A Tyrannosaur Family Reunion

[applause]

Thank you. Tyrannosaurus Rex. We've all grown up having different views of Tyrannosaurus Rex. I'm looking around the room at the age groups, because what we think of when we think of Tyrannosaurus Rex is going to change, depending on our age. Through this program, we're going to get an opportunity to appreciate that a little bit.

1915, Tyrannosaurus Rex, the very first one goes on display at the American Museum of Natural History with great fanfare, and great hyperbole.

If there's one thing that paleontologists love, its hyperbole. If there's one thing that surrounds Tyrannosaurus Rex, it's hyperbole.

These are just quotes from the first opening of Tyrannosaurus Rex, "The ambassador to science," "The icon for paleontology," "The prizefighter of antiquity," "The last of the great reptiles and king of them all," "The most formidable fighting animal of which there is any record whatsoever," "Royal man‑eater of the jungle." I'm not really on board for that one.

"King of all kings in the domain of animal life." I guess we had to qualify that. There's a king of kings, and then there's the king of kings of animal life. "The absolute warlord of the earth," my favorite one. We May plus ultra, I bring to you Tyrannosaurus Rex.

[applause]

Thank you. 1915, this is what you're seeing. You're seeing this in the newspaper. This is the new thing, this animal. You've heard the buzz. It was discovered 10 years earlier, but it didn't actually go on display until 1915 at the American Museum of Natural History.

It was actually discovered by a fellow by the name of Barnum Brown, who was named after the P. T. Barnum, in the same tradition. He discovered the first Tyrannosaur in 1902. He actually discovered a second one in 1908.

We're going to learn that, I can't remember the exact date, but it was about 50 years between the time the second Tyrannosaur was found, and the third Tyrannosaur was found. The first two were found by the same guy, Barnum Brown. This guy, a little bit lucky here, he found two Tyrannosaurs. Who in this room has found two Tyrannosaurs?

Found it in Montana. I'm going to say it was on BLM‑administered lands, but it was actually 1902's just south of Glasgow, Montana. That's actually, if you tracked that, about 35 miles south of Glasgow. You're either in reclamation lands, or you're on Fish and Wildlife lands, or adjoining BLM lands. A pretty good guess it was public lands, though. Since we're at Interior right now, we'll go with that.

Audience Member: [inaudible 00:03:14] .

Yes, and that's exactly where Jack Warner has excavated a number of Tyrannosaurs, which we'll see here. But that's the area around Fort Peck Reservoir in Montana.

In 1905, the animal was described by Henry Fairfield Osborn, and a fellow by the name of Matthew put out this, the very first illustration of Tyrannosaurus. To the world, this is what Tyrannosaurus Rex looked like, a sketchy little drawing in 1905.

It really didn't capture the imagination until 1915, when it went on display, and people saw this enormous beast. It was nothing to compare it to. The only thing they knew about it was that it was a slow, lumbering, stupid reptile. It was also the king of kings of the animal world, and the most terrible beast ever.

It took only three years for it to make the transition from the front of the museum into cinema. This is where dinosaurs stayed for the next 70 years. Didn't hear a lot of research on dinosaurs. You kept hearing about dinosaurs taking over this, dinosaurs taking over the lost world.

If you go back to the 1920s and all of the early films from the '20s, if you were to ask anyone on the street to name 10 films from the 1920s. At least in my generation, ask me to name 10 films from the 1920s, nine of those 10 are going to be "The Lost World." That's the only one I know of. I think Zorro came out that time too, so that could be then my number two.

1933, Tyrannosaurus Rex finally is the big, bad guy. If you want to come up with a bigger, badder bad guy, who can you come up with better than Tyrannosaurus Rex? Who is a worthy opponent to King Kong? There is no other worthy opponent than Tyrannosaurus Rex. This is how we see it.

It was in 1941, I think, that the American Museum sold one of its two Tyrannosaurs to the Carnegie Museum, $100,000. That's a lot of money, one museum selling it to another.

Carnegie Museum put it on display in 1945, so now the public has two dinosaurs to look at. This one is largely fabricated, casts taken from the other specimen. There's not a lot of real bone in this specimen, just because there wasn't a lot discovered. I don't remember if it's 20 percent complete, somewhere in that realm.

By 1945, there are two specimens and probably about 20 movies about Tyrannosaurus Rex, and that's what we know about Tyrannosaurus Rex at that time. During this time there's also two extremely, I think, very influential murals, and I would say anybody who grew up say before the 1980s, when you say Tyrannosaurus Rex, you're going to think of one of these two murals.

The top one is Charles R. Knight from the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. That thing was in every one of my child books. That thing was in every encyclopedia. That photo was everywhere. The other photo was our bloated fellow down here at the bottom.

That one's a mural at the Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven, Connecticut at Yale. One of these two images of Tyrannosaurus Rex, and in fact, the Yale Peabody mural inspired every toy I grew up with. Every little dinosaur plastic toy was one of these little bloated slow‑moving reptile things, as was I think most of the people in this room.

That's how we knew between 1902 and 1988, Tyrannosaurus Rex was mostly known from either the cinema, or from this artwork, or from these great pictures we'd seen from the museums, but what did we know about the research behind it? What did we know about who its friends were, what it was doing?

All we knew is that he fought with Triceratops. We all knew that, and we all pretty much had that down. Other than that, what did we know about Tyrannosaurus? Was it a solitary animal? Did it hunt in packs? Did it live up in the mountains? Did it live down by the ocean?

We didn't know anything about the animal. Did it like flowers? We didn't know anything about the animal. That was all we knew. I was reading in the last couple of days, doing a lot of reading about Tyrannosaurus Rex. One of the big questions, and I'm not the only person who's asked the question. It seems like when you think something like that you find out other people have asked the same question.

Why did we not do anything with Tyrannosaurus Rex for the first 80 years? Why didn't we look into it? One analysis I read, which it maybe, maybe not, was that this was a time of theoretical science.

This is the time when real science was genetics, physics, putting a man on the moon, goes from theoretical to doing something, but paleontology, is that a real science now? That's what children do. That's what kids do. That's the gateway to science. We're still using that jingle today, "It's the gateway drug to science. Do fossils."

Hyperbole, I do it, too. It was always this idea that this is what children do. This is what children love, and then they get into real science later on. Someday they'll get into real science. It occurred to me, this is just the synthesizing going on here. I read the exact same article a few weeks ago during National Bike Month.

If you remember the late 19th century, and the early 20th century huge bicycle culture, bicycles everywhere. Sports heroes were cyclists. You can't say Lance Armstrong, name a famous cyclist today. See, cycling.

What happened in the 1940s, and 1950s, and 1960s? Who rides bicycles? Children. It's a kid's thing. We ride bikes. I'm an avid cyclist. Even today when I'm going to work, "You like to ride your bike to work, isn't that cute!" No, actually, this is serious stuff.

I spend thousands of dollars on bicycles every year. It's the same thing in paleontology. It's come full circle. It's not just what the children are doing. Paleontology is something big is going on.

When did that transition happen, between being a kid's thing and some very serious signs going on? It starts with two books that came out in 1988. It seems like these things come out in two's and three's. It's never just like one book that changes this world. It's like "Boom!" two of them.

In the world of paleontology, two books came out, one, Jack Horner. How many people in here have heard the name "Jack Horner" before? See? You can't name a famous cyclist today, but you know Jack Horner and Bob Bakker. Two, very, very different people. Both of them worked as advisers on the first Jurassic Park. Both of them became spokespeople for paleontology. Both of them worked on Tyrannosaurus Rex.

When you talk about paleontology, it goes to dinosaurs. When you talk about dinosaurs, it goes to Tyrannosaurus Rex. If you're a paleontologist, you learn to hate Tyrannosaurus Rex. Everything is about Tyrannosaurus Rex. "OK. I work with Tyrannosaurus Rex." [laughs] That's what you end up doing.

Two books are very influential, not as much in the profession as it was outside the profession. It made it accessible.

Jack Horner, this is a guy we can relate to. He's working a blue collar job, doing some work, gets him a third through Genius Grant, and becomes one of the most famous paleontologists ever. Well, it wasn't because he was given the grant. It's the other way around.

This guy is amazing! If you've ever had a chance to meet Jack Horner, or read his books, he has just this amazing insight and vision that dinosaurs might be just a little bit more than just finding some cool skulls, putting on display, and making toys for kids.

Bob Bakker said, again this is something the public hadn't heard, and the sciences have been talking about it for about 100 years actually. Bob Bakker didn't come up with anything original. He packaged it in an original way, and just boom, made a huge impact.

Maybe dinosaurs weren't slow, sluggish, lumbering, stupid reptiles. What if they were more like birds, jumping around, doing active things? What if they had feathers? It must have named the hearsays. What if birds had feathers, or what if dinosaurs had feathers? Yeah, right, feathers! Right! Whales are related to cows!

In the last 10 years, guess what we've just learned? Whales are kind of closely related to hippopotamus. Strange things in science, hearsays until you kind of crash through, and think about it.

In 1990, something else very big happened. A Tyrannosaurus was found on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in South Dakota. This in itself was a notable scientific discovery, very interesting. It was the most complete one found, almost complete, fully complete, and in any fossil finding complete is unusual.

Normally, when you hear in the news that a "complete" anything is found, there's a dirty secret. That means they found more than 50 percent. If it's more than 50 percent, we'll say that it's mostly complete. That's where the mostly comes in. This thing is nearly complete. I don't know the number. I'd say better than 90 percent complete though. An amazing specimen.

It follows up with some notable things. If you're working for the bureau or in the Department of Interior at the time, maybe you heard some of this, maybe you grew up hearing some of this. Those bad Federal agents went in and took this fossil away from these poor hard working folks.

It turns out there's a little bit more going on behind the scenes. Who knew, you know? The Cheyenne River Tribe might have thought, "Maybe this tyrannosaur belongs to the tribe." The rancher in which it's found, "Actually, it's mine. It's not theirs. It belongs to me." The Federal Government, "I imagine this belongs to the American people."

This thing went through court case, after court case, after court case. Institutes Sues for Sioux. My favorite clipping, which I couldn't find here, but I'll find, is one that says, "The Sioux sues for Sioux." This went on for years. The FBI was involved. There were criminal indictments filed. There were criminal findings; people went to jail. I guess fossils stolen from public lands.

It was a little more than just a tyrannosaur. It started with the discovery of a Tyrannosaur, and ended up a big long thing. A chapter we're very happy to put behind us. Then it goes into something else that started happening in the 1990's, that was very big and still effects the profession today in a very dramatic way, and that is the idea that "Fossils are worth money, and not just making movies. We can actually sell these things."

All through the 1990's, this became huge in the profession. Now it wasn't, "Go out West and find yourself a Tyrannosaur." It was, "Go out West and sell yourself a tyrannosaur. Pay off that mortgage." Especially, if you're a rancher out West. If you could find a dinosaur on your land, pay back the bank. Take control. The "American Dream."

That was very threatening to a lot of the scientists, to museums. I don't know now, $8.6 million dollars for a Tyrannosaur. Those are questions that are still being asked today. I think it's settled down a lot. We've understood it.

Fossils on private land belong to the private individual. The fossils on public lands are now protected under law, and belong to the American public. As land managers, we are required to manage them as such. The rules are kind of setting down now. We know what the rules are, we can play by the rules. We don't have to like the rules, but at least we're all playing by the same rules now.

Audience Member: The [inaudible 00:16:24] .

Everyone has their own opinion on whether a museum should or should not buy a specimen. There are arguments either way. As long as it's legal, it's legal. There's no problem.

The Field Museum of Natural History put together $8.36 million dollars for a Tyrannosaur, and then they kept it in a public trust. Is that OK? It is not. That gets into a question of ethics that can go every direction. Those questions are still being asked, and hopefully those questions will always be asked. They are very important.

Also, in the 1990's though, something new happened. We started talking about, "Well, let's look at some real research on rather Tyrannosaurus Rex was warm‑blooded. Let's look for DNA in these bones." Jurassic Park, yeah. You didn't get complete DNA. You just stick some frog DNA in there, and then you have dinosaurs. You saw the movie. Presto! A dinosaur! That's all you have to do.

But now we're having some real research going on, so understanding some real things that are happening. The junk that has happened since the 1990's to today, where you won't see a paper in paleontology with a single author on it, and that's in most of the sciences.

Now there's rare earth elemental analysis, looking for the geochemical fingerprinting and the geochemical signatures behind these bones. There's oxygen isotope. There's carbon isotope. Let's see what the weather was like when this animal died. If they was living in a climate shadow that had lots of rain, or not so much rain.

Geochemistry has completely taken over paleontology. That's a good thing. It's a little scary, too. I wasn't a wizard in chemistry. I wanted to work on fossils.

Now, if you want to work on fossils, you're going to work in chemistry, too. You're going to be a physicist. You're going to be a good biologist. You're going to know your anatomy. Or you're going to assemble a good team of people who can cover all those bases. Some real science happening now, not just digging them up, and sticking them up in the museum and saying, "Isn't that pretty?" We're still doing that too.

1992. I knew we'd get groans from this one, but how many people have grown up with Barney? How many people had one of their first great friends was a dinosaur?

I know there's not a lot of connections to the science, but it brought it into the psyche. Tyrannosaurus is no longer the villain. Still has an opportunity to be a villain now and then. A year later, and almost to the day, a year later we come up with another movie, and it'd been a long time since we'd seen a movie on dinosaurs. When we got one, boy, did we get one? There he is again.

What's wonderful about this, this is like the revisionist Western, which is going on in the 1990s too. "Jurassic Park" came out a year after "Unforgiving." The very gritty, non‑traditional western, and it's the same thing with tyrannosaurs. Is Tyrannosaurs the villain of Jurassic Park, or is it the hero of Jurassic Park? Discuss.

[laughter]

If you think about it, the very end of the movie, when those Velociraptors, who are definitely the villains, who saved them from the Velociraptors? It was Tyrannosaurus Rex. Who saved the heroes from the lawyer? It was the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

What is more scary than having a tyrannosaur going after two cars? Having two Tyrannosaurs going after one car. It gets better and better. Then it got a little forgettable in "Jurassic Park III."

A true story about this one, it was 2005. I remember where I was. I was in a video store. I found Jurassic Park III in a little sale bin. I'm like, "Whoa! There's a third one?" I'm a professional paleontologist. [laughs] I don't have a television. I don't go see movies. I was working out the park at the time.

Still, I was like, "Wow. I should buy this and check it out." I enjoyed the movie, but it was interesting. You know why this one flopped? There's only one reason. Spinosaurus can take out tyrannosaurus? Come on, really?

A Spinosaur, he doesn't even look dangerous. That's my analysis. We're waiting for "Jurassic Park IV." This will be "Advance of the Mammals." Hasn't come out yet, but here we go.

This is a painting by Luis Rey, who's done a huge amount of dinosaur art. You'll see a little bit of it later on. I worked in a graduate program full of dinosaur folks. My advisor worked on dinosaurs.

The other folks in my laboratory worked on dinosaurs. There are half a dozen well‑known paleontologists who are working in the laboratory with me, doing dinosaurs. Dinosaur paleontologists, I didn't touch dinosaurs.

I commissioned this piece of work while I was in graduate school. Brought it to my advisor. He is the one and only person who's not amused. I think this was hilarious! He was not amused. He thought that was so disrespectful. Could have been my attitude when I showed it to him. It's a fun thing.

What this is really though, is that paleontology is so much more than just tyrannosaurs. There's other things going on. Yet, I walk around DC saying, "I work on dinosaurs." "I do dinosaurs." Paleontology, that's dinosaurs. Archeology, that's dinosaurs. [laughs] Sorry.

Let's talk about Tyrannosaurs. From 1905 to 1970, we just knew about tyrannosaurs. In the 1970s, pretty obscure, not any of us picked up the newspaper on that morning in 1970. I said, "Oh my God, there's another Tyrannosaur from Canada. This one's called Daspletosaurus."

Daspletosaurus isn't really a household name. Tyrannosaurus, yes. Daspletosaurus, not so much. If you saw Daspletosaurus late in the evening, walking through Alberta, you would have said, "That's tyrannosaurus. Run." You wouldn't have said, "That's Daspletosaurus. It's nowhere near as nasty as Tyrannosaurus."

After that, it's another gap of almost 40 years before we get another Tyrannosaur in North America. We're still finding Tyrannosaurus Rex, remember, during this time we're in the 90s, we're finding tyrannosaurs on Fort Peck Reservoir. They're going to Museum of the Rockies.

There's more Tyrannosaurus being found in South Dakota, both on the tribal lands, both on private lands, BLM lands. Tyrannosaurus are being found all over the place.

But, there's a new species, a new genus, described in 2010. This is one from the Bisti/De‑Na‑Zin Wilderness in northwestern New Mexico. Excavated out of the wilderness, this is the anniversary of the Wilderness Act, and this is probably going to become one of the icons of the Wilderness Act celebration. 50 years of wilderness, right now.

If you can't say Bistahieversor, its Bistahieversor. Or you can call it the Bisti Beast, which we like to call it. We're still having chats with a fellow by the name Dr. Carr. Thomas Carr gave it that name. I'm still having some discussions with him.

Teratophoneus. One year later, 40 years without a new genus. One year, another one. This time, from Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, southern Utah, also in BLM lands. Teratophoneus is much smaller than the others. It was only about 15 feet tall. Half the size of Tyrannosaurus Rex. Plenty large to get your attention.

Lythronax, described last fall. We've known about lythronax for about six months now. But, in four years, we have three new species of tyrannosaur. All in the Tyrannosaur family, very closely related. Different genera, but very, very closely related.

There's a few others closely related in Canada that I'm not talking about now. Gorgosaurus, albertosaurus. If you're keeping track of them all, you're like, "Wait a minute! Aren't there three more from China too?" "That's right, and what's the one from Mongolia?" Tarbosaurus. There's others.

One was in the news less than a month ago called Pinocchio Rex, because it has a really long snout. That's in China. There's this Chinese Tyrannosaurid. These are all in North America. All in the US, and recently, all found on public lands.

If that wasn't enough, we're putting together Smithsonian exhibits. Smithsonian's bringing in a new dinosaur. We're saying, "Let's bring in some more dinosaurs, and have a dinosaur reunion."

Now it's getting confusing. Smithsonian's getting a dinosaur; BLM's bringing in a few dinosaurs. We've just named lythronax. There's all this dinosaur stuff in the news. If I'm getting confused, everyone's getting confused. All of a sudden one day, a couple of months ago, "There's nanuqsaurus." Another tyrannosaur described from BLM lands, and this time out of Alaska. A Tyrannosaur from Alaska.

We went from just knowing about tyrannosaurs and daspletosaurs and voom. You're saying, "Where are the intermediate fossils?" You never find the intermediate fossils. There they are. If you look at all of them next to each other, which you can now do at the Smithsonian, is see all these specimens lined up right next to each other. When has that ever happened? Never.

I'm getting ahead of myself. We'll get to the reunion here in a moment. I have to throw it out there, there are four new species of Tyrannosaur from BLM administered lands in just the last five years. Wow.

Let's shift a little bit, and talk about the museums. New York has a Tyrannosaur. This is a new mount of the specimen that was originally put up in 1915. Pittsburgh has the original holotype that was discovered in 1902. Chicago has sued one that was confiscated in South Dakota. It's on its way to Chicago.

8.3 million dollars later, there it is. Chicago has its own dinosaur. Alberta has this beautiful dinosaur mount there. The one at Denver, this is a cast of the New York specimen. First of all, every major national natural history museum seems to want to have a tyrannosaur. I wonder why?

I work on these pig‑like mammals, and they're not asking for pig‑like mammals in every single natural history museum in the world. But, for some reason, they want these Tyrannosaurs. I love that pose. Everyone says that pose is everything from its dancing, to its peeing on a fire hydrant, I've heard. I think it actually looks like it's winding up to pitch a ball. It's a fun mount to look at.

Who's missing a Tyrannosaur? Washington DC. Thus, the Museum of the Rockies specimen is coming to DC. Arrived in the middle of March. It's over at Smithsonian now. It's going to take most of the year. Probably another six months to go unpack all the crates. They're digitally scanning each specimen, and they're doing some fine crepe up on the specimens. Specimens have already been prepared. Mostly, it's re‑preparing it.

They're also scanning detailed sub‑millimeter three‑dimensional scanning of the entire skeleton. You could rapid prototype that skeleton now with the 3D printers. Technology has gone nuts. With all that data, presumably, you could put that whole dinosaur on one of these thumb drives, then I'll take it somewhere and create a dinosaur out of it. It's a brave new world we're in. Yes?

Audience Member: Are they trying to extract DNA?

Scott: Yes. They are trying to extract DNA, but not from this specimen. There's another specimen called the Pex Rex, that's also at the Museum of the Rockies, where they say they've extracted DNA. I'll go as far as say they've extracted proteins, which they can code into certain DNA.

I'm not completely up on the research they've done so far on that, but yes, they are looking for DNA. The thing is, that even when they do find DNA in fossils, it's very unlikely you're going to find a complete strand of DNA.

There's always frog DNA you can fill it in with. That was a brilliant, brilliant science fiction idea, to fill it in with frog DNA. But, we're not going to fill it in with frog DNA, and we're not going to be seeing dinosaurs walking around any time soon.

We are going to have a Tyrannosaur here in Washington DC. There's what they call the Rex Room at the Smithsonian right now. Those are crates with the actual bones in it. They're pulling those bones out, one bone at a time, scanning them, setting that all up.

Smithsonian had a big gala, press event, everyone came in to see their new dinosaur, but their new dinosaur was in crates. The director of the Smithsonian moves over here to the BLM dinosaur to do his press announcements, because there it is.

What we have is an exhibit at Smithsonian right now with Tyrannosaurus Rex. That's actually a cast of the American Museum specimen, because the new Tyrannosaur specimen is undergoing preparation and everything else.

Right next to it is Lythronax. Next to that is our [inaudible 00:31:25] beast and then over here is Teratophoneus. Remember, talked about the test.

Audience Member: Where?

These are at Smithsonian, in the Rex Room.

Audience Member: In the Rex Room?

In the Rex Room. It's just off the main foyer when you walk in. They're there. They're the first big four Tyrannosaur skulls on your left.

Audience Member: [inaudible 00:31:45] .

[laughs] As I said, there'd be a test afterwards so you can remember Lythronax is on the left there, Teratophoneus on the right.

There's more to it than this. Remember I said we spent a 100 years where this is kids stuff, children work on dinosaurs. This is a family reunion. This in itself is just putting up some cool skulls. This is the kid stuff, this is the part that's really neat and this is the hyperbole part, which of course means it's my favorite part.

There's more to it than that. There's also the research. There is also some real research going on. They would be looking for DNA if this specimen was preserved in a way that it could preserve DNA.

Some really neat stuff going on with that. Everything from studying how these things did what they did. What happens at a family reunion is when you go to a family reunion, sure it's great to see old Aunt Bessy, and Uncle Bill, and all these folks that you haven't seen since you were eight years old.

There's something funny that family reunions, if you've been to a family reunion. You say, "Hey, dad's nose looks like Uncle Bill's nose. I never noticed that before." You visit them all the time, but you never see them all together in the same place. When you have them all together in the same place, researchers are going to come from around the world for the opportunity to look at these specimens all in one place.

Because otherwise, they're going to have to go out to Utah to look at one, out to New Mexico to see another, here to Washington DC to see the other. That's one of the values of having them all in one place at one time for research. You're going to see things that you're not going to normally see.

In the collections of the Smithsonian, the part that's not on display is all the stuff that's not so sexy. Of course, a jaw is kind of sexy, but these rib fragments, little parts of wrist bones, there's a broken tooth over there in the lower right.

This is what's also at the Smithsonian for research. They're all available and that's the other part of the family reunion. It's not just the skulls on display, but it's also the research opportunities that are coming out of this.

Like I say, normally you wouldn't put something like that on display, because it's not very exciting. Not exciting to look at, but it's very exciting to work with if that's what you're working on.

The skulls are available, they can be brought back into the collections for work. It's brought paleontologists in from all over the place. I like this [inaudible 00:34:35] it's a grouping of all the paleontologists in Washington, minus about two.

It's a chance to bring not only the paleontologists together, not only the specimens together, the research together, and then the opportunity to see them all in one place. That's our family reunion.

It's the first time scientifically in a 100 years that all these fossils have been brought together in one place, but if you're a Tyrannosaur it's the first family reunion in 65 million years, so that's how you look at it, thus the hyperbole.

Our ambassador to science, icon for paleontology, I still love that "absolute warlord of the Earth." I've got to remember that one. [laughs]

Where do we go from here? What's going to happen now? What will happen in the next 100 years? That's something to think about, and that's the responsibility we have to start thinking about now with Tyrannosaurus Rex, with the ambassador to paleontology, the ambassador to science.

What happens to Tyrannosaurus Rex is going to be an indicator of what's going on in paleontology, which is an indicator of what goes on in science in general. In science we do more than just science. There's so many other things happening.

There's going to be more movies with Tyrannosaurs, and the big question is, is Tyrannosaurus going to be the villain or the good guy? Or that revisionist, little bit of both.

The artwork. The artwork on the dinosaur artwork has gone crazy in the last 20 years. The quality is just unbelievable, and it's getting to the point where some of these pieces of artwork are more valuable than some of the fossils, strictly in a market sense. There's some amazing stuff going on.

Luis Rey, who did all of these here, he did a rendering of Tyrannosaurus with feathers on them. He was putting feathers on dinosaurs before paleontologists were putting feathers on dinosaurs. Why? Because he's an artist. Artists are allowed to break the rules.

If a scientist says, "I think that's stripes," or, "I think that's spots," you're like, "What's your basis for saying that?" There's a little rigor involved. The artist has the license to take it one step beyond that step of rigor. OK, I'm going to take everything you know scientifically, I'm going to say, but you know what? What if it had feathers? Why not? It could have feathers.

Luis is good friends with Bob Bakker, the Heresies. Some people love this stuff, and other people like, "Dude, you're sending it the wrong direction. The public's getting the wrong idea, they're going to start thinking that Tyrannosaurus Rex had feathers on it."

Luis has done some other things. There's his Tyrannosaurus next to the chicken or rooster. Scaled it up, showing some biomechanical things. Kind of fanciful, kind of fun, but it also gets you thinking.

True story, this was around I want to say it was 2001, but I can't remember exactly. Around 2000, they started finding feathered dinosaurs in China. Not a feathered Tyrannosaurus Rex, but some feathered Dromaeosaurs which are very closely related to Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Audience Member: The major point was 1996, the meeting in New York.

The meeting in New York in 1996, was it earlier than I remembered, then? They announced that they were finding these feathered dinosaurs.

I remember Luis, when he learned this, that they had found feathers on dinosaurs, because he'd be putting feathers on his reconstructions for a long time. You never saw someone so happy, [laughs] and validated. He wasn't a zealot about it by any means, "Oh, I think they all had feathers." He was just like, "What if they had feathers? Wouldn't that be neat?"

It was really neat, because you can try things on. You can try things on that a scientist would say, "That's not rigorous." The artist has the license to try it and see.

In this case, Luis was right, but fantastic artwork, what's going to happen in the future with the management of fossils? Where are we going to be? Are we going to know what we're doing, are we going to understand who owns them, how we manage them, what we do with them?

Is our Justice Department going to understand how we prosecute, how we deal with them? Is our law enforcement going to understand what our rules, how we want to manage them, how they need to be managed, what the laws say about doing with them?

Right now Homeland Security, Department of State are dealing with requests from foreign countries saying, "Our dinosaurs were stolen and shipping to the US. Could you send them back to us?" Whoa. Big question. You're sitting at Department of State, you're dealing with very important things and someone wants their dinosaur back. You're like, "What are the rules on dinosaurs?"

This is the next 100 years. This is what's in front of us, an international trade not only in selling dinosaurs but also in the research and the understanding, in the intellectual property. What if we do a three‑dimensional scan of a Tyrannosaur and put it on a card like this? Can I give it to China? That's the next big questions in paleontology.

Finally, where is the research going to go? Not only how they're related to each other, not only the Dino DNA, as we say, that's be found, but they actually have been finding strands of DNA, strands of soft tissue. If not DNA, proteins. They're finding actual tissue from dinosaurs in the fossils.

The fossilization process usually is a replacement process. It's boom, one for one replacement. Like petrified wood, there's no original wood in petrified wood but it maintains all of the structure, because the structure of the wood at a molecular level was replaced one for one.

All of those carbon atoms are replaced with silica atoms, and now you have a silicified or a petrified tree, and it still has the tree rings and everything else in it.

What if you start finding some original tendon, sinew, blood from millions of years ago? Whole new thing. Who's going to recognize this? The geochemists, the biologists, the anatomists. This is where it's become a much more integrated science. It's not just the guys sitting in the field with a pickaxe prying that skull out and putting it on display.

Then the last thing I want to show is how important are public lands? How important are they going to be in the next 100 years when we're looking at dinosaurs, when we're looking at paleontology, when we're looking at science?

Public lands are the biggest scientific laboratory in the world. That's why we have to think about regions, ecosystems, large areas. We're not just talking about modern ecosystems, but paleo‑ecosystems as well.

You want to talk about questions of global climate change, don't ask a meteorologist. They'll tell you what the weather has done for the last 100 years, but who's asking the deep time questions? When was the last time the Earth did what it's doing now, and how are we going to know?

We're going to know by the signal that was left in the life that lived on planet Earth a long time ago. That's called paleontology. That is not kid stuff. That's some of the stuff that's so important here.

Notice that Tyrannosaurus has been found on all sorts of public lands. The one you can't really see, the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe, since they have a couple of Tyrannosaurs out of their areas.

I stuck in the park service one at the end for two reasons. One, because I knew Vince was going to be here so I had to throw something for park service, but also Big Ben National Park actually has a partial Tyrannosaur specimen. That's pretty neat about that too.

Anyway, we just have to think about this whole regional look, not just today but the paleo‑regional look at what was going on. That's where these public lands are going to be so important in the next 100 years to not just learn more about Tyrannosaurus Rex, but also paleontology, which is an indicator of what's going on in science in general.

Then the final question of course is who's going to attend the next reunion? How many more species are waiting out there to be discovered? All these Tyrannosaurs, and every time you see a Tyrannosaur remember that there's a bunch of other.

Alice and I were laughing yesterday about little Ostracods. I should give a talk on Ostracods. Would we fill the room if we're talking about little fossil Ostracods? When you talk about paleo‑ecosystems and all, they're just as important. In fact, they might be a little more important, for what we can learn from them, from the science.

What are we going to learn about Tyrannosaur in the next 100 years? Anyway, thank you.

[applause]