I originally worked as an archaeologist in North Carolina, and when bones were found police would take them out to the bones lady at the university, and that was me.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
My father had owned a ranch when he was younger, in Montana, and he remembered riding his horse across the prairie and seeing some large bones sticking out of the ground. He was enough of a geologist, being a sand and gravel man, to have a pretty good notion that they were dinosaur bones.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a palaeontologist. I wanted to dig up dinosaurs.
Bones tell me the story of a person's life - how old they were, what their gender was, their ancestral background.
I had this idea that I could hire myself out as a person to go on archeological digs and dig, without any training! I actually wrote to a number of archeology departments and offered up my services.
I had a doctorate in biological anthropology. I got a post-doc at CWRU dental school in 1983 teaching gross anatomy.
I found my first dinosaur bone when I was 6, growing up in Montana. Ever since then I've been interested in dinosaurs.
Through the study of fossils I had already been initiated into the mysteries of prehistoric creations.
I always was going to be a writer. The other jobs were just to keep me in food. Though I enjoyed the archaeology.
I used to work as a private detective years and years ago.
I used to dig around the sandbox and pull out pieces of coal and show them to my mother, and she used to say that's how I must have known I was going to be a geologist.