An Afternoon with a Paleontologist // Inside Utah 7 Production - July 2019

What would you do to spend an afternoon with a paleontologist exploring one of the most important regions in dinosaur discoveries in North America? What questions would you like to ask? Why did the dinosaurs die? What do you look for when you are looking for dinosaur bones? Or, how the T-rex lived? 

Our documentary film crew recently filmed with Dr. Alan Titus, the Bureau of Land Management Monument Paleontologist for Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. With trying to contain the overly excited inner children inside of us humming the Jurassic Park theme song driving up Dr. Alan Titus’s lab in the back lots of a BLM field office in Kanab, Utah, the excitement of spending some time with a Paleontologist to discuss the scientific importance of GSENM was overwhelming to say the least. 

While our shoot with Dr. Titus was actually 2 days, 1 day in his lab and 1 day in the field, the rest of this story focuses on our crew’s work during an afternoon, deep in the Kaiparowits Plateau. We were exploring the Kaiparowits Formation and Wahweap Formations, discussing nothing but dinosaurs and rocks with a Paleontologist whose recent claim to fame was unearthing a family of 4 T-Rex, changing science’s understanding of how this infamous creature lived, hunted, and nurtured it’s young. Meaning those poor kids in Jurassic Park, and the gentleman on the toilet, truly didn’t stand a chance. 

In the middle of a July afternoon, yes July, in Southern Utah our documentary film crew captured  Dr. Titus’s travels through several important areas of scientific interest in the Plateau that is the central region in the former GSENM boundaries. 

To obtain our access through the BLM, we had to omit any questions or conversations that involved any political opinions from being captured on camera. This shoot was 100% focused on Dr. Titus’s background as a Paleontologist, along with the scientific importance of what an area like GSENM offers to dinosaur discoveries, and how it can benefit and has changed science as a whole. 

While jumping from site to site, looking to dodge being stranded in the deep backcountry from a very apparent and ominous looking Monsoon coming in from the South, our afternoon had one very specific  primary objective; to beat the rain and get to film one site, “Rainbows and Unicorns”.

With our cameras rolling, Dr. Titus revealed that this site’s very unique naming convention is in fact a jab at him. Dr. Titus is very charismatic, well spoken, and you can see an excitement in his eyes whenever he was asked about a discovery that changed his career. To Dr. Titus and his colleagues, the running joke is that every site, every dig, every bone is “Rainbows and Unicorns”

However, when his field manager was called by a colleague for the REAL information about Dr. Titus’s latest site, it was revealed “That this site is in fact, Rainbows and Unicorns”. 

With 100 degree heat beating down upon us, with spirit crushing gnats, and flesh eating black flies…yes again UTAH IN JULY, we approached the very modest looking site. We are licking rocks the entire way (something we can’t reveal the truth as to why) and we arrive at the location where a family of 4 T-rex were unearthed, right next to a 40 foot crocodile, which is next to a turtle that is in mid-process of being unearthed. The turtle is described to us as being about 6 feet long. As our camera operator literally trips over a vertebrate tail bone, Dr. Titus picks it up and calmly remarks “Hm,,, this should have been collected”, and places it back on the ground.” 

Sitting in the pit conducting our field interview, Dr. Titus, with his child-like sense of discovery and generous sharing of his knowledge, presents us with a handful of fish scales, and “oh hey, here’s a leg bone”. He describes this site as having unearthed literally hundreds of specimens from Rainbows and Unicorns. He believes that they have barely scratched the “surface” of the bone layer in this site. That with several discoveries on this modest hillside, 99.9% would have walked right past. The discovery surface bone that was found was the toe of a one year old T-Rex measuring about 1 inch by ¼ and black in color. One tiny little bone, caught by a very well trained eyed, led to the uncovering of a site that changed has and will continue to change the course of scientific understanding of one of everyone’s favorite dinosaur species, The T-Rex.

All Photographs are copyrighted by Traverse Image LLC. Please contact us for use