- [Interviewer] Let's meet
paleontologist Beau Campbell.
- Hi, I'm Beau Campbell
and I'm a preparator
at the Natural History
Museum of Los Angeles
in the Dinosaur Institute.
And it's my job to excavate
these fossils out in the field,
bring it back to the lab
and use specific tools
to remove the rock from the bones.
- [Interviewer] When did you
first start liking dinosaurs?
- I first started liking
dinosaurs at age five
when the movie Jurassic
Park came out in 1993.
It was the first time I got to
see these big extinct animals
on the big screen and it
really got me curious.
After that I started buying
toys, of T. Rex and triceratops
and brachiosaurus and things
like that, which led me to
books as well, which I started
reading about dinosaurs.
And then as the years went by,
I kept watching television
programs, cartoons,
and the other movies that
would come out about dinosaurs.
- [Interviewer] How did you
become a paleontologist?
- As I got to middle
school and in high school,
I started really getting
interested in the sciences,
and specifically in anatomy,
which is the structure
of bodies from either from
humans and from animals.
And then in college I decided
to study anthropology,
which is the study of people,
emphasizing mostly in
archeology and bones.
I also minored in geology,
which is a study of rock,
so I could continue to study
how these remains were preserved.
Once I got out of college,
I knew I needed to get
some hands on experience
and so I went to volunteer
at the La Brea Tar Pits Museum
where I got to excavate fossils.
I got to work on fossils in the lab
and clean them up and I
got to put these fossils
into the collections as well.
Within a year, I was lucky
enough to get a position
as a preparator working in the lab
and I did that for about six years.
And then I was lucky
enough to get another job
at the Natural History
Museum of Los Angeles
in the Dinosaur Institute where
I get to do the same thing
on dinosaurs in the lab there.
- [Interviewer] What are
you working on right now?
- I've been working on a ton of projects
in the last year at the museum.
I've been working on projects
throughout the Mesozoic,
in the Triassic, in the
Jurassic and the Cretaceous.
One of the specimens from the Triassic,
around 240 million years ago,
before dinosaurs even existed,
I've been working with a ignisaur
which is a marine reptile and a skull
that was about this big
and it was actually in several pieces
and I helped glue that back
together, that was really fun.
I also have been working
in a late Jurassic,
around 150 million years
ago, working within Utah
and digging out diplodocuses,
these long neck dinosaurs,
and allosaurs, which are these
big meat eating dinosaurs.
I've also been working in the Cretaceous
and digging up tyrannosaurs
from New Mexico as well.
So I've been pretty busy.
- [Interviewer] How do
paleontologists know
what dinosaurs were like
when they were alive?
- In order to figure out
what dinosaurs were like
when they were alive, we
look at dinosaur fossils
or traces that dinosaurs left behind,
as well as fossils from other organisms
that weren't dinosaurs to
see what they were eating,
what other types of life was around them.
And we also study the rocks
that these dinosaurs were preserved in.
Paleontologists have
been studying dinosaurs
for around 200 years, and so we found
a lot of dinosaur fossils in that time.
So we can make scientific interpretations
of what these dinosaurs
were doing back then.
We find physical clues like
the dinosaur bones themselves.
These bones can actually tell us
what type of dinosaur it was.
Was it a T. Rex?
Was it a triceratops,
was it something else?
We've also found fossils
of eggs and babies
that are just a few inches big,
but we also find the adult
forms of that same dinosaur
and they can be over a hundred feet long
for some of those sauropods, huge.
We can also find behavioral clues
that these dinosaurs left behind.
We find fossil tracks of dinosaurs,
so these are the
footprints that they left.
We can see were they
walking, were they running?
How fast were they walking,
how fast were they running?
Did they drag their tail?
Did they keep it up in the air?
Tells us what they were,
how they're moving around.
We also find fossils that tell us about
how they were eating or
what they were eating.
We find possible bite marks
from carnivorous dinosaurs
in plant eating dinosaurs, tells us that
they were eating them.
We also find coprolites,
which is fossilized poop,
and in that coprolite,
we find plant remains
of maybe a sauropod and it tells us that
that sauropod was eating
specific types of plants.
In order to figure all
this information out,
we look at modern animals today
to give the best
interpretation that we can make
of these extinct dinosaurs.
We typically rely on their
closest living relatives,
which are crocodiles and birds.
Birds, even, are dinosaurs.
They stem from the theropod group.
So with these comparisons, you can make
these scientific observations as well,
right outside your door.
You can look at what types
of animals are around
where you live, how many of
those animals do you find?
What are they eating?
How are they moving around?
These are the first steps to
understanding how to interpret
extinct animals like dinosaurs.
- [Interviewer] Thanks for
answering our questions.
- Thank you so much for listening
and make sure you keep making
those scientific observations.
It could lead to a really
important discovery
when maybe you become a
paleontologist yourself.
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