Single toe bone to major dino display

In the summer of 2000, David Gillette, Colbert curator of vertebrate paleontology....

  In the summer of 2000, David Gillette, Colbert curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Museum of Northern Arizona, was getting ready to return to camp after a long day of field excavation. Busy excavating bones of a plesiosaur, an ancient sea reptile, in the Tropic Shale in the desert of southern Utah, Gillette was suddenly handed an odd bone by Merle Graffam, a crew member and resident of the town of Big Water near the site. Turning the bone in his hand, Gillette was not excited, just mystified. "It was just a puzzle," Gillette recalled. "When Merle handed me that bone, there was no great enlightenment, no 'Eureka!' That didn't come until a year later. It was the beginning of a long mystery that we're still figuring out." The shape of the bone appeared to be that of a terrestrial animal from about 93 million years ago. More bones were found at the same site and from the same animal. "We had no clear idea about what we were looking at, but it was a dinosaur," he said. "What was so surprising was that it was in a place dinosaurs should not be found. We find dinosaurs where sediments were laid down in lakes and rivers, but not in the middle of the ocean." Six years and much work later, that single toe bone has resulted in a major new dinosaur exhibit at the Museum of Northern Arizona, "Therizinosaur — Mystery of the Sickle-Claw Dinosaur," co-curated by Gillette and artist Victor Leshyk. The exhibit opened to the public last week. "This is the first time this dinosaur has been displayed in North America and it's the most complete skeleton known for the Therizinosaur sickle-claw," Gillette said. "I think they're the most bizarre of all the dinosaurs." Trying to solve the mystery of how a land-dwelling dinosaur could end up buried 60 miles out at sea, Gillette and his crew settled on the "bloat and float" theory which had the dinosaur floating out into the ocean after its death. The Therizinosaur was probably feathered and a relative of Tyrannosaurus rex, Gillette noted. "Their ancestors were predators," he said. "It's a predatory dinosaur that went to feeding on plants. When you're feeding on plants, you don't have to be very fast." Mounting the new exhibit cost about $150,000, said museum director Robert Breunig. "We're very excited," Breunig said. "Dinosaurs have been displayed in museums for well over a century, so that's nothing new. What's inspiring about this exhibit to us is this exhibit is about a new discovery. So, this is not something anyone has seen before, and it is a physical expression in exhibit form of MNA research." Gillette, 61, came to dinosaurs later in life. "I didn't get interested in dinosaurs until 20 years into my career," he said. "I was interested in other fossils, but not dinosaurs. For me, dinosaurs are not gee-whiz fossils; they are subjects of interest for understanding evolution." Gillette's tenure at the museum began in 1998, after moving to Flagstaff from Salt Lake City, where he was Utah's official paleontologist for 11 years. His wife of 13 years, Janet Whitmore Gillette, also works for the museum as a paleontologist and collection manager for natural history. Gillette's career with the museum was interrupted at the end of 2003 when the geology department was closed and he was laid off. After Breunig became director in January 2004, he applauded the commitment of the new board to reopen the geology department and rehire Gillette. Gillette has not tired of discovering new science. "When we make a discovery that we can't figure out what it is, there's always the possibility that it's something new to science," he said. "You bet that's exciting, even if it's not new to science, it's new to us and improves our understanding of what we're looking at. That's very rewarding." Gillette will have an opportunity to talk about the excitement connected with his work, as well as the mysteries of the Therizinosaur, during the Flagstaff Festival of Science. He will be the keynote speaker when the festival opens Friday. "I don't think it's any less exciting for us than for explorers in the 16th and 17th centuries, when they were looking for new lands," Gillette said about the role of scientists. "We're interested in discoveries. We're populating new landscapes with these new animals. It fuels your imagination."