The True Story Of How Jurassic Park Made Everything OK

Darren Naish's excellent blog on stegosaur taxonomy includes a photograph of the Stegosaurus mount at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science (fifth image down). Ah yes, I know that mount. Let me tell you the story.

I started working at DMNS in 1992, when I was 17. It was still the Denver Museum of Natural History (DMNH) in those days; incidentally, the name change took place sometime in the late 1990s, and was a largely unadvertised administrative decision to accommodate the then brand-new, hideously expensive, and totally uninspiring space science exhibit. The move royally pissed off most of the people I knew who worked there, many if whom decided the new acronym DMNS stood for "dumbass."

In consider myself extremely fortunate to have worked at DMNH as a volunteer from 1992 to 1994, as I witnessed and participated (in a minor way) in virtually the entire construction of the Prehistoric Journey exhibit, which means that I got to help dismantle the old dinosaur mounts on the first floor and remount them upstairs. This was also when I met Ken Carpenter, Bryan Small, and the four temporary staff members hired to help assemble the exhibit: Jerry Harris, Jennifer Moerman (who currently works at the Natural History Museum in Philadelphia), John Christians (who left paleo to go teach high school), and Karen Alf (who did some important work with dinosaur eggs; sadly, Karen died about ten years ago).

I was a skinny kid in those days who wore a large black hat which obstructed my peripheral vision. I bumped my head into things several times. This is known as "foreshadowing."

This story takes place after I had been working at DMNH about a year or so. It was, in fact, the week the Jurassic Park opened (and the summer after I graduated from high school), before anyone really had any idea what a completely game-changing movie it was going to be. Ken Carpenter had been invited to an early screening for a bunch of dinosaur paleontologists that week, and was looking forward to it.

This particular day, I'm helping touch up the Allosaurus and Stegosaurus skeletons. Now, the DMNH Stegosaurus skull is mostly a plaster reconstruction, and while it was on exhibit in the old dinosaur hall, no one was sure if there might be real bone inside. When the skeleton was dismantled and the bones re-prepped, it was discovered that there was a real skull roof buried inside, which is visible in the new mount. Fortunately though, the rest of the skull was plaster. That is more foreshadowing.

The skeleton was mostly mounted by then, including the skull. I'm painting some of the reconstructed areas on the Allosaurus pelvis and verts, while Ken is getting the forelimbs of the Stegosaurus mounted. Incidentally, Ken's method in mounting the skeletons was to first use duct tape to tape the limb bones to the armature to hold it in place while he welded on the braces; the Rocky Mountain News ran a story on duct tape about that time, and the cover image was a great photo of Ken taping the Diplodocus tibia in place.

Ken has finished getting the armature welded for the left forelimb, and says "Martz, come over here and hold the shoulder blade for me."

So, I hop down off the ladder and duck under the skull, but stand up too soon. I feel my head smash into something, which doesn't really hurt that bad since whatever it is crumbles immediately, and then I am sitting on the floor under a decapitated Stegosaurus surrounded by little bits of plaster. It takes me a moment to absorb the calamity.

Oh, shit, I think.

Ken stands surveying the scene for a moment, and then walks out of the room. I'm not sure if he is getting away to avoid killing me, or if he is going to look for a tool that will hurt more than the welding torch, so I take the opportunity to flee.

The week passes without me working up the balls to go back to the museum, and two days before Jurassic Park comes out, I get a call from John Christians. John tells me that everything is cool. I can come back and Ken won't kill me. Ken saw Jurassic Park and it was fucking awesome. The words "shit pants" were used. The Denver Museum has bought two rows of seats in a theater for opening day, would I like to go? Sure, I said. And it wasn't a trap either; Ken really was in a good mood. I sat with two rows of natural history employees and watched the dawn of the cg age and we did a lot of cheering and screaming, and everything was cool.

LNJ

p.s. I tried to find the image of Ken taping up the Diplodocus image online, and somehow found this news story. What the fuck, google?