Fossil Hunters Trade 9-to-5 Security for Thrill of Discovery

SHELL, Wyo. —  There’s a geologist, a metalworker, a veterinarian and a computer technician.

They come from New Orleans, California, Germany--and just down the road.

Their enthusiasm is boundless, though their experience and qualifications are limited. In short, they enjoy getting down on all fours--toothbrush and dental pick in hand--and digging in dirt for hours. Bone fragments make them giddy; words ending in “saur” evoke downright delirium.

They aren’t like kids in a candy store. They are kids in a candy store, savoring the sweet taste of discovery. And, like children, their pleasure is divulged in smiles and giggles.

Part Indiana Jones, a little more like the Nutty Professor, they are among a smattering of explorers conquering the new West by way of the old: grown-ups trading 9-to-5 jobs and steady salaries to dig for fossils in the foothills of Wyoming.

This is no hobby or weekend project. For these entrepreneurs, it is the ultimate business venture in an era of high-stakes stocks and dot-com millionaires--one that unites childhood fantasy and adult ambition.

Wistful Ambition

“If I could make a living doing this,” Bob Simon says with a wistful sigh, “that’d be awesome.”

He is squatting on a sandstone hill high above a cattle ranch outside Shell, a 50-person speck of a town in northern Wyoming. He wears a T-shirt splashed with pastel-colored dinosaurs, a bronze belt buckle in the shape of an Allosaurus and a baseball cap with the insignia of his fledgling company, Dinosaur Safaris.

He looks like he cleaned out a “Jurassic Park” souvenir shop.

Simon, 44, has spent almost half his life--19 years, to be precise--as an oil and gas geologist for Chevron in New Orleans. He earns a “good salary,” owns a four-bedroom house and commutes regularly to Washington, D.C., where his wife works as an environmental health scientist.

But Simon is trading security for uncertainty to make a go of his dream: leading dinosaur-digging expeditions in Wyoming’s Morrison Formation, with rock layers dating back to the Jurassic period.

“I’m working two jobs, basically,” he says. “Hopefully, this thing’ll fly.”

Simon started Dinosaur Safaris in 1998 after his own weeklong digging vacation to the 80-acre site he now leases. On the third day of his trip he hit the jackpot, unearthing an Apatasaurus tibia and rib.

Simon negotiated a six-year lease with the landowners and, after a year spent exploring and developing a Web site, he is opening the dig site to tourists through Aug. 11. A handful have signed up for one-, three- or five-day digs costing $90 to $450.

If the business takes off, Simon plans to quit his job and spend his summers in Wyoming, overseeing digs, and his winters in Washington, preparing bones. For now he can spare only a few weeks a year at the site.

When he’s not there, Roger Rousu is. Rousu is the so-called director of field operations for Dinosaur Safaris, although his own job description is less fancy: “I just move dirt.”

The longtime owner of a bronze foundry in nearby Cody, 52-year-old Rousu now spends his days digging, excavating and making cast molds of bones. He stumbled onto the job after meeting another fossil collector who needed a mold maker. Eventually he met Simon, who gave him a full-time job and stacks of books to help him learn what to look for.

On Simon’s most recent visit to the site this summer, Rousu astounded his boss with his latest find--the 22-foot backbone of a plant-eating dinosaur, with more vertebrae still to be uncovered.

“That’s exciting,” Simon says, his eyes widening with pleasure as he knelt down for a closer look. “Finding something like this is nice--pretty darn nice.”

A satisfied smirk pinching his lips, Simon stood and surveyed his temporary workplace, raising his arms as if to embrace the land and all its hidden treasures.

“You can see what it’s like out here,” he says. “New Orleans to this? Come on.”

For Simon, New Orleans to Shell would be the fulfillment of a fantasy. A few miles south of him, one amateur fossil collector already has seen his dream realized. A few miles west, another is struggling to survive.

*

In 1993, Burkhard Pohl was on the verge of moving from Switzerland to his native Germany to open a veterinary practice. After an eight-week vacation to Wyoming, Pohl returned home and packed up his wife and two children.

But instead of heading to Germany, he relocated to Thermopolis--a central Wyoming town of 3,500 people known for its trout fishing, elk hunting, hot springs and, now, dinosaur fossils.

“It is a little bit strange,” admits Pohl, a jocular fellow with chubby cheeks, curly hair and a bushy mustache the color of nutmeg.

Stranger yet is that this veterinarian from Frankfurt went on to become the benefactor of Wyoming’s first facility dedicated to excavating, preparing and displaying dinosaur bones discovered within the state.

An amateur fossil hunter who had collected the remains of birds and small mammals, Pohl had never been interested in dinosaurs until he ventured to Wyoming with friends seven years ago and found dinosaur bones embedded in the mountains of a private ranch in Thermopolis.

Pohl purchased the land and, in 1995, opened the Wyoming Dinosaur Center.

“I made this into a temporary business, and it got permanent,” Pohl, 44, says in a still-thick accent.

Five years later, as director of the center, Pohl oversees a 16,000-square-foot complex that includes a museum, working dig sites on two main quarries and a preparation laboratory. The center draws about 40,000 visitors each year and has a staff of nine.

Among Wyoming’s amateur fossil hunters, Pohl is the proof one can make it.

Living on the Edge

At the other end of the spectrum is Bernie Makowski.

A year ago, Makowski was making $8 an hour as a computer technician in California. Then his wife divorced him, and he lost his job. Makowski sold a target rifle, bought a pickup and a trailer and headed east.

He landed in Cody, on the western edge of Wyoming near Yellowstone National Park, and found work at the Wal-Mart. On the side, as he had done as a hobby since childhood, he scoured the surrounding hillsides for fossils.

When he found a few marine deposits on ranchland south of Cody, he offered the landowners 10% of any profit he earns to gain access to 500 acres. Last September, he moved his trailer onto the property and began digging full-time.

“When I found this I thought, ‘This is my opportunity,’ ” says Makowski, 45.

Ten months later, he has discovered dozens of bones and fossils, mostly of marine mammals. On one recent weekend he was hunched over a hillside working to unearth what he believes is a crocodile skeleton. About a dozen volunteers from local rock clubs pitched in.

Makowski tried to sell some of his finds to publicly funded institutions for further study. That’s when he learned an important lesson in the world of amateur paleontology: Professionals say they are ethically barred from working with novices who intend to profit from their discoveries.

To date, Makowski has sold nothing. Instead, he lives off donations, eats cheese sandwiches and pilfers water from his landlords’ hoses. His trailer is powered by a wind generator he built from a car alternator and a plane propeller. Even his eyeglasses were donated by a local ophthalmologist.

“To be honest,” he says, “I thought I could make a decent amount of money. I didn’t expect to be a millionaire, but I was looking to have a piece of property, a nice home and a reliable vehicle.”

Simon and Pohl agree fossil hunting is a financial risk. Simon has poured more than $30,000 into his business and hopes simply to break even. Pohl won’t say how much money he sank into the Dinosaur Center, but acknowledges the venture was more costly than expected.

And there are other drawbacks. Amateurs are restricted to collecting on private land, forcing them to negotiate leases with the landowners. Anyone other than a paleontologist or an educator caught collecting fossils on federal lands can face fines.

Then there’s the criticism from professionals who accuse novices of sacrificing science for money.

Are there big bucks to be made from a big find? After all, Chicago’s Field Museum paid $8.3 million for a Tyrannosaurus rex named Sue. Its discoverer and namesake, Sue Hendrickson, didn’t get the money, however. After a protracted court battle, it went to the landowner.

But these three say the financial risks, restrictions and ridicule are worth the thrill of trying.

“It’s just an amazing feeling when you start opening the ground and you find something that’s never been seen before,” Makowski explains. “It’s like coming on a crime scene and taking all the clues and figuring it out. It’s seductive. It’s solving the mystery.”

On the Net:

https://www.dinosaursafaris.com

https://www.wyodino.org