We had interview with Canadian paleontologist and museum curator, Dr Phillip Currie, co-founder of Alberta's Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology.
Since he first came to Mongolia in 1989, he had and still working on researches and expeditions on dinosaur fossils, and is world-famous in the field of paleontology. We talked with him about the science of paleontology, the fossils in Mongolia, and what we can focus on and develop.
How come did you collaborate with Mongolians?
In 1960, there weren’t very good relations between the West and the East. So, I thought I probably wouldn’t be able to work here ever. And I never thought about it anymore until we started working in Canada. I work in a province called Alberta, which is Western Canada. And Alberta has many of the same dinosaurs that you have here in Mongolia. I knew that at some point I had to understand better the relationship of the ancient dinosaurs between the two countries. And initially, I started to work in China, in the Gobi Desert. In 1989, I came here for the first time and started to study the dinosaurs of Mongolia as well. And then in 1996, we had our first expedition which was mostly to the Flaming Cliffs and in that area.
And then by 1998, I had come again. And then in 1999, we had an expedition here that was fairly substantial. So we've always come back since then and do a lot of research with our colleagues here in Mongolia. And the things that I study are dinosaurs from Canada, but also dinosaurs from Mongolia, and how they're related to each other. And what I was primarily interested in is first of all why they're the same, but also why they're different. Because in many ways, the dinosaurs of the two regions are very close to each other, but they're not the same. So, for example, Tarbosaurus is very much like Tyrannosaurus rex, which we find in Alberta. But we have another dinosaur, a duckbill dinosaur called Sorolopus. And we have Sorolopus in Alberta, and here in Mongolia. And then many other dinosaurs, even though they're not exactly the same, they're very closely related to each other. And just look at them, they would seem the same to you because they are very closely related to each other.
I wanted to understand why there were such strong similarities, but I also wanted to understand why similarities weren't exactly the same. And now I think I understand much better than before that it's because the environments they lived in were quite different. And like modern animals, like lions and tigers, and they're very closely related to each other, but they don't live in exactly the same environments, and that makes them different. So, studying the dinosaurs is one part of it, but studying the environments they lived in was another part of it. And I have a much better understanding now of what's going on. I've also been very interested in the history of paleontology in this part of the world because it's very similar to what we have in Canada in that it was mostly people from outside who came in and made us realize just how important our dinosaurs were. And it's the same in Mongolia that the first people who worked here on dinosaurs were the Americans and the Russians and the Poles and so on. But what that allowed is for programs to develop in the country of Mongolia. And so now you have institutions like this one and displays like in the Natural History Museum and the Hunnu Mall and so on that are world-class displays and world-class research programs as well that are being done here. But it takes time to develop these in other parts of the world. It's the same thing.
Were you very curious about Paleontology since your childhood?
Actually, when I was six years old, I loved dinosaurs. I always wanted to know more about dinosaurs. But when I was 11-12 years old, I read the book by Roy Chapman Andrews about Mongolia, and then I knew all that I wanted to do. There was no question anymore I wanted to be a dinosaur paleontologist.
I was told you are the Legend of the Paleontologist and I searched by your name on the internet and there is tons of data and information about you. You are very famous in this field.
Well, there are not many dinosaur paleontologists in the world. And when I started it was less than ten. So now, because of Jurassic Park, paleontology has become more famous and there are more positions. So now I would say there are about 150 positions in the world where people can get paid to research dinosaurs. But in some ways, I was a big fish in a small pond. We would say in English that there really weren't too many other people. And so I became famous because there weren't many people, but also because I like working on dinosaurs so much. And I've been very lucky to work both in Canada, in Alberta, to work here in Mongolia, and to work in other parts of the world as well. And so I became well known because I do so much work on dinosaurs in different parts of the world. But my strong points are Alberta and Mongolia.
I heard the role of Jurassic World film is sourced from you. Is that true?
I don't think entirely it is in part because when the book, which was by Michael Crichton. I was definitely mentioned in the book, and I think that I was part of the character that developed Alan Grant and that was with Crichton in writing the book. But when Steven Spielberg did the movie, of course, it developed after the book. But I think he designed his character more after Jack Horner. And Jack has worked here in Mongolia as well.
I used to think dinosaurs were just creatures before humans and didn’t understand the point of searching for their fossils. But now I realize it is a science educational way for humans. What do you think about that?
Dinosaurs are very important for a lot of reasons. One is that for education, they're very valuable because kids love dinosaurs and they're fascinated with dinosaurs. And if you make a display, of course, it becomes very popular. If you teach subjects about science and you use dinosaurs as an example, kids very often will learn faster just because they like working with dinosaurs. Dinosaurs have affected us in many ways through our education and our public programs. But in terms of science, it's very valuable because it gives us a different perspective on history and how things develop. So, for example, with extinction, we know that dinosaurs dominated the world for more than 150 million years. And because they were so powerful mammals didn't develop. So mammals included things like little tiny rat-like mammals and so on. But they lived the whole-time dinosaurs did. And yet, until dinosaurs disappeared, mammals could not become the most important animals that they are today.
The other thing is that mammals were doing a different thing than dinosaurs anyway until dinosaurs disappeared. But then they changed and could adapt into all the roles that we have now. But as long as dinosaurs were around, they couldn't do that. But dinosaurs also gave rise to birds. And so, technically, to a scientist, to a paleontologist, or a biologist, a bird is a dinosaur. So in a sense, birds are still around, so therefore, dinosaurs are still around. And they're officially classified as dinosaurs. So that's important too.
But another thing that's always fascinated people about dinosaurs is that 65 million years ago, all of the big dinosaurs disappeared. And it was very sudden. And so, after dominating the world for 150 million years, they disappeared. Well, it turned out that in studying dinosaurs, we now realize that several things were going on. There's no one cause, there's many things. But the causes were in part because of environmental changes, dinosaurs became less diverse. So the number of species of dinosaurs decreased. And that meant that dinosaurs were less adaptable if there were major changes. And 65 million years ago, an asteroid from outer space hit the Earth, and that caused massive changes in the climate. And so, in a very short time, dinosaurs became extinct, because, the asteroid, when it hit the Earth, it threw so much dust into the air that it shut the sun out for a period of several months. And dinosaurs being big animals, they couldn't adapt fast enough. They couldn't change because their lifespan is longer than several months. And so you can't change very fast. Small animals can change fast because they have babies every year, things like mice and birds and so on. The big animals can't change that fast. The dinosaurs that were left were the largest ones, things like Tyrannosaurus Rex and Edmontosaurus and Ankylosaurus. And these are huge dinosaurs. But they're also very specialized. And the larger you are and the more specialized you are, the less chance you have of changing if something goes wrong. So what dinosaurs are telling us is that a reduction in diversity, biodiversity, is not a good thing because when something goes wrong, you can't adapt fast enough. You need the big animals, maybe, but you also need the small animals even more so that you can change fast enough.
And dinosaurs, I think, are very much emphasizing that some of the things that are happening in the world these days are very bad things because in a way, it threatens our long term survival as well. Looking at dinosaurs, I think it's telling us something that we should be aware of, that we have to be very careful about what we're doing in terms of reduction of biodiversity economically.
Economically dinosaurs are also very good. In Alberta, we opened a dinosaur museum in a small town of 7000 people in 1985. And that museum has paid for itself every couple of years because of the amount of tourist dollars that it generates. And it's very much true in Mongolia as well. You get more and more tourists every year who come here to do ecotourism. But part of that ecotourism is also dino tourism. They're coming here because Mongolia is so famous for dinosaurs. So it generates millions and millions of dollars for the country as well and also makes people aware of Mongolia in so many ways. It's not just Genghis Khan anymore. It's also dinosaurs and many other things, of course, too. But tourism is a very important thing. So, in our case, when our museum opened, then the Government of Alberta and Canada realized that tourism generated a lot of money. And that's because half a million tourists every year come to this town of 7000 people to look at the dinosaurs. And half a million tourists generate a tremendous amount of tourist dollars that economically helps drive that whole community.
What does Mongolian Gobi have more special than other countries?
I think the number of dinosaurs you find here is spectacular. I mean, it's crazy. There are other places in the world with a lot of dinosaurs, but there's not that many. Western North America, Argentina and Mongolia and the Gobi of China as well. So, they're the best places. And because many of these places are from the same period, they're right from the very end of the age of dinosaurs, we can make comparisons on a worldwide scale. And it's very interesting because, of course, like the modern world at one time, we don't just have one environment. We have animals that are adapted for specific environments. In North America, we have animals that are specifically adapted for living in Australia or animals that are adapted for living in the Middle East. We basically have alive today more than 10,000 species of birds or dinosaurs. We have more than 4000 species of mammals today. We have more than 6000 species of reptiles and amphibians. So all at one time, we have all these things. Well, for the entire history of dinosaurs, which is 150 million years, we only have 1000 species that we know of. So, it's a field that is still developing and a field that is continuing to produce more and more new species of dinosaurs that we never knew of before. And there are thousands of species yet to be discovered.
But the other interesting thing about dinosaurs is just that the science of studying dinosaurs has changed tremendously over the years too. It's become a lot more specific. So even when I work on a big dinosaur like Tarbosaurus, for example, I'm not just looking at the animal overall, I'm also looking at the microscopic details of that animal. So, for example, I'll use a microscope, and I'll use scanning electron microscopes, and I'll even use synchrotrons to judge small details in the bones and so on that tell us something about the biology of the animal that helps us understand why dinosaurs became so successful as they did. And the science of studying dinosaurs and science in general has become much more precise. And things that 10-20 years ago, we would have thought were impossible to know, we now understand, because science has become so specific. So a good example is that the other day we were working in the Gobi Desert and we found footprints of dinosaurs. Well, the footprints, if they're well enough preserved, the animal steps in the mud and leaves an impression of its foot. But if it's a good impression, then you can see the skin. And if you can see the skin, then you can learn something about the external covering of the animal. So right now, we know more about skin than we've ever known before. Because of studies that are done partly here and partly in other parts of the world, too.
We can look at the bones and we can take cut bones and look at thin sections of those bones, and we can figure out how old the dinosaur is or was when it died. And so we know now that most dinosaurs didn't live all that long. They only lived probably about 30 years. And so their lifespan is very similar to modern animals, more or less what we would expect. But people have always thought in the past that because dinosaurs were so big they must have lived for hundreds of years. Well, that's just not true. Dinosaurs were probably warm-blooded animals, and not all dinosaurs, but many of the meat-eating dinosaurs in particular. And they were animals that had relatively short lives, but they grew very fast, and they were very active as well. We've also found, in Mongolia and other parts of the world, stomach contents. So we can look at a dinosaur and see what it ate, and sometimes we can look at mammals from that time period and see that they ate baby dinosaurs, too. So it's very interactive, their world and our world.
We have feathers on many dinosaurs now, so feathers don't preserve very easily. But when they do preserve, they tell us that almost all of the meat-eating dinosaurs were animals with feathers on their bodies, like birds. The feathers weren't there for flying. The feathers were there, emulsive to insulate the body and keep the body warm, the bone structure as well. Doing those thin sections in bones allows us to figure out how fast they were growing. It also tells us how old they were when they died and gives us many other aspects of their life in terms of what they were eating and what they were feeding on. We can also look at the biochemistry in the bones, and we can tell what kinds of plants they were even eating because in modern animals, it's the same thing. We can look at modern animals and look at their bones and compare it with the food or their diets, but we can see in the bones of dinosaurs and figure out many of the dinosaurs, what the food was that the dinosaurs were eating. There's the easy thing. You can tell if it's eating meat or whether it's eating plants, but you can also tell what kinds of plants it was eating, and so on, too. So many, many types of studies are being done on dinosaurs now, and they basically open up the science for other types of paleontology as well as other types of science. So they're kind of like icebreakers. They go in, and because people are interested in dinosaurs, they want to do the work on dinosaurs first. But once the work has been done and proven with dinosaurs, then other people who are working on other types of fossil animals, for example, can then go and use the same kinds of studies as well and learn about their animals, in many cases, animals that are still alive today. So it's a wonderful time right now to be working on paleontology, especially dinosaurs.
You mentioned that a lot of studies you have been through. So, on that point, please share your thoughts about the Mongolian paleontologists’ skills and potential.
Yeah, we have also known paleontologists here ever since we started working here, who are very famous people. Rinchen Barsbold is the most famous dinosaur person from Mongolia. He started in the 1970s, maybe earlier, and he has done many studies and has been the mentor of many Mongolians who also work on dinosaurs. That's one reason this institution is here, and he has helped make Mongolia famous. But now you also have a lot of younger people who are, in some cases, studying in Mongolia and getting their degrees, and they're coming to work for this institution or for other institutions in Mongolia. And so the research is actually being done here, but many of them are also going to other parts of the world to study and bring home techniques that have developed in other parts of the world, too, so that they can be done here. So the number of people who are working in Mongolia right now is still fairly small on dinosaurs, but the number is increasing all the time.
And of course, you're also getting new museums opening up and new places where these people can work. So at the Flamming cliffs, there's a move to make a natural park or a natural area. They have a small museum display down there, but they also need a paleontologist to do the work in terms of keeping track of the new resources that are discovered, new specimens and so on. And so that's another a museum opened last year in Dalanzadgad, and they have a nice dinosaur display there. And it's talking about the dinosaurs from Nemegt and the Southern Gobi province which are important. You have other famous dinosaur sites in Mongolia that I think eventually will probably also get museums and help create this tourism that I was talking about before for dinosaurs in Mongolia. But that means that there's other opportunities for young Mongolians to also get jobs. More importantly, though, I think they're also doing important research, and there are so many specimens in Mongolia and so many things that can be learned from Mongolian dinosaurs. And then it's best for everybody if, in fact, it's Mongolian scientists who are involved in all the studies. So we're seeing a tremendous increase in the number of people in Mongolia who are studying dinosaurs, who are working with people from outside in some cases, and who are working independently as Mongolians as well. And they're helping to make Mongolia even more famous for dinosaurs.
What was the main goal of the recent expedition in Nemegt formation?
It was a very interesting expedition actually because in 1965 the Polish Mongolian paleontological expedition started, and they found several dinosaurs in the south in Nemegt, and they found two Sauropods which are the long-necked dinosaurs. They're very big dinosaurs, and they found two different places called and one specimen had a body but no head, the other specimen was a head with no body, and the two sites are only 50 kilometers apart, and I was always very suspicious about there being two sauropods, and it doesn't make sense really to have two animals, different animals, living that close and in basically the same environment at the same time, and for them to be two species, but you can't prove that they're the same species unless you have the head for one or the body for the other one. But the one specimen, the animal called Nemegtosaurus was a skull with lower jaws, and I would It was suspicious that they had only collected the skull, but that they had left the skeleton behind.
And so for many years we were looking for the site where they found the Nemegtosaurus. And finally in 2016 we found where it came from. And at the site we found not only packing materials, but plaster and things that they'd used.
We didn't have photographs so we had no way of knowing exactly where it was. But we were lucky because we found Sauropod bones from the skeleton. And we also found all this evidence that they had used these materials to collect the skull. So we finally found the right site. And so this year we came in with a very large and hard-working large crew. And we right kind of equipment, and we had to actually move many tons of rock to get down to where the bones were found. The reason they had not collected it in 1965 is because there's a cliff. The skull was found here outside the cliff, but the bones were in the cliff. And so to collect it, they had to remove as much as 5 meters high of rock to get down to the bones first.
So our goal this year was really just to work on that specimen to take down the rocks and see how much of the bones we could find from the skeleton of the animal so that we could compare it to the other dinosaur, the one that had a skeleton but no skull, and then hopefully prove that they're the same animal. Because ecologically that makes a lot more sense than having two Sauropods living in the same region at the same time and eating the same things.
I'm just wondering what the first step is to search for the dinosaur fossils.
There are all kinds of technology you can use for looking for as well as mineral resources, whether it's oil and gas or gold. But dinosaur fossils are much harder. And the best thing for us is just to walk around and look. And what we're hoping is that we'll get a cliff and then we'll have bones coming out of the cliff and that'll tell us that there's a dinosaur there. And we look for not just one bone, it could be a whole line of vertebrae that'll tell us we should look there and dig it up and then we see what we can find. But it is a lot of work. You have to walk sometimes for days or months or more. It's easier in Mongolia because it is so rich with dinosaurs that helps a lot. But you still have to use a lot of work to actually do the digging and then, of course, the studies after to show what kinds of dinosaurs you've discovered and so on. So it's a very long process. Generally, we will have to have a team of people who know what they're doing, and they'll have to walk for many days and look for the right kind of place. But even then, as you say, you can't see through the rock, so you have to dig it up. So then you spend an even longer period digging the specimen up. Once you've dug it up, then you have to collect it.
Once you've collected it, you have to send it to a laboratory, do the preparation, and then you do the studies after that. So it's a years-long process for every single dinosaur. And it's very good for teams of people to work together because different people have different kinds of expertise and backgrounds and can bring different understandings to a study. But more importantly, it's also very manpower intensive and having people who are willing to do the work. We work long days, and we work very hard. Moving tons of rock is not what people think is what scientists should be doing or do. But yet they do. They have to, because if they don't do it, nobody else is going to do it.
And I think most of the paleontologists are men. Is it rare a woman can be a paleontologist?
No, it's less rare than it used to be. There are certainly my wife, for example, she's a paleobotanist. She works on fossil plants. There are other people around the world, I would say maybe as many as 25%-30% of the people working on dinosaurs now are women. And this number is increasing all the time, so it's certainly equalizing. I think one of the reasons that there tend to be more men than women with dinosaurs is simply because dinosaurs are big, they're heavy and it's very heavy work.
And about the kids, most of the boys like dinosaurs. But girls are more interested in barbie or dolls.
Very often there's a difference in interests. Maybe horses. In North America, I'd say a lot more girls are interested in horses than boys, whereas more boys are interested in dinosaurs than girls. But it still kind of equals out. And for me, I train graduate students and I would say that the number of girls is almost the same as the number of boys now. So in terms of people developing their interests, women are becoming much stronger in terms of studying dinosaurs, too.
What is your next biggest plan? Will you come Mongolia again?
Yeah. I like coming back to Mongolia. It's a beautiful place and I feel very comfortable here. I think the studies I do here are very relevant to the studies I do in Alberta, and consequently, I always learn something when I come back here. So, I intend to come back to Mongolia at least once every year to study more.
You have a lot of experience working as a curator in the National History Museum. So please share your thoughts about the Mongolian National History Museum.
Yeah, I think that to me, it's a little bit of a mystery, why you don't have a bigger Natural history museum here devoted to dinosaurs. Because Mongolia is one of the most famous places in all of the world for dinosaurs. Mongolia is the most famous place in the world for Genghis Khan, of course, so it makes sense to have a Genghis Khan museum. But it also makes sense that this place will eventually develop dinosaur museum, that's as world class as the resources are here, and I think that's important. You also need them for the storage and care of the fossils that you collect. Mongolia is one of the few places in the world that protects the dinosaur fossils and does its best to stop poachers from working or for people from just coming here and collecting dinosaurs and taking them away. They have to stay in Mongolia, but that means you're responsible for them, too. And so you need good facilities for storing the collections. This institution is the main one that collects and stores dinosaur specimens in the country of Mongolia. And yet they're very squeezed for space. They desperately need more space for storing collections and more space for displaying specimens so that people can see them.
What is the happiest and saddest moment working as a paleontologists?
I think the happiest moment is when you see a dinosaur fossil for the first time because you realize that you're the first person who's ever seen it in 65 million years or more. And it's always exciting. And so in Mongolia, it's almost every single day you get excited by what you find. It's really amazing place. The saddest thing is when you see specimens that are destroyed by erosion sometimes because you just didn't find them fast enough. But of course, Mongolia also had this terrible problem with poachers, especially 10-15 years ago. And in many cases, the poachers destroyed specimens, partly because it was illegal which they knew, and they were trying to just take the very expensive parts of specimens. And so in many cases, they destroyed whole skeletons to get skull or the hands with the claws or the feet. And it's the most discouraging thing in the world for a paleontologist to see a specimen that's been destroyed just to take a few teeth and things like that to make money. It's the same as when people shoot elephants to get just the tusks and leave the rest of the specimen to rot. It's the same kind of discouraging thing. So for paleontologists, that's probably one of the most discouraging things that you can ever see.
My last question. What is your dream?
Well, I've been very lucky. I dreamed when I was a kid that I would be a paleontologist. I became a paleontologist, working in Alberta. I got to build a museum in Alberta. I got to participate in the building of many other museums around the world. I got to travel to Mongolia, one of my dreams. And yet I never really expected it would happen because, as I said when I was a kid, politically it was impossible. So for me, I've accomplished so many of my dreams, and yet things continue to improve and get better as time goes on. For me, it's important to have new generations of students who study dinosaurs and take it further than you could have done. And so for me, seeing what my students are doing and the students of other people in terms of trying to understand dinosaur biology is very exciting for me.
Thank you for your time with us.
We had interview with Canadian paleontologist and museum curator, Dr Phillip Currie, co-founder of Alberta's Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology.
Since he first came to Mongolia in 1989, he had and still working on researches and expeditions on dinosaur fossils, and is world-famous in the field of paleontology. We talked with him about the science of paleontology, the fossils in Mongolia, and what we can focus on and develop.
How come did you collaborate with Mongolians?
In 1960, there weren’t very good relations between the West and the East. So, I thought I probably wouldn’t be able to work here ever. And I never thought about it anymore until we started working in Canada. I work in a province called Alberta, which is Western Canada. And Alberta has many of the same dinosaurs that you have here in Mongolia. I knew that at some point I had to understand better the relationship of the ancient dinosaurs between the two countries. And initially, I started to work in China, in the Gobi Desert. In 1989, I came here for the first time and started to study the dinosaurs of Mongolia as well. And then in 1996, we had our first expedition which was mostly to the Flaming Cliffs and in that area.
And then by 1998, I had come again. And then in 1999, we had an expedition here that was fairly substantial. So we've always come back since then and do a lot of research with our colleagues here in Mongolia. And the things that I study are dinosaurs from Canada, but also dinosaurs from Mongolia, and how they're related to each other. And what I was primarily interested in is first of all why they're the same, but also why they're different. Because in many ways, the dinosaurs of the two regions are very close to each other, but they're not the same. So, for example, Tarbosaurus is very much like Tyrannosaurus rex, which we find in Alberta. But we have another dinosaur, a duckbill dinosaur called Sorolopus. And we have Sorolopus in Alberta, and here in Mongolia. And then many other dinosaurs, even though they're not exactly the same, they're very closely related to each other. And just look at them, they would seem the same to you because they are very closely related to each other.
I wanted to understand why there were such strong similarities, but I also wanted to understand why similarities weren't exactly the same. And now I think I understand much better than before that it's because the environments they lived in were quite different. And like modern animals, like lions and tigers, and they're very closely related to each other, but they don't live in exactly the same environments, and that makes them different. So, studying the dinosaurs is one part of it, but studying the environments they lived in was another part of it. And I have a much better understanding now of what's going on. I've also been very interested in the history of paleontology in this part of the world because it's very similar to what we have in Canada in that it was mostly people from outside who came in and made us realize just how important our dinosaurs were. And it's the same in Mongolia that the first people who worked here on dinosaurs were the Americans and the Russians and the Poles and so on. But what that allowed is for programs to develop in the country of Mongolia. And so now you have institutions like this one and displays like in the Natural History Museum and the Hunnu Mall and so on that are world-class displays and world-class research programs as well that are being done here. But it takes time to develop these in other parts of the world. It's the same thing.
Were you very curious about Paleontology since your childhood?
Actually, when I was six years old, I loved dinosaurs. I always wanted to know more about dinosaurs. But when I was 11-12 years old, I read the book by Roy Chapman Andrews about Mongolia, and then I knew all that I wanted to do. There was no question anymore I wanted to be a dinosaur paleontologist.
I was told you are the Legend of the Paleontologist and I searched by your name on the internet and there is tons of data and information about you. You are very famous in this field.
Well, there are not many dinosaur paleontologists in the world. And when I started it was less than ten. So now, because of Jurassic Park, paleontology has become more famous and there are more positions. So now I would say there are about 150 positions in the world where people can get paid to research dinosaurs. But in some ways, I was a big fish in a small pond. We would say in English that there really weren't too many other people. And so I became famous because there weren't many people, but also because I like working on dinosaurs so much. And I've been very lucky to work both in Canada, in Alberta, to work here in Mongolia, and to work in other parts of the world as well. And so I became well known because I do so much work on dinosaurs in different parts of the world. But my strong points are Alberta and Mongolia.
I heard the role of Jurassic World film is sourced from you. Is that true?
I don't think entirely it is in part because when the book, which was by Michael Crichton. I was definitely mentioned in the book, and I think that I was part of the character that developed Alan Grant and that was with Crichton in writing the book. But when Steven Spielberg did the movie, of course, it developed after the book. But I think he designed his character more after Jack Horner. And Jack has worked here in Mongolia as well.
I used to think dinosaurs were just creatures before humans and didn’t understand the point of searching for their fossils. But now I realize it is a science educational way for humans. What do you think about that?
Dinosaurs are very important for a lot of reasons. One is that for education, they're very valuable because kids love dinosaurs and they're fascinated with dinosaurs. And if you make a display, of course, it becomes very popular. If you teach subjects about science and you use dinosaurs as an example, kids very often will learn faster just because they like working with dinosaurs. Dinosaurs have affected us in many ways through our education and our public programs. But in terms of science, it's very valuable because it gives us a different perspective on history and how things develop. So, for example, with extinction, we know that dinosaurs dominated the world for more than 150 million years. And because they were so powerful mammals didn't develop. So mammals included things like little tiny rat-like mammals and so on. But they lived the whole-time dinosaurs did. And yet, until dinosaurs disappeared, mammals could not become the most important animals that they are today.
The other thing is that mammals were doing a different thing than dinosaurs anyway until dinosaurs disappeared. But then they changed and could adapt into all the roles that we have now. But as long as dinosaurs were around, they couldn't do that. But dinosaurs also gave rise to birds. And so, technically, to a scientist, to a paleontologist, or a biologist, a bird is a dinosaur. So in a sense, birds are still around, so therefore, dinosaurs are still around. And they're officially classified as dinosaurs. So that's important too.
But another thing that's always fascinated people about dinosaurs is that 65 million years ago, all of the big dinosaurs disappeared. And it was very sudden. And so, after dominating the world for 150 million years, they disappeared. Well, it turned out that in studying dinosaurs, we now realize that several things were going on. There's no one cause, there's many things. But the causes were in part because of environmental changes, dinosaurs became less diverse. So the number of species of dinosaurs decreased. And that meant that dinosaurs were less adaptable if there were major changes. And 65 million years ago, an asteroid from outer space hit the Earth, and that caused massive changes in the climate. And so, in a very short time, dinosaurs became extinct, because, the asteroid, when it hit the Earth, it threw so much dust into the air that it shut the sun out for a period of several months. And dinosaurs being big animals, they couldn't adapt fast enough. They couldn't change because their lifespan is longer than several months. And so you can't change very fast. Small animals can change fast because they have babies every year, things like mice and birds and so on. The big animals can't change that fast. The dinosaurs that were left were the largest ones, things like Tyrannosaurus Rex and Edmontosaurus and Ankylosaurus. And these are huge dinosaurs. But they're also very specialized. And the larger you are and the more specialized you are, the less chance you have of changing if something goes wrong. So what dinosaurs are telling us is that a reduction in diversity, biodiversity, is not a good thing because when something goes wrong, you can't adapt fast enough. You need the big animals, maybe, but you also need the small animals even more so that you can change fast enough.
And dinosaurs, I think, are very much emphasizing that some of the things that are happening in the world these days are very bad things because in a way, it threatens our long term survival as well. Looking at dinosaurs, I think it's telling us something that we should be aware of, that we have to be very careful about what we're doing in terms of reduction of biodiversity economically.
Economically dinosaurs are also very good. In Alberta, we opened a dinosaur museum in a small town of 7000 people in 1985. And that museum has paid for itself every couple of years because of the amount of tourist dollars that it generates. And it's very much true in Mongolia as well. You get more and more tourists every year who come here to do ecotourism. But part of that ecotourism is also dino tourism. They're coming here because Mongolia is so famous for dinosaurs. So it generates millions and millions of dollars for the country as well and also makes people aware of Mongolia in so many ways. It's not just Genghis Khan anymore. It's also dinosaurs and many other things, of course, too. But tourism is a very important thing. So, in our case, when our museum opened, then the Government of Alberta and Canada realized that tourism generated a lot of money. And that's because half a million tourists every year come to this town of 7000 people to look at the dinosaurs. And half a million tourists generate a tremendous amount of tourist dollars that economically helps drive that whole community.
What does Mongolian Gobi have more special than other countries?
I think the number of dinosaurs you find here is spectacular. I mean, it's crazy. There are other places in the world with a lot of dinosaurs, but there's not that many. Western North America, Argentina and Mongolia and the Gobi of China as well. So, they're the best places. And because many of these places are from the same period, they're right from the very end of the age of dinosaurs, we can make comparisons on a worldwide scale. And it's very interesting because, of course, like the modern world at one time, we don't just have one environment. We have animals that are adapted for specific environments. In North America, we have animals that are specifically adapted for living in Australia or animals that are adapted for living in the Middle East. We basically have alive today more than 10,000 species of birds or dinosaurs. We have more than 4000 species of mammals today. We have more than 6000 species of reptiles and amphibians. So all at one time, we have all these things. Well, for the entire history of dinosaurs, which is 150 million years, we only have 1000 species that we know of. So, it's a field that is still developing and a field that is continuing to produce more and more new species of dinosaurs that we never knew of before. And there are thousands of species yet to be discovered.
But the other interesting thing about dinosaurs is just that the science of studying dinosaurs has changed tremendously over the years too. It's become a lot more specific. So even when I work on a big dinosaur like Tarbosaurus, for example, I'm not just looking at the animal overall, I'm also looking at the microscopic details of that animal. So, for example, I'll use a microscope, and I'll use scanning electron microscopes, and I'll even use synchrotrons to judge small details in the bones and so on that tell us something about the biology of the animal that helps us understand why dinosaurs became so successful as they did. And the science of studying dinosaurs and science in general has become much more precise. And things that 10-20 years ago, we would have thought were impossible to know, we now understand, because science has become so specific. So a good example is that the other day we were working in the Gobi Desert and we found footprints of dinosaurs. Well, the footprints, if they're well enough preserved, the animal steps in the mud and leaves an impression of its foot. But if it's a good impression, then you can see the skin. And if you can see the skin, then you can learn something about the external covering of the animal. So right now, we know more about skin than we've ever known before. Because of studies that are done partly here and partly in other parts of the world, too.
We can look at the bones and we can take cut bones and look at thin sections of those bones, and we can figure out how old the dinosaur is or was when it died. And so we know now that most dinosaurs didn't live all that long. They only lived probably about 30 years. And so their lifespan is very similar to modern animals, more or less what we would expect. But people have always thought in the past that because dinosaurs were so big they must have lived for hundreds of years. Well, that's just not true. Dinosaurs were probably warm-blooded animals, and not all dinosaurs, but many of the meat-eating dinosaurs in particular. And they were animals that had relatively short lives, but they grew very fast, and they were very active as well. We've also found, in Mongolia and other parts of the world, stomach contents. So we can look at a dinosaur and see what it ate, and sometimes we can look at mammals from that time period and see that they ate baby dinosaurs, too. So it's very interactive, their world and our world.
We have feathers on many dinosaurs now, so feathers don't preserve very easily. But when they do preserve, they tell us that almost all of the meat-eating dinosaurs were animals with feathers on their bodies, like birds. The feathers weren't there for flying. The feathers were there, emulsive to insulate the body and keep the body warm, the bone structure as well. Doing those thin sections in bones allows us to figure out how fast they were growing. It also tells us how old they were when they died and gives us many other aspects of their life in terms of what they were eating and what they were feeding on. We can also look at the biochemistry in the bones, and we can tell what kinds of plants they were even eating because in modern animals, it's the same thing. We can look at modern animals and look at their bones and compare it with the food or their diets, but we can see in the bones of dinosaurs and figure out many of the dinosaurs, what the food was that the dinosaurs were eating. There's the easy thing. You can tell if it's eating meat or whether it's eating plants, but you can also tell what kinds of plants it was eating, and so on, too. So many, many types of studies are being done on dinosaurs now, and they basically open up the science for other types of paleontology as well as other types of science. So they're kind of like icebreakers. They go in, and because people are interested in dinosaurs, they want to do the work on dinosaurs first. But once the work has been done and proven with dinosaurs, then other people who are working on other types of fossil animals, for example, can then go and use the same kinds of studies as well and learn about their animals, in many cases, animals that are still alive today. So it's a wonderful time right now to be working on paleontology, especially dinosaurs.
You mentioned that a lot of studies you have been through. So, on that point, please share your thoughts about the Mongolian paleontologists’ skills and potential.
Yeah, we have also known paleontologists here ever since we started working here, who are very famous people. Rinchen Barsbold is the most famous dinosaur person from Mongolia. He started in the 1970s, maybe earlier, and he has done many studies and has been the mentor of many Mongolians who also work on dinosaurs. That's one reason this institution is here, and he has helped make Mongolia famous. But now you also have a lot of younger people who are, in some cases, studying in Mongolia and getting their degrees, and they're coming to work for this institution or for other institutions in Mongolia. And so the research is actually being done here, but many of them are also going to other parts of the world to study and bring home techniques that have developed in other parts of the world, too, so that they can be done here. So the number of people who are working in Mongolia right now is still fairly small on dinosaurs, but the number is increasing all the time.
And of course, you're also getting new museums opening up and new places where these people can work. So at the Flamming cliffs, there's a move to make a natural park or a natural area. They have a small museum display down there, but they also need a paleontologist to do the work in terms of keeping track of the new resources that are discovered, new specimens and so on. And so that's another a museum opened last year in Dalanzadgad, and they have a nice dinosaur display there. And it's talking about the dinosaurs from Nemegt and the Southern Gobi province which are important. You have other famous dinosaur sites in Mongolia that I think eventually will probably also get museums and help create this tourism that I was talking about before for dinosaurs in Mongolia. But that means that there's other opportunities for young Mongolians to also get jobs. More importantly, though, I think they're also doing important research, and there are so many specimens in Mongolia and so many things that can be learned from Mongolian dinosaurs. And then it's best for everybody if, in fact, it's Mongolian scientists who are involved in all the studies. So we're seeing a tremendous increase in the number of people in Mongolia who are studying dinosaurs, who are working with people from outside in some cases, and who are working independently as Mongolians as well. And they're helping to make Mongolia even more famous for dinosaurs.
What was the main goal of the recent expedition in Nemegt formation?
It was a very interesting expedition actually because in 1965 the Polish Mongolian paleontological expedition started, and they found several dinosaurs in the south in Nemegt, and they found two Sauropods which are the long-necked dinosaurs. They're very big dinosaurs, and they found two different places called and one specimen had a body but no head, the other specimen was a head with no body, and the two sites are only 50 kilometers apart, and I was always very suspicious about there being two sauropods, and it doesn't make sense really to have two animals, different animals, living that close and in basically the same environment at the same time, and for them to be two species, but you can't prove that they're the same species unless you have the head for one or the body for the other one. But the one specimen, the animal called Nemegtosaurus was a skull with lower jaws, and I would It was suspicious that they had only collected the skull, but that they had left the skeleton behind.
And so for many years we were looking for the site where they found the Nemegtosaurus. And finally in 2016 we found where it came from. And at the site we found not only packing materials, but plaster and things that they'd used.
We didn't have photographs so we had no way of knowing exactly where it was. But we were lucky because we found Sauropod bones from the skeleton. And we also found all this evidence that they had used these materials to collect the skull. So we finally found the right site. And so this year we came in with a very large and hard-working large crew. And we right kind of equipment, and we had to actually move many tons of rock to get down to where the bones were found. The reason they had not collected it in 1965 is because there's a cliff. The skull was found here outside the cliff, but the bones were in the cliff. And so to collect it, they had to remove as much as 5 meters high of rock to get down to the bones first.
So our goal this year was really just to work on that specimen to take down the rocks and see how much of the bones we could find from the skeleton of the animal so that we could compare it to the other dinosaur, the one that had a skeleton but no skull, and then hopefully prove that they're the same animal. Because ecologically that makes a lot more sense than having two Sauropods living in the same region at the same time and eating the same things.
I'm just wondering what the first step is to search for the dinosaur fossils.
There are all kinds of technology you can use for looking for as well as mineral resources, whether it's oil and gas or gold. But dinosaur fossils are much harder. And the best thing for us is just to walk around and look. And what we're hoping is that we'll get a cliff and then we'll have bones coming out of the cliff and that'll tell us that there's a dinosaur there. And we look for not just one bone, it could be a whole line of vertebrae that'll tell us we should look there and dig it up and then we see what we can find. But it is a lot of work. You have to walk sometimes for days or months or more. It's easier in Mongolia because it is so rich with dinosaurs that helps a lot. But you still have to use a lot of work to actually do the digging and then, of course, the studies after to show what kinds of dinosaurs you've discovered and so on. So it's a very long process. Generally, we will have to have a team of people who know what they're doing, and they'll have to walk for many days and look for the right kind of place. But even then, as you say, you can't see through the rock, so you have to dig it up. So then you spend an even longer period digging the specimen up. Once you've dug it up, then you have to collect it.
Once you've collected it, you have to send it to a laboratory, do the preparation, and then you do the studies after that. So it's a years-long process for every single dinosaur. And it's very good for teams of people to work together because different people have different kinds of expertise and backgrounds and can bring different understandings to a study. But more importantly, it's also very manpower intensive and having people who are willing to do the work. We work long days, and we work very hard. Moving tons of rock is not what people think is what scientists should be doing or do. But yet they do. They have to, because if they don't do it, nobody else is going to do it.
And I think most of the paleontologists are men. Is it rare a woman can be a paleontologist?
No, it's less rare than it used to be. There are certainly my wife, for example, she's a paleobotanist. She works on fossil plants. There are other people around the world, I would say maybe as many as 25%-30% of the people working on dinosaurs now are women. And this number is increasing all the time, so it's certainly equalizing. I think one of the reasons that there tend to be more men than women with dinosaurs is simply because dinosaurs are big, they're heavy and it's very heavy work.
And about the kids, most of the boys like dinosaurs. But girls are more interested in barbie or dolls.
Very often there's a difference in interests. Maybe horses. In North America, I'd say a lot more girls are interested in horses than boys, whereas more boys are interested in dinosaurs than girls. But it still kind of equals out. And for me, I train graduate students and I would say that the number of girls is almost the same as the number of boys now. So in terms of people developing their interests, women are becoming much stronger in terms of studying dinosaurs, too.
What is your next biggest plan? Will you come Mongolia again?
Yeah. I like coming back to Mongolia. It's a beautiful place and I feel very comfortable here. I think the studies I do here are very relevant to the studies I do in Alberta, and consequently, I always learn something when I come back here. So, I intend to come back to Mongolia at least once every year to study more.
You have a lot of experience working as a curator in the National History Museum. So please share your thoughts about the Mongolian National History Museum.
Yeah, I think that to me, it's a little bit of a mystery, why you don't have a bigger Natural history museum here devoted to dinosaurs. Because Mongolia is one of the most famous places in all of the world for dinosaurs. Mongolia is the most famous place in the world for Genghis Khan, of course, so it makes sense to have a Genghis Khan museum. But it also makes sense that this place will eventually develop dinosaur museum, that's as world class as the resources are here, and I think that's important. You also need them for the storage and care of the fossils that you collect. Mongolia is one of the few places in the world that protects the dinosaur fossils and does its best to stop poachers from working or for people from just coming here and collecting dinosaurs and taking them away. They have to stay in Mongolia, but that means you're responsible for them, too. And so you need good facilities for storing the collections. This institution is the main one that collects and stores dinosaur specimens in the country of Mongolia. And yet they're very squeezed for space. They desperately need more space for storing collections and more space for displaying specimens so that people can see them.
What is the happiest and saddest moment working as a paleontologists?
I think the happiest moment is when you see a dinosaur fossil for the first time because you realize that you're the first person who's ever seen it in 65 million years or more. And it's always exciting. And so in Mongolia, it's almost every single day you get excited by what you find. It's really amazing place. The saddest thing is when you see specimens that are destroyed by erosion sometimes because you just didn't find them fast enough. But of course, Mongolia also had this terrible problem with poachers, especially 10-15 years ago. And in many cases, the poachers destroyed specimens, partly because it was illegal which they knew, and they were trying to just take the very expensive parts of specimens. And so in many cases, they destroyed whole skeletons to get skull or the hands with the claws or the feet. And it's the most discouraging thing in the world for a paleontologist to see a specimen that's been destroyed just to take a few teeth and things like that to make money. It's the same as when people shoot elephants to get just the tusks and leave the rest of the specimen to rot. It's the same kind of discouraging thing. So for paleontologists, that's probably one of the most discouraging things that you can ever see.
My last question. What is your dream?
Well, I've been very lucky. I dreamed when I was a kid that I would be a paleontologist. I became a paleontologist, working in Alberta. I got to build a museum in Alberta. I got to participate in the building of many other museums around the world. I got to travel to Mongolia, one of my dreams. And yet I never really expected it would happen because, as I said when I was a kid, politically it was impossible. So for me, I've accomplished so many of my dreams, and yet things continue to improve and get better as time goes on. For me, it's important to have new generations of students who study dinosaurs and take it further than you could have done. And so for me, seeing what my students are doing and the students of other people in terms of trying to understand dinosaur biology is very exciting for me.
Thank you for your time with us.