MEETING NOTES

Past-President Mark McDonnell introduced local businessman and Renaissance man, Mark Tarner.  Among Mr. Tarner’s interests is paleontology, and he shared with us his experience of excavating the 65 million year-old fossilized remains of a large Edmontosaurus that Tarner named “Juliet” in honor of his wife.  The large duck-billed dinosaur would have weighed 10-12 tons and would have been approximately 39 feet long.

Mr. Tarner and his family travelled to a ranch in Montana to unearth Juliet from a tip he received from another amateur paleontologist who noticed some bones that had rolled down from a butte.  The Tarner family’s “vacation” project ranged from building (and re-building after a rain storm) a road to the top of the butte where “Juliet” rested to excavating the dinosaur, using everything from brushes and dental picks to jackhammers and a D-9 bulldozer.  The hard and sometimes delicate work continued with encasing portions of the skeleton in plaster and then carefully loading them on a trailer to remove them from the site and preserve them from the elements.

Several museums have expressed interest in displaying Juliet, and Mr. Tarner says he will bring it home one way or another.