April 7, 2025 • 16 mins
George Noory and researcher Billy Doran discuss his work investigating the dinosaur history of Colorado, his discovery of a 76 million year old dinosaur fossil, and the devastation of the asteroid impact that wiped out most of the creatures.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nor are
you with you, Billy Duran with us? Billy, what aspect
of paleontology do you find the most fascinating?
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (00:14):
Wow, that's kind of a tough one because it's all
to me. To me, it's also exciting, you know what.
I think one of the big things for me besides
just the discovery, you know, finding these incredible animals, these
animals that are just almost only out of our imagination
with the exception of the bones who were trying to
figure out what they look like, and our imaginations can
just go crazy. And you mentioned, you know, movies like
(00:34):
Jurassic Park that do it such a great job of
putting bringing that to light before our eyes. But you know,
it brings me back to an incident I had, or
I shouldn't say it was a moment, I had more
of a moment. This was many years ago. I was
on a national geographic expedition. I was an Escalonia National
Monument and I was with the Denver Museum and Nature
and Science at the time, and I came across a
(00:55):
dinosaur as a horned dinosaur, so it would have looked
a lot like a triceratops the big three hole horns,
but this one was it was likely a pentaceratops, which
means it had five horns, so it had one on
each cheek in addition to the three over.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Two on the brow, and then one on the nose.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
But one of the most magical thing, and it was
a big animal. And this one would have been about
the size of an elephant. So the head was, you know,
seven feet long. It took us eventually about a year
and a half to take the head out, which is
sitting in the Denver Museum now, which is really exciting.
But there was a moment where I was by myself
working on this animal that I had found myself. I
found it, and it was a whole team that helped
excavate it. But the day I found it, I kind
(01:31):
of stumbled across it. But in the days following there
was a moment where I was up digging on this animal, digging.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
On the head.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
And we're about fifty miles from any kind of civilization
and the bad lands of Utah, there's nothing as far
as you can see, and It's just me on this
hillside and I'm digging the dirt, and all of a sudden,
I move the dirt aside, and I'm looking at the
left side of this animal's face, and I'm staring at
this big eye socket. It would have been a eyeball, yeahball,
(02:00):
probably would have been about the size of an orange
or maybe a smaller grapefruit. But I'm staring at this
big empty eye socket on the side of the skull.
And it's me by myself in the sunny, hot day,
with the wind blowing, totally quiet, and I had this
moment where I thought, this animal has been sitting here
for seventy six million years. That's the age of the
rock layers we're working in. And I'm the first, not
(02:23):
just the first person, but the first living thing to
come in touch with this animal since it died. And
also the sun is now shining on it for the
first time in seventy six million years, so I'm now
I am now part of this animal's entire story. So
in that moment, I get a kind of mikes. The
(02:44):
hair on my neck, you know, go up, just telling it,
because it was such a moment where I realize palely
intolligent to me, and fossilhoning a dinosaur hunting to me,
it's it's a it's a real it's a real time machine.
I'm now part of that animal's entire story, and I
just crossed eons at time in a moment by brushing
away that dirt and the sun hitting it for the
(03:05):
first time. So for as far as aspects of dinosaur
hunting and paleontology, that's one that's huge for me, that
that that like supersedes all kinds of like human and science,
where it becomes this almost ethereal thing where you've just
crossed that kind of time to become in touch with
this animal and be part of its story. So that
that's a big one for me. Is that kind of
(03:25):
part of it?
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Yeah, Billy, you mentioned the asteroid impact of sixty five
million years ago, which supposedly wiped out the dinosaurs.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
Did it wiped out the big ones?
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (03:37):
I wiped out all. I wiped out, you know, the
non avian dinosaurs, the big giant long next at that time,
the animals like Argentinosaurus that would have been one hundred
and ten hundred and twenty thousand pounds living down in
the region of Patagonia and Argentina. But for the most part,
it wiped out yeah, pretty much everything. And in fact,
that asteroid impact George, A lot of.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
People don't realize it.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
It wiped out somewhere around eighty to eighty five percent
of all living things. So we're not talking about just
big dinosaurs or even small dinosaurs. We're talking about insects, plants,
for the very first flowering plants, that's when flowers first
showed up, was kind of around that time, animals, sharks, crocodiles, yeah,
you name it, and we're talking about eighty to eighty
(04:17):
five percent of all living things. And one of the
most incredible things to think about the asteroid impact is
that the changes that it that it caused, that it instilled,
it incurred, were changes that prior to that took tens
of millions of years to occur. You talk about something
like the tearing a part of the super continent of
Pangaea which separates the Triassic and Jurassic time, and that's
(04:40):
right around two hundred million years ago. That took tens
of millions of years for that that massive change to occur,
and that event also wiped out eighty to eighty five
percent of all living things. It was a terrible time
on Earth. That took tens of millions of years, but
the asteroid, those changes happen in hours, in hours and days.
(05:02):
We're talking about changes that just devastated, devastated the Earth.
They've been doing a lot of research lately in the
last ten or fifteen years, drilling down into the impact
crater that's been in Yucatan Peninsula, and it would have
been literally hell on Earth when that thing hit. I
mean to give people an idea how big this asteroid was.
It was so big it was basically the size of
Mount Everest or Manhattan Island. And to put in perspective
(05:24):
in that way, if you're driving, you're flying in a
commercial airliner, when you look out of that airliner a
cruising altitude and you see the Earth way down below,
as that asteroid was coming in and the very front
of it was about to hit Earth. The back of
it was as high as that commercial airliner. And when
that thing hit, it had the devastating explosive power of it.
(05:44):
Some scientists will say ten billions, some will say more
than that, but ten billion Hiroshima atomic bombs in an instant,
not million billion, ten billion horoshima atomic bombs in an instant,
So everything within six hundred mile was vaporized in a
moment poof just gone. Because it hit in an ancient,
ancient sea bed, which the Gulf of Mexico obviously is
(06:07):
still there, but it was a little bit higher back then,
a little bit more water. But it created a tidal
wave that some people say, you know, some some professionals
will say it was close to a mile high five
thousand feet when it initially occurred. And then that tile
of the tidal wave inundated all the land at you know,
seven to eight hundred miles per hour, moving in every direction.
The fallout from all the all the dirt and rock
(06:28):
that was blown out of the earth because of the
impact and because of the explosion that equaled somewhere around
six to seven mount averests in its own right, just
that amount of rock and debris being blown out, And
the explosion was so powerful it didn't just.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Throw it up in the air like a firecracker poof.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
It actually blew that material into outer space, out of
our atmosphere, into outer space, where all that material then
started to spread out. And because of the gravity of
the Earth, it kind of kept a lot of it there,
so it thread out to like a giant blanket around
planet Earth from things that stuff from you know, rocks
the size of buildings and elephants and people and cars
(07:05):
all the way down to microscopic silica dust particles basically,
and then within a few hours to days, all of
that material fell back to Earth. So basically, within about
three days of that asteroid impact, the entire Earth was
on fire. Everything was burning. It was the largest forest
fires the Earth had ever experienced, the largest volcanic eruptions, earthquakes.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
It all occurred in just a matter of hours and days.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
So that would have been an absolutely horrible, horrible event.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Yeah, it was.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
It was devastating to It was literally the worst the
worst day for nature, for life on Earth at that point.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Yeah, Billy, is it possible that asteroid was even bigger
and it broke up a little bit.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
That's there's a recent Yeah, yeah, there's a there's a
recent story. I read not long ago, and I want
to say it was someplace down around around the African
continent matic Gascar, maybe I can't remember exactly where it was.
Where they found another another impact crater, and they think
that the Chick Salute they call the chick Salub asteroid
the dinosaur ending asteroid, because it's named after the smallest
(08:05):
little Mayan village in Yucatan Peninsula called the Chick Salute,
the town of Chicksloub. They think that that asteroid had
had a sister, had a sibling asteroid that was much smaller,
but still nonetheless would have been an absolute devastating event.
They think that might have come in days to weeks earlier,
and then the big one came in later on and
just hammered everything.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Yeah, I'd a palaeontologists even nowhere to start digging to
look for bones.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
That's a great that's a great question. You know, here
in Colorado, here in the Rocky Mountains, it's so visible
for us because really any mountain ranges there, any place
you're driving through where there were roads cut through hillsides
and you can see if from you know, I'm sure
your listeners have seen those those lines of rock, those
layers of geologic sediment right there in the rocks, right
there in the mountains, right along the sides of the roads.
(08:50):
And in essence, what those are is there are volumes
of encyclopedias is what you're looking at. And so when
you have an idea of what layer you're in, you're
gonna have a much better understanding.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Of what's going to be in those layers.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
And we have to thank one hundred hundred and fifty
years of women and men ahead of us, of paleontologists
and scientists ahead of us that have done so much.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Of the hard work laying all this out.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
So once you see those layers, once you're in the
right layer, you kind of just look. I call it
the ultimate, the ultimate treasure hunt. You know, go on
a hike and it's the ultimate treasure hunt to see
if you can find these pieces of the prehistoric past.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Yeah, tell us about your dinosaur museum.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
Ah, the museum that is that has been a real
passion for about three years, will be actually three years
old June twenty fifth. The museum at Dinosaur Junction is
in Edwards, Colorado.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
We are an official five oh one.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
C three nonprofit. We are an Eagle County museum. And honestly,
it came about because I've been just blessed with finding
so many things. I know that sounds funny, but I
have found so many remains of so many different dinosaurs,
probably thirteen or fourteen to this point here in Eagle County.
And that doesn't even include crocodiles and sharks and turtles
and other things. So many things I've come across here
(10:01):
that I kind of feel like Mother Nature kind of
was giving me one of these Oh you want to
find some dinosaurs, Well here you go. Now you got
to do something with it. So we kind of came
my wife and I, my wife, Lily and I we
kind of came together during COVID and thought, we know
we should, we should bring this to the next step
and really make something come of it. And so we
ended up getting our nonprofit status. So we absolutely do
take donations. And I want to give a holler. Last
(10:23):
time I was on Coast to Coast about two years ago.
One of your listeners, John, I'll just say John L
in California. He listened and he was an incredibly generous man.
Is an incredibly generous man. He sent us a beautiful
wooly mammoth tusk and and a giant, gorgeous wooly mammoth
tooth to put on display at the museum because he
preferred it to be someplace where kids and families could
(10:43):
learn from those items rather than sitting on a shelf. So, John,
if you're listening, thank you so much. And so with
the museum was born. You see, the museum came together.
We found a little spot here in Edwards, Colorado. We
hear a tiny blip on the map. If you blink
driving down Interstate seventy, you're gonna miss us. But we
are right there at exit one sixty three. Dinosaur Junction.
Dot Org is the website and we've been open a
(11:06):
little bit less than three years and today we've had
about we're proud to say about seven thousand visitors. We've
had about a thousand students from from kindergarten up through
college classes that come through living up here in the
high Mountains George. Here in Colorado, it's tough to get
to places like Denver, as you can imagine it definitely
during the wintertime. And so one of my goals in
building this museum was that a lot of the little
(11:28):
towns in the High Country, little county counties up here
in the school systems could have a place where the
kids could get to to really see dinosaurs, see massive skeleton,
see fossils, see bones and all that stuff without without
just missing out on a field data that these dinosaur
museum or just not being able to make it to Denver,
one of the bigger cities. So that's really come to fruition,
which is very exciting and rewarding to see. You know,
(11:49):
even at the age of fifty eight years old, to
see a kid walk in and you know, a five
year old and just squeal Tyrannosaurus rex. It brings me
right back to that age. I remember going to the
Smithsonian the very first time, and I was that kid.
So it's it's very rewarding to be able to bring
that to our community into the surrounding uh, surrounding counties.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Yeah are they are there digs all over the world
all the time.
Speaker 4 (12:10):
There there are lots of digs. Yeah. In fact, I
would tell all your listeners, but someone who really wants
to get as interested as you can, uh, contact your
your local museums. They're almost always looking for some kind
of help in some way, shape or form. I always
tell people it's that that that hunting dinosaurs and excavating
dinosaurs is the hardest, most rewarding job I've ever had
(12:31):
in my life. It's probably the closest thing I imagine
being at boot camp. Yet at the end of the day,
as you're walking back to your barracks, you got a
backpack full of dinosaur bones, which brings it to a
whole other level of excitement. So, yeah, you're a lot
of museums. You're always looking for help, and it's just
one of the most rewarding things ever to be able
to pick something up and know that you're the first
(12:52):
person to come across. And not only that, but if
you're holding a big tooth to something and you know,
you think, wow, this tooth was in the mouth of
a tyrannosaur. This tooth ripped apart other animals, Like, it's
really exciting.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
What's your take on Bigfoot?
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Billy?
Speaker 4 (13:06):
My take on Bigfoot? You know what, I really want
him to be out there. I do whenever I'm out
in the hills, I'm always kind of looking around. I
don't want to ever admit that he doesn't exist, because
and then I feel like the little boy and me
would die, and I don't want that to happen. And
I always tell kids, you know, one of the most
amazing things about science, the most amazing thing about science
is we never know what tomorrow is gonna hold. We
(13:27):
never know what someone's gonna discover, what someone's gonna see,
And so that's what that makes things really really exciting,
and in fact that it's funny, you know, because you
guys talk about a lot of paranormal things that on
the show here. And I had an interesting experience last summer.
Lieutenant Alex Dietrich, she's I don't know, she's probably been
mentioned on your shows many times. She was one of
(13:48):
the Navy pilots in two thousand and four that was
flying off the USS ninnts that reported the tic Tac
objects south the coast of San Diego. Yeah. So I
was sitting at the museum one day, one slow day,
and I was on you know, YouTube, just going down
that rabbit hole looking at stuff, and came across UFO things,
was looking at this and that, and next thing I know,
I'm watching an interview with Lieutenant Alex Tetrick and her
(14:10):
other co pilot at that time, on sixty minutes, and
she's talking all about what they saw, blah blah blah
all this stuff, and it was just, you know, very
intriguing when it comes from someone that's you know, Navy,
a real pilot that's flying off talking to the base
and everything and talking to the people in the radar
about what they're seeing anyway, believe it or not, I
kid you not. The next day, she walks into the
(14:31):
museum with her family. They had just moved from California
to Colorado and they were out traveling around and I'm
talking to her and she looked familiar, but I didn't
think of thinking much of it, and you know, we
get a lot of people to kind of come in familiar.
And a few minutes later she walks up and we
start chatting, and she says, let me ask you something.
When you're out there, way out in the hills by herself,
do you ever come across anything strange unusual? And right
(14:54):
as she said that, I looked right at her, and
without even pausing, I went, oh, my god, you're Lieutenant
Alex Teacher and she said yes. So I got to
talk to her about her experience with UFOs standing in
the museum and she's asking me about parent all this stuff.
So it was really exciting, and honestly, the closest thing
I could come to it. I told her, this is
(15:14):
believe it or not. I haven't you know, told a
lot of people this, but now just you know, millions
of people listening right now. Every now and again, when
I'm out there hunting for things, I'll get this very strange.
The only way I can explain it since a very
weird sense. It's again, it's the hair standing up. It's
that all of a sudden, the senses go alert. And
every time that happened, a kid, you not George, every
(15:37):
time that's happened, I have found something amazing within minutes,
within ten feet to where I'm standing, something amazing, A
footprint of tooth, giant boned, you name it. But that's
the only way I can explain it is something strange.
I get this weird feeling, but it's proven itself every
single time. And that's a God. God's Aam's truth right there.
(15:57):
But that was exciting to have Alex Teacher come in.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Are we still finding remnants of animals we never even
knew existed?
Speaker 4 (16:04):
Absolutely, they're finding like as I mentioned earlier, they're finding
new dinosaurs, new dinosaurs, not variations, but new things all
the time.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one am Eastern and go to Coast to coastam dot
com for more
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nor are
you with you, Billy Duran with us? Billy, what aspect
of paleontology do you find the most fascinating?
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (00:14):
Wow, that's kind of a tough one because it's all
to me. To me, it's also exciting, you know what.
I think one of the big things for me besides
just the discovery, you know, finding these incredible animals, these
animals that are just almost only out of our imagination
with the exception of the bones who were trying to
figure out what they look like, and our imaginations can
just go crazy. And you mentioned, you know, movies like
(00:34):
Jurassic Park that do it such a great job of
putting bringing that to light before our eyes. But you know,
it brings me back to an incident I had, or
I shouldn't say it was a moment, I had more
of a moment. This was many years ago. I was
on a national geographic expedition. I was an Escalonia National
Monument and I was with the Denver Museum and Nature
and Science at the time, and I came across a
(00:55):
dinosaur as a horned dinosaur, so it would have looked
a lot like a triceratops the big three hole horns,
but this one was it was likely a pentaceratops, which
means it had five horns, so it had one on
each cheek in addition to the three over.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Two on the brow, and then one on the nose.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
But one of the most magical thing, and it was
a big animal. And this one would have been about
the size of an elephant. So the head was, you know,
seven feet long. It took us eventually about a year
and a half to take the head out, which is
sitting in the Denver Museum now, which is really exciting.
But there was a moment where I was by myself
working on this animal that I had found myself. I
found it, and it was a whole team that helped
excavate it. But the day I found it, I kind
(01:31):
of stumbled across it. But in the days following there
was a moment where I was up digging on this animal, digging.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
On the head.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
And we're about fifty miles from any kind of civilization
and the bad lands of Utah, there's nothing as far
as you can see, and It's just me on this
hillside and I'm digging the dirt, and all of a sudden,
I move the dirt aside, and I'm looking at the
left side of this animal's face, and I'm staring at
this big eye socket. It would have been a eyeball, yeahball,
(02:00):
probably would have been about the size of an orange
or maybe a smaller grapefruit. But I'm staring at this
big empty eye socket on the side of the skull.
And it's me by myself in the sunny, hot day,
with the wind blowing, totally quiet, and I had this
moment where I thought, this animal has been sitting here
for seventy six million years. That's the age of the
rock layers we're working in. And I'm the first, not
(02:23):
just the first person, but the first living thing to
come in touch with this animal since it died. And
also the sun is now shining on it for the
first time in seventy six million years, so I'm now
I am now part of this animal's entire story. So
in that moment, I get a kind of mikes. The
(02:44):
hair on my neck, you know, go up, just telling it,
because it was such a moment where I realize palely
intolligent to me, and fossilhoning a dinosaur hunting to me,
it's it's a it's a real it's a real time machine.
I'm now part of that animal's entire story, and I
just crossed eons at time in a moment by brushing
away that dirt and the sun hitting it for the
(03:05):
first time. So for as far as aspects of dinosaur
hunting and paleontology, that's one that's huge for me, that
that that like supersedes all kinds of like human and science,
where it becomes this almost ethereal thing where you've just
crossed that kind of time to become in touch with
this animal and be part of its story. So that
that's a big one for me. Is that kind of
(03:25):
part of it?
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Yeah, Billy, you mentioned the asteroid impact of sixty five
million years ago, which supposedly wiped out the dinosaurs.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
Did it wiped out the big ones?
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (03:37):
I wiped out all. I wiped out, you know, the
non avian dinosaurs, the big giant long next at that time,
the animals like Argentinosaurus that would have been one hundred
and ten hundred and twenty thousand pounds living down in
the region of Patagonia and Argentina. But for the most part,
it wiped out yeah, pretty much everything. And in fact,
that asteroid impact George, A lot of.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
People don't realize it.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
It wiped out somewhere around eighty to eighty five percent
of all living things. So we're not talking about just
big dinosaurs or even small dinosaurs. We're talking about insects, plants,
for the very first flowering plants, that's when flowers first
showed up, was kind of around that time, animals, sharks, crocodiles, yeah,
you name it, and we're talking about eighty to eighty
(04:17):
five percent of all living things. And one of the
most incredible things to think about the asteroid impact is
that the changes that it that it caused, that it instilled,
it incurred, were changes that prior to that took tens
of millions of years to occur. You talk about something
like the tearing a part of the super continent of
Pangaea which separates the Triassic and Jurassic time, and that's
(04:40):
right around two hundred million years ago. That took tens
of millions of years for that that massive change to occur,
and that event also wiped out eighty to eighty five
percent of all living things. It was a terrible time
on Earth. That took tens of millions of years, but
the asteroid, those changes happen in hours, in hours and days.
(05:02):
We're talking about changes that just devastated, devastated the Earth.
They've been doing a lot of research lately in the
last ten or fifteen years, drilling down into the impact
crater that's been in Yucatan Peninsula, and it would have
been literally hell on Earth when that thing hit. I
mean to give people an idea how big this asteroid was.
It was so big it was basically the size of
Mount Everest or Manhattan Island. And to put in perspective
(05:24):
in that way, if you're driving, you're flying in a
commercial airliner, when you look out of that airliner a
cruising altitude and you see the Earth way down below,
as that asteroid was coming in and the very front
of it was about to hit Earth. The back of
it was as high as that commercial airliner. And when
that thing hit, it had the devastating explosive power of it.
(05:44):
Some scientists will say ten billions, some will say more
than that, but ten billion Hiroshima atomic bombs in an instant,
not million billion, ten billion horoshima atomic bombs in an instant,
So everything within six hundred mile was vaporized in a
moment poof just gone. Because it hit in an ancient,
ancient sea bed, which the Gulf of Mexico obviously is
(06:07):
still there, but it was a little bit higher back then,
a little bit more water. But it created a tidal
wave that some people say, you know, some some professionals
will say it was close to a mile high five
thousand feet when it initially occurred. And then that tile
of the tidal wave inundated all the land at you know,
seven to eight hundred miles per hour, moving in every direction.
The fallout from all the all the dirt and rock
(06:28):
that was blown out of the earth because of the
impact and because of the explosion that equaled somewhere around
six to seven mount averests in its own right, just
that amount of rock and debris being blown out, And
the explosion was so powerful it didn't just.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Throw it up in the air like a firecracker poof.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
It actually blew that material into outer space, out of
our atmosphere, into outer space, where all that material then
started to spread out. And because of the gravity of
the Earth, it kind of kept a lot of it there,
so it thread out to like a giant blanket around
planet Earth from things that stuff from you know, rocks
the size of buildings and elephants and people and cars
(07:05):
all the way down to microscopic silica dust particles basically,
and then within a few hours to days, all of
that material fell back to Earth. So basically, within about
three days of that asteroid impact, the entire Earth was
on fire. Everything was burning. It was the largest forest
fires the Earth had ever experienced, the largest volcanic eruptions, earthquakes.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
It all occurred in just a matter of hours and days.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
So that would have been an absolutely horrible, horrible event.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Yeah, it was.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
It was devastating to It was literally the worst the
worst day for nature, for life on Earth at that point.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Yeah, Billy, is it possible that asteroid was even bigger
and it broke up a little bit.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
That's there's a recent Yeah, yeah, there's a there's a
recent story. I read not long ago, and I want
to say it was someplace down around around the African
continent matic Gascar, maybe I can't remember exactly where it was.
Where they found another another impact crater, and they think
that the Chick Salute they call the chick Salub asteroid
the dinosaur ending asteroid, because it's named after the smallest
(08:05):
little Mayan village in Yucatan Peninsula called the Chick Salute,
the town of Chicksloub. They think that that asteroid had
had a sister, had a sibling asteroid that was much smaller,
but still nonetheless would have been an absolute devastating event.
They think that might have come in days to weeks earlier,
and then the big one came in later on and
just hammered everything.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Yeah, I'd a palaeontologists even nowhere to start digging to
look for bones.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
That's a great that's a great question. You know, here
in Colorado, here in the Rocky Mountains, it's so visible
for us because really any mountain ranges there, any place
you're driving through where there were roads cut through hillsides
and you can see if from you know, I'm sure
your listeners have seen those those lines of rock, those
layers of geologic sediment right there in the rocks, right
there in the mountains, right along the sides of the roads.
(08:50):
And in essence, what those are is there are volumes
of encyclopedias is what you're looking at. And so when
you have an idea of what layer you're in, you're
gonna have a much better understanding.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Of what's going to be in those layers.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
And we have to thank one hundred hundred and fifty
years of women and men ahead of us, of paleontologists
and scientists ahead of us that have done so much.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Of the hard work laying all this out.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
So once you see those layers, once you're in the
right layer, you kind of just look. I call it
the ultimate, the ultimate treasure hunt. You know, go on
a hike and it's the ultimate treasure hunt to see
if you can find these pieces of the prehistoric past.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Yeah, tell us about your dinosaur museum.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
Ah, the museum that is that has been a real
passion for about three years, will be actually three years
old June twenty fifth. The museum at Dinosaur Junction is
in Edwards, Colorado.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
We are an official five oh one.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
C three nonprofit. We are an Eagle County museum. And honestly,
it came about because I've been just blessed with finding
so many things. I know that sounds funny, but I
have found so many remains of so many different dinosaurs,
probably thirteen or fourteen to this point here in Eagle County.
And that doesn't even include crocodiles and sharks and turtles
and other things. So many things I've come across here
(10:01):
that I kind of feel like Mother Nature kind of
was giving me one of these Oh you want to
find some dinosaurs, Well here you go. Now you got
to do something with it. So we kind of came
my wife and I, my wife, Lily and I we
kind of came together during COVID and thought, we know
we should, we should bring this to the next step
and really make something come of it. And so we
ended up getting our nonprofit status. So we absolutely do
take donations. And I want to give a holler. Last
(10:23):
time I was on Coast to Coast about two years ago.
One of your listeners, John, I'll just say John L
in California. He listened and he was an incredibly generous man.
Is an incredibly generous man. He sent us a beautiful
wooly mammoth tusk and and a giant, gorgeous wooly mammoth
tooth to put on display at the museum because he
preferred it to be someplace where kids and families could
(10:43):
learn from those items rather than sitting on a shelf. So, John,
if you're listening, thank you so much. And so with
the museum was born. You see, the museum came together.
We found a little spot here in Edwards, Colorado. We
hear a tiny blip on the map. If you blink
driving down Interstate seventy, you're gonna miss us. But we
are right there at exit one sixty three. Dinosaur Junction.
Dot Org is the website and we've been open a
(11:06):
little bit less than three years and today we've had
about we're proud to say about seven thousand visitors. We've
had about a thousand students from from kindergarten up through
college classes that come through living up here in the
high Mountains George. Here in Colorado, it's tough to get
to places like Denver, as you can imagine it definitely
during the wintertime. And so one of my goals in
building this museum was that a lot of the little
(11:28):
towns in the High Country, little county counties up here
in the school systems could have a place where the
kids could get to to really see dinosaurs, see massive skeleton,
see fossils, see bones and all that stuff without without
just missing out on a field data that these dinosaur
museum or just not being able to make it to Denver,
one of the bigger cities. So that's really come to fruition,
which is very exciting and rewarding to see. You know,
(11:49):
even at the age of fifty eight years old, to
see a kid walk in and you know, a five
year old and just squeal Tyrannosaurus rex. It brings me
right back to that age. I remember going to the
Smithsonian the very first time, and I was that kid.
So it's it's very rewarding to be able to bring
that to our community into the surrounding uh, surrounding counties.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Yeah are they are there digs all over the world
all the time.
Speaker 4 (12:10):
There there are lots of digs. Yeah. In fact, I
would tell all your listeners, but someone who really wants
to get as interested as you can, uh, contact your
your local museums. They're almost always looking for some kind
of help in some way, shape or form. I always
tell people it's that that that hunting dinosaurs and excavating
dinosaurs is the hardest, most rewarding job I've ever had
(12:31):
in my life. It's probably the closest thing I imagine
being at boot camp. Yet at the end of the day,
as you're walking back to your barracks, you got a
backpack full of dinosaur bones, which brings it to a
whole other level of excitement. So, yeah, you're a lot
of museums. You're always looking for help, and it's just
one of the most rewarding things ever to be able
to pick something up and know that you're the first
(12:52):
person to come across. And not only that, but if
you're holding a big tooth to something and you know,
you think, wow, this tooth was in the mouth of
a tyrannosaur. This tooth ripped apart other animals, Like, it's
really exciting.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
What's your take on Bigfoot?
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Billy?
Speaker 4 (13:06):
My take on Bigfoot? You know what, I really want
him to be out there. I do whenever I'm out
in the hills, I'm always kind of looking around. I
don't want to ever admit that he doesn't exist, because
and then I feel like the little boy and me
would die, and I don't want that to happen. And
I always tell kids, you know, one of the most
amazing things about science, the most amazing thing about science
is we never know what tomorrow is gonna hold. We
(13:27):
never know what someone's gonna discover, what someone's gonna see,
And so that's what that makes things really really exciting,
and in fact that it's funny, you know, because you
guys talk about a lot of paranormal things that on
the show here. And I had an interesting experience last summer.
Lieutenant Alex Dietrich, she's I don't know, she's probably been
mentioned on your shows many times. She was one of
(13:48):
the Navy pilots in two thousand and four that was
flying off the USS ninnts that reported the tic Tac
objects south the coast of San Diego. Yeah. So I
was sitting at the museum one day, one slow day,
and I was on you know, YouTube, just going down
that rabbit hole looking at stuff, and came across UFO things,
was looking at this and that, and next thing I know,
I'm watching an interview with Lieutenant Alex Tetrick and her
(14:10):
other co pilot at that time, on sixty minutes, and
she's talking all about what they saw, blah blah blah
all this stuff, and it was just, you know, very
intriguing when it comes from someone that's you know, Navy,
a real pilot that's flying off talking to the base
and everything and talking to the people in the radar
about what they're seeing anyway, believe it or not, I
kid you not. The next day, she walks into the
(14:31):
museum with her family. They had just moved from California
to Colorado and they were out traveling around and I'm
talking to her and she looked familiar, but I didn't
think of thinking much of it, and you know, we
get a lot of people to kind of come in familiar.
And a few minutes later she walks up and we
start chatting, and she says, let me ask you something.
When you're out there, way out in the hills by herself,
do you ever come across anything strange unusual? And right
(14:54):
as she said that, I looked right at her, and
without even pausing, I went, oh, my god, you're Lieutenant
Alex Teacher and she said yes. So I got to
talk to her about her experience with UFOs standing in
the museum and she's asking me about parent all this stuff.
So it was really exciting, and honestly, the closest thing
I could come to it. I told her, this is
(15:14):
believe it or not. I haven't you know, told a
lot of people this, but now just you know, millions
of people listening right now. Every now and again, when
I'm out there hunting for things, I'll get this very strange.
The only way I can explain it since a very
weird sense. It's again, it's the hair standing up. It's
that all of a sudden, the senses go alert. And
every time that happened, a kid, you not George, every
(15:37):
time that's happened, I have found something amazing within minutes,
within ten feet to where I'm standing, something amazing, A
footprint of tooth, giant boned, you name it. But that's
the only way I can explain it is something strange.
I get this weird feeling, but it's proven itself every
single time. And that's a God. God's Aam's truth right there.
(15:57):
But that was exciting to have Alex Teacher come in.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Are we still finding remnants of animals we never even
knew existed?
Speaker 4 (16:04):
Absolutely, they're finding like as I mentioned earlier, they're finding
new dinosaurs, new dinosaurs, not variations, but new things all
the time.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one am Eastern and go to Coast to coastam dot
com for more
The Best of Coast to Coast AM News
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George Noory
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