Down to Earth With: Highway paleontologist Shane Tucker

Tue, 05 Jun 2018 15:39:13 -0400

Nebraska highway paleontologist Shane Tucker monitors road construction projects to recover the state's valuable paleontological resources, including many of the mammal fossils for which Nebraska is famous. Credit: Gary Hochman.

When roads are built in fossil-rich states, paleontologists sometimes follow the trucks and bulldozers to make sure that the buried treasures that construction crews occasionally uncover — namely, remnants of ancient animals and plants — get out of the ground safely and into a museum to be cataloged and studied.

Down to Earth With: National Park Service senior paleontologist Vincent Santucci

Tue, 10 Apr 2018 09:56:08 -0400

Vincent Santucci is the senior paleontologist and paleontology program coordinator at the National Park Service. Credit: NPS photo.

When Vincent Santucci was hired in 1985 to work as a seasonal ranger in South Dakota’s Badlands National Park, he assumed the most formative part of the experience would be sharing his unbridled enthusiasm for fossils with park visitors. But as Santucci explored the colorful badlands on his days off, he sometimes stumbled across people who were illegally collecting fossils. Following the first of these encounters, Santucci raced back to headquarters to report the illicit activity with the expectation that the chief ranger would rush out and arrest the perpetrator. Much to Santucci’s surprise, the ranger instead put a hand on his shoulder and drawled, “You ain’t from around here, are you, boy?” After several repeat episodes, Santucci learned that when rangers had previously caught illegal collectors and brought them before the local magistrate, the judge had refused to prosecute, citing a lack of fencing or signage that clearly informed the fossil hunters they’d been on federal land.

Department on EARTH Magazine

Down to Earth With: Highway paleontologist Shane Tucker

Down to Earth With: National Park Service senior paleontologist Vincent Santucci