Paleontologist says digging for dinosaurs is very hard work

DALLAS — Dinosaurs walked the earth long before humans, but our fascination with the likes of tyrannosaurus isn't dying out anytime soon. Children and adults alike continue to consume everything and anything dinosaurs, like museum exhibits, action films, and books. When you ask a child what they want to be when they grow up, paleontologist is a common answer.

Dr. Lindsey Zanno is a paleontologist with expertise in cretaceous therapods like the t-rex or the velociraptor. Zanno focuses on how rising sea levels and global warming millions of years ago affected the evolution of these creatures.

"They survived many mass extinction events in Earth's history, and they lived through many intervals of extreme climate change on Earth," Zanno said. "Their survival and their evolution has a lot to teach us about how animals on our planet can adapt to a changing climate."

Zanno is head of paleontology at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and an associate professor at North Carolina State University, where she teaches the next generation of researchers. When Zanno is not in the classroom or at the museum, she walks the grounds of the American West or Asia, looking for the next discovery.

"A lot of our time is spent in the field, outdoors exploring, and that's certainly my favorite part of being a paleontologist," Zanno said. "When we target field areas, we usually do that in the summer months in the northern hemisphere because there's no snow on the ground, and you can be outside for long periods of time."

Being outside for extended periods is essential because there is no high-tech or efficient way to find fossils or dinosaurs, just a paleontologist's trained eye. Zanno said Paleontology work is dirty, often in remote areas with no running water or facilities and usually in locations with hot temperatures. Often, they do not find anything.

"You never know what you're going to find out," said Zanno. "You're going to walk around a hill and make some incredible discovery, or you might walk around for three weeks and find absolutely nothing."

With patience, Zanno has successfully searched the rocks of central Utah for over a decade. The fona, the smallest plant-eating dinosaur that lived underground, is one of several new species found in Utah's Mussentuchit Flat area.

"That's one of the most outstanding things about fieldwork in any science; there's this discovery element, which is what drives us to do what we do," said Zanno. "But that discovery comes with the unknown, it sounds romantic, but it's very, very hard."

Dr. Lindsay Zanno's "Rise of the T-Rex" is at the Perot Museum on Wednesday, October 2, at 6:30 p.m. as part of the National Geographic Live Speaker Series .