5. “Before a big piece sells...”: Interviews with Amanda Prokopi and her mother, Betty Graham. I spent time with Amanda Prokopi in Gainesville, Florida, and Williamsburg, Virginia, and kept up by phone, between 2012 and 2018. I spent time with Betty Graham in Virginia in late 2014.
6. The one species whose name everyone gets right: Holtz said this in a lecture, “The Life and Times of Tyrannosaurus rex,” at the Burke Museum in Seattle, a video of which was uploaded to YouTube on March 19, 2013. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqkqkxYGNZc.
7. Dominated Earth for 166 million years: Dinosaurs lived in the Mesozoic era, which lasted from 251 million years ago to roughly 66 million years ago. Its three periods, oldest to most recent, were the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous. See “International Chronostratigraphic Chart,” International Commission on Stratigraphy, stratigraphy.org.
8. Birds: From March 2016 to January 2017, the AMNH showed an exhibit, curated by AMNH vertebrate paleontologist Mark Norell, called Dinosaurs Among Us. The exhibit and corresponding web presence explained that the fossil record of the link between dinosaurs and birds “grows richer by the day. So rich, in fact, that the boundary between the animals we call birds and the animals we traditionally called dinosaurs is now practically obsolete.” Extensive research exists on the bird-dinosaur connection. See Mark Norell, Unearthing the Dragon: The Great Feathered Dinosaur Discovery, with photographs and drawings by Mick Ellison; and John Long and Peter Schouten, Feathered Dinosaurs: The Origins of Birds. Two indispensable books on dinosaur species in general are the Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs, by Gregory S. Paul, and the massive The Dinosauria, edited by David B. Weishampel, Peter Dodson, and Halszka Osmólska.
9. “Dinosaurs are the gateway to science”: Interviews with paleobotanist Kirk Johnson, Sant Director, Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History.
10. T. rex bite force: “The Biomechanics behind Extreme Osteophagy in Tyrannosaurus rex,” Scientific Reports 7 (May 17, 2017). See also Nicholas St. Fleur, “Between a T. rex’s Powerful Jaws, Bones of Its Prey Exploded,” New York Times, May 18, 2017.
11. “likely exploded”: Ibid.
12. “SUPERB TYRANNOSAURUS SKELETON” and description: Heritage Auctioneers & Galleries Inc., catalog for Heritage Signature Auction No. 6068, May 20, 2012, New York.
13. Hunting: “Almost any paleontologist will attest that, although of course he collects fossils to advance the science of paleontology, his personal drive also arises at least as much from the joy of the hunt and of outdoor life, often in remote camps and with some apparent hardships that are actually part of the pleasure,” the late AMNH paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson wrote in Fossils and the History of Life. Simpson, who became an AMNH paleontologist in the late 1920s, worked on Mesozoic mammals, including those found in Mongolia. He spent his academic career at Columbia, Harvard, and, after moving to Tucson, the University of Arizona. In Fossils and the History of Life, he wrote, “As a monitor of geological resources and an arbiter of evolutionary history, paleontology has played an essential and sometimes a crucial part in varied pursuits of great economic importance. It has even greater values in a more human and less strictly commercial sense. It helps us to understand the world in which we live and to understand ourselves, our origins, our relationships, and our natures.”
14. His mounts: Prokopi’s major sales included a handful of giant ground sloths, one of which sold via Sotheby’s in Paris, where the skeleton loomed in the front window on rue Saint-Honoré.
15. Rainbow: Bolor told me Mongolians name their children for natural wonders. Her name, for instance, means “quartz.” Chuluu means “stone.” Chuluutse means “stone flower.” Oyuna means “copper.”
16. Eternal blue sky: A guide named Selenge Yadmaa told me Mongolians have ninety- nine skies. “We’re very close to nature because we’re nomadic,” she said. One day in the Gobi she and I sat for a while in the Land Cruiser of her driver, Bat-Ezdene, whom everyone called “Eeigii.” Selenge, who had been a miner and a TV journalist before becoming a guide, told me there were different types of prayer cairns, some made by shamans in reverence to earth and sky. As people pile stones on the cairns they also leave silk sashes. Sashes can be given as gifts, in symbolic colors, as signs of respect. Give a teacher yellow. Give white to dignitaries. Shamans used black against curses. Blue was all-purpose—“You can’t go wrong with blue.” The cairns often stood many feet high. Every stone in the bed of the hill wants to be at the top of the hill, Selenge said. The higher the stone the happier the person placing it. Eeigii sat listening to all of this. I thought he didn’t speak English until he answered, in English, a question meant for Selenge. “You understood everything we were just saying?” I asked, learning that Mongolians say it’s important to be lower than grass. “Listen but not talk,” Eeigii said. “Like spy.”
17. Ulaanbaatar: Say it OOH-lan-BAT-are. Tarbosaurus bataar, on the other hand, is generally Anglicized to bat-TAR. The capital has also been spelled Ulan Bator. Until 1924, the city was known as Urga. In Mongolian: Улаанбаатар хот. A good general resource is Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire, by Christopher P. Atwood.
18. “the largest dinosaur fossil reservoir in the world”: “Cretaceous Dinosaur Fossil Sites in the Mongolian Gobi,” UNESCO, December 19, 2014.
19. “no place for kids”: Many of Bolor Minjin’s quotes and personal details are from interviews or observation. To hear her talk about her projects, see “Science Stories: Bolor Minjin on Making a Museum” (https://www.fi.edu/file/science-stories -bolor-minjin-making-museum) and “Bolor Minjin Visits the Gobi Desert” (https://www.fi.edu/file/science-stories-bolor-minjin-visits-gobi-desert), via the Franklin Institute.
20. “Oh it’s so hard”: Ibid.
21. “I’m a paleontologist”: Ibid.
22. Philip Currie’s poach-pit count: For more information, see Philip J. Currie, “Fossil Bounty Hunters’ Days May Be Numbered,” New Scientist, June 16, 2012; and Currie, “Dinosaurs of the Gobi: Following in the Footsteps of the Polish–Mongolian Expeditions,” Palaeontologia Polonica 67 (2016).
23. Fender Stratocaster: You’d be surprised how many news-writing pun lovers refer to Mark Norell as a “rock star.” Norell is also a prolific art collector. “I like the research aspect,” he once told Aeon. See Laurie Gwen Shapiro, “A Tyrannosaur of One’s Own,” Aeon, January 28, 2016; and Annie Correal, “How Mark Norell, a Paleontologist, Spends His Sundays,” New York Times, February 26, 2016.
24. “lightweight”: I interviewed Mark Norell at length, on multiple occasions, for this project. This interview took place on July 10, 2012, over lunch near the AMNH.
25. “how we come up with ideas”: Interview with Norell.
26. “go feral”: Interviews with Kirk Johnson, happily confirmed by Norell. I interviewed Johnson numerous times between 2012 and 2018, by phone or in person in Denver and Washington, DC. For information on Mongolian fossils’s place within the AMNH see John Noble Wilford, “Presenting a Fight to the Death from 80,000,000 B.C.,” New York Times, May 19, 2000.
27. “touring with the Stones”: Interviews with Norell. The AMNH scientists who work in the Gobi no longer allow journalists on their expeditions. A few reporters managed to get in before the banishment, including Donovan Webster, who wrote about the experience in an article in the July 1996 issue of National Geographic. See “Dinosaurs of the Gobi” for references to standing naked in a sandstorm, drinking the blood of horses, Lawrence of Arabia, and stunning illustrations and photos, including one of Norell teasing a fossil from the earth with “surgical tenderness.”
28. Gobi: For centuries, the Chinese had one word for the vast desert (shamo) and Mongolians another (gobi). The Mongolian term prevailed, and as of 2015 the term “Gobi desert” was “not recognised in China’s geographical lexicon,” Troy Sternberg wrote in “Desert Boundaries: The Once and Future Gobi,” a paper for the March 2015 issue of The Geographical Journal.
29. “clobbering”: Interviews with Norell.
30. straddles the Mongolia–China border: The Gobi is primarily associated with Mongolia. Unless otherwise noted, I refer to the Mongolian Gobi when I reference the desert.
31. “I’m not one of the people”: Interviews with Norell.
32. “almost a Silk Road”: Shapiro, “A Tyrannosaur of One’s Own.”
33. Skull of Saichania: This was being offered as “FANTASTICAL ANKYLOSAURID SKULL,” and was expected to sell for up to $80,000. Not long after the auction, Heritage scrubbed its website of the major dinosaurs listed in this auction, and the pages weren’t available via internet archives. Other items remained in Heritage’s online archive, showing the final sales prices. They included “Fine Bird-Dinosaur Skeleton,” Jinfengopteryx elegans, from “Central Asia,” which sold for $32,000, and “A Superb Tyrannosaurus Tooth with an Erupting Crown,” from the Nemegt Formation of the Mongolian Gobi, which sold for $37,500. The items can also still be found in the hard-copy version of the auction catalog.
34. Central Asia: The borders of Central Asia have long been under debate. The region is often defined as the five “stans”—Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, and sometimes Afghanistan. While “East Asia” is a more apt descriptor, I reference Central Asia here partly because the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) defines the term as “Afghanistan, northeastern Iran, Pakistan, northern India, western China, Mongolia, and the former Soviet Central Asian republics.”
35. “no legal mechanism”: The letter from Mark Norell to Heritage Auctions, dated May 17, 2012, can be found in United States of America v. One Tyrannosaurus Bataar Skeleton a/k/a LOT 49315 LISTED ON PAGE 92 OF THE HERITAGE AUCTIONS MAY 20, 2012 NATURAL HISTORY AUCTION CATALOG, 12-CIV-4760, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York.
36. “The auctioning of such specimens”: Ibid.
37. “might not otherwise be realized”: Dia Art Foundation, https://diaart.org.
38. “boulder” of gold: Catalog for Heritage Signature Auction No. 6068.
39. David Herskowitz: “Museums, especially in this country, really don’t have the money to spend on specimens, so they rely on philanthropists,” he said in one interview. “So we are hoping that a philanthropist or a museum trustee would be able to put up the money and purchase this, and then donate it to a museum.” See Wynne Parry, “For Sale: Tyrannosaurus skeleton at NYC Auction,” Live Science, May 17, 2012. Watch “Preview of Auction of Dinosaur Remains Found in Gobi Desert,” a three-minute video of the skeleton and Herskowitz talking about it, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy6czapJKd8.
40. “crown jewel”: From video shot by Painter Law Firm staff member Andrew King.
41. “Mongolian fossils are spectacular”: The online petition was started on change.org by Neil Kelley, a California graduate student in paleontology.
42. “no impropriety exists”: The letter from Heritage attorney Carl R. Soller, of Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman, P.C., can be found in 12-CIV-4760.
43. “We need a lawyer”: Interviews with Bolor Minjin and Oyuna Tsedevdamba.
44. Forty-eight seconds: Auction video.
CHAPTER 2: LAND O’ LAKES
1. Flat Florida: See Thomas Scott et al., “Geologic Map of the State of Florida.” Also see the Florida Geological Survey Open File Report No. 80, 2001, in cooperation with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. Another good source is The Geology of Florida, edited by Anthony F. Randazzo and Douglas S. Jones (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997).
2. Liquid Florida: Assessing the water resources of the United States is no joke. The U.S. Department of the Interior published a valuable bibliography of studies, Bibliography of U.S. Geological Survey Studies of Lakes and Reservoirs—the First 100 Years, by Thomas C. Winter, in 1982.
3. Dorothea “Doris” Trappe: Interviews with Doris Prokopi in Land O’ Lakes.
4. Cologne: On May 30, 1942, bombers “passed over the city at the rate of one every six seconds, dropping a total of 1,500 metric tons of high-explosive and incendiary bombs....When at length the all-clear sounded, about 600 acres (240 hectares) of Cologne had been flattened, including 90 percent of the central city, 5,000 fires had been ignited (the glare of the flames was visible to returning RAF aircrews up to 150 miles away), 3,300 homes had been destroyed and 45,000 people left homeless. The casualty toll reached 474 killed and 5,000 wounded...” If not for the “air-raid shelters and the deep cellars under so many homes in old Cologne,” the death toll would have been much higher. For a mere glimpse of what Cologne experienced during World War II, see Max G. Tretheway, “1,046 Bombers but Cologne Lived,” New York Times, June 2, 1992.
5. Freikörperkultur: Also known as FKK and Free Body Culture. One of many, many resources on this is “Nudity in Germany: Here’s the Naked Truth,” by Marcel Krueger, CNN.com, October 10, 2017.
6. Lake Como: “Welcome to Lake Como” flyer (“We are a family nudist club. Please bare with us...”), received in person but with no disrobing, Lutz, Florida, April 2015. Activities include tennis and volleyball tournaments, hiking, a 5K run, concerts, pub crawls, and a classic car show. See lakecomonaturally.com.
7. “extra thirty minutes for small talk”: See Diana Everett, “Tender Loving Care,” Tampa Tribune, March 30, 1981.
8. “I’m going to Canada”: Interviews with Doris and Bill Prokopi, in Land O’ Lakes.
9. “like gypsies”: Interviews with Doris and Bill Prokopi.
10. Once an orange grove: In The Orchid Thief, Susan Orlean described Florida as “infinitely transformable,” writing, “It is as suggestible as someone under hypnosis. Its essential character can be repeatedly reimagined. The Everglades soil that is contaminated by intractable Brazilian pepper trees is now being scraped up in order to kill the invader trees, and then the sterilized soil is going to be piled high, covered with plastic snow, and turned into a ski resort....The flat plainness of Florida doesn’t impose itself on you, so you can impose upon it your own kind of dream.” See Bibliography.
11. “That’s for the husband”: Interviews with Doris Prokopi.
12. Eric wasn’t averse: When asked what his son was like as a child Bill tended to repeat two stories, both about mischief. In one, Eric slipped beneath the church pews and tickled ladies’ feet. In the other, he sat on the roof at Halloween, dangling a fake spider in front of arriving trick-or-treaters.
13. Del Borgo’s “Canterbury Overture”: Land O’ Lakes High School Spring Concert program, Tuesday, May 23, 1989. Papers of Doris Prokopi.
14. “I don’t like it”: Interviews with the Prokopi family.
15. “You choose”: Interviews with Doris Prokopi.
16. “Prokopi, the ‘unknown swimmer’”: The Laker community newspaper, October 16, 1991.
17. “Swimming is in his blood”: Ibid.
18. “trouble with relays”: Mick Elliott, “Gators literally a 1-man team in swimming,” Tampa Tribune, November 9, 1989.
19. “Defiance of authority”: District School Board of Pasco County Notice of Suspension, May 9, 1989. Papers of Doris Prokopi.
20. “Hardly a roadcut or realignment”: S. J. Olsen, Fossil Mammals of Florida, Florida Geological Survey, Special Publication No. 6, 1959.
21. Sharks and three thousand teeth: One source is Florida’s Fossils, by Robin C. Brown (Sarasota, FL: Pineapple Press, February 2008).
22. “With patience”: Margaret C. Thomas, Let’s Find Fossils on the Beach (Sunshine Press, 1962). Another book, Let’s Go Fossil Shark Tooth Hunting, by B. Clay Cartmell (Natural Science Research, June 1978), reminded hunters that shark teeth could be found in a number of states, even the landlocked ones, but that in Venice someone could “walk less than 100 feet from his parked car and begin picking up fossil teeth.”
23. “The important thing to remember”: Olsen, Fossil Mammals of Florida.
CHAPTER 3: GARCIA, KING OF THE ICE AGE
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p; 1. “You’ll never be a brain surgeon”: Frank Garcia told me this in interviews but he’s also written about it, variously in autobiographies and on Facebook. He has self-published four books, at last count. The first, in 1974, was An Illustrated Guide to Fossil Vertebrates, which he illustrated himself. The others are memoirs. This chapter and part of the next were informed by interviews with Garcia in the Florida towns of Ruskin and Venice, and by two of his self-published memoirs, Sunrise at Bone Valley (1988) and I Don’t Have Time to Be Sane (2007).
2. “That’s Amore”: On YouTube you can see or hear Garcia’s velvety stylings of various songs, including “Besame Mucho” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvvnbn4uv0U). In one 2009 video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsQqqm3YdkY), he takes the stage at the Tampa mayor’s Hispanic Heritage Celebration, in sunglasses, and performs his original tune “Corazon de Tampa.” At one point during the reporting of this book, I fleetingly imagined Garcia in concert with other singers mentioned here, such as the auctioneer and jazz singer Izzy Chait and the herder family I met one night in the Gobi.
3. “most interesting man”: Jeff Klinkenberg, “Give a Dog a Bone,” Tampa Bay Times, June 19, 2011.
4. Dinosaurs had never been found in Florida: Olsen, Fossil Mammals of Florida.
5. “We had camels in Florida?”: Klinkenberg, “Give a Dog a Bone”; and interviews with Garcia interviews.
6. Joe Larned: My favorite Larned story: In a 1977 newspaper essay he predicted a string of brutally cold Florida winters that would “bottom out” in January 1985. When he turned out to be right the Lakeland Ledger ran a front-page story on Larned, headlined, “He Told You So.” One guy told Larned he’d lost his groves two years running and had to quit citrus. “Why didn’t you tell me two years ago?” the guy asked Larned. Larned replied, “Jesus, why didn’t you read the newspaper eight years ago?” See Mike Capuzzo, “He Feels the Future in His Bones,” Miami Herald, February 24, 1985. For more on Larned, see Martha F. Sawyer, “A Touch of the Prehistoric Lives in Polk,” Lakeland Ledger, March 24, 1982; and Barbara Donaghey, “Fossil Museum a Fine Place to Bone up on the Past,” Lakeland Ledger, May 14, 1979. These papers are publicly archived via Google Newspapers.
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