly eggs, possibly young children, we don’t know. “
Realizing that he had discovered something special, Phipps alerted the world.
There is only one problem: nobody listens. “We called all the wonderful American museums and told them what we had,” says Phipps. “But me, no one. A lot of them probably thought, yeah, that’s true. This guy is crazy. No one sent anyone to check what we found. “
However, over time, they came out. Sampson, the Canadian paleontologist, then at the Denver Nature Museum
Several other experts who have noticed that grieving dinosaurs have come to the same conclusion. “It’s exquisite,” says Kirk Johnson, director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. “This is one of the most beautiful fossils ever discovered in North America. . ” Tyler Lyson, curator of the Denver Nature Museum
But not everyone agrees. ” As far as I’m concerned, these specimens are scientifically unnecessary,” says Jack Horner, the pioneering, world-renowned paleontologist who encouraged the dinosaur expert played through Sam Neill at Jurassic Park. “Every specimen collected through an advertising collector is useless, because it is not accompanied by any of the data” that academically trained paleontologists collect, Horner says.
Over time, Phipps tried everything he came up with to locate a client for grieving dinosaurs. “There were some museums that were interested,” he says. They gave us closer to one. I’ve just been talking to the director and we’ve come here to an agreement on a value at some point. And then nothing happened. They didn’t answer us. I don’t know any more. ‘
In 2013, after seven years in the CK Preparations lab, the Dueling Dinosaurs were auctioned in Bonhams, New York, valued through evaluators up to $9 million, according to Phipps.
To ship Montana specimens, traditional boxes had to be built per section. A special semi-trailer with air suspension was rented. Phipps and his gang flew to New York.
Bonhams exhibited the fossils in a giant room in the atrium of his Madison Avenue facility. The crowd on the occasion a combination of “master bathers, cunning seekers, impeccably dressed collectors”, according to an account of the occasion published through Gizmodo’s Website. Phipps reported the website, “dressed in a breeder’s vest, shawl and a black cowboy hat. “
The Duel of the Dinosaur Auction lasted only 81 seconds. Only $5. 5 million was offered, which were unsuccessful in the reserve. (Although the value of the reserve was not publicly announced, Phipps said it was approaching an estimated $9 million. idea that were probably worth twice what they offered us,” Phipps says. We expected more and didn’t need to. “
Perhaps reflecting the decline in the fossil market, several other pieces were sold that day, adding a triceratop skeleton, valued between $700,000 and $900,000, and a Tyrannosaurus rex valued at $2. 2 million.
Three years later, sitting in his office, there is remorse in his voice. “The explanation for why they went to auction was a kind of frustration on my part. And then it all ended before it started. It was disappointing not being able to do it. make a sale, but I guess I was expecting it halfway. My attitude is the same: you don’t count chickens before they’re born. ‘
Since then, grieving dinosaurs have been housed in a garage in an undisclosed location in New York City. They have been studied for more than a decade after their exhumation. Meanwhile, some have seen Phipps, even erroneously, as a privateer true more to money than to science.
“I’ve never had cash, so cash has never been more vital to me,” he says. “But I’m not just passing by to give them away. There were other people who said I just give a little. Well, no. I have partners. I’ve invested too much in the project. I was there watching for a living. It’s like academics who pass out every summer between catepasias to look for fossils, they’re also looking to make a living. “
Johnson of the Smithsonian says there is a huge cost to dinosaur duels, despite some of the criticism of the way the specimens were excavated. “There’s a clinical cost, there’s a demo cost, there’s the novelty of the two adjacent dinosaurs,” he says. But, he adds, “the value is beyond the reach of the maximum museums, unless someone comes to buy it and donate it. And that hasn’t happened yet. ” Johnson says he saw the dinosaurs in a duel with a wealthy museum supporter he invited, hoping that guy might be interested in the fossil. It turned out that the donor had already noticed, with an official from some other museum. “actually, they’re not small buyers for any of that. “
Sue’s sale of the T. rex for more than $7 million is a “tip” for fossils, Johnson says, reflecting unprecedented donations from corporate sponsors such as McDonald’s and Disney. “It replaced everything, because the ranchers were a little crazy when they found out that dinosaurs weren’t just old bones, they were a source of cash, and that ruined it. “
Tyler Lyson of the Denver Museum says he would be “unlucky if he didn’t end up in a museum. “A Yale-educated paleontologist who grew up about 3 hours southeast of Phipps, along the Montana-North Dakota border, Lyson began hunting fossils on a ranch owned by his mother’s family. Incredibly, thanks to a series of scholarships, his years of training have become the paintings of his life.
“There’s only one sure percentage of other people on the planet who are interested in fossils to begin with,” Lyson says. “We all share this non-unusual bond, we would probably be interested for other reasons. “
At five o’clock, Phipps’ wife rings the dinner bell. Phipps gets out of his chair and climbs the stairs with complete care. Three months ago, he and his 12-year-old son were cutting a calf from the herd when Phipps’ horse slipped. and turned to him. Phipps broke his leg in several places; his foot was poorly spinning. His son, believing he was dead, began administering CPR. Last week, the screws were removed from his leg; Of course, his recovery was lost a full exploration season, as well as any hope of fossil revenue source, a source of income that over the years accounted for two-thirds of its annual source of income, he said.
In addition to his one-room schoolwork, Phipps has published two children’s books. We are accompanied at the table by the couple’s two sons, the youngest of whom is 10 years old (the eldest, a daughter, is in nursing school). We eat a friendly dinner consisting of chicken, potatoes and sharp squash. The windows frame the wild beauty of the surrounding countryside. Early morning sunlight creates an intimate glow. Next to my plate, in two small plastic bags, there are a couple of triceratop teeth that Phipps gave me in memory of my visit.
“Academics think what I’m doing is horrible,” Phipps says. “They think I’m destroying fossils and promoating them to the highest bidder. But that’s not true, ” he said, anger emerging in his voice. “I love fossils as much as they do. Of course, I’m self-taught. I’m just a cowboy, I don’t know everything. But I’ve had several paleontologists, even those who don’t tolerate exactly what I’m doing, told me I did an intelligent task in extracting the fossils. Maybe I didn’t do the fully detailed scientific paintings like they do, but I don’t have 30 academics running for anything. When we discovered the grieving dinosaurs, I thought academics would be big enough to close the gap. I think they’d say, “Okay, this is a one-of-a-lifetime discovery. “”
One day, Phipps waits, the gap will be closed with the university network and all valuable clinical knowledge will be collected that grieving dinosaurs will stay. “Dinosaurs were kidnapped,” he said. If we had left them on the hill, time would have destroyed them in the last 8 or ten years since we dug them up, we did the most productive thing with what we had at our disposal, you have to do it if what I’m doing is wrong or not. But for me, that’s not the case. “
After my visit, some time before this article went to the printing press, Phipps told me that there had been new openings of a museum interested in buying bereavement dinosaurs. “Things are happening, but I’m not on the loose to talk about it. “, he said. But he warned that not enough budget had yet been raised. “I guess it’s like anything in business. You need a fair price. I’ll wait and see what happens. I’m in no hurry. “
Meanwhile, Phipps says: “I’ve paid off my debts and I’m looking to build a little more ranch and have more cattle. I’m renting more land now, too. I’m looking to focus on that, because fossils guarantee, you know?»
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Mike Sager is the one of a dozen books and winner of the 2010 National Magazine Award. He is also the founder of the Sager Group, editor and distributor of films.