PENN: Lots of kids go through a “dinosaur phrase,” but Tanner Frank says he “never grew out of it.
This summer, Frank, now a college sophomore, spent time pursuing his childhood passion on dinosaur digs in the Utah desert. Working side by side with experts, he uncovered fossils, footprints, and a confirmation that he’s on the right academic path.
Frank, who is from Wyckoff, New Jersey, went to college wanting to concentrate in paleobiology as part of the Earth science major.
Once on campus, Frank reached out to Peter Dodson, a paleontologist and professor in both the School of Veterinary Medicine and the School of Arts & Sciences.
“He’s the go-to guy for dinosaurs at Penn,” Frank says.
Dodson gave the freshman special permission to take his course, “Evolution of the Dinosaurs,” and introduced him to the campus’s paleobiological community. Each week, a journal club allows students and faculty to discuss new landmark papers in the field.
Frank is considering adding a biology major to his Earth science focus to give his interest in dinosaurs an ecological and evolutionary context.
“We’re beginning to close the gap between just finding these animals’ bones and understanding how they actually lived,” says Frank. “Fossils and footprints can tell us something about how they interacted, how they hunted and moved, and even how the climate affected them.”
When Frank approached Dodson about opportunities for summer research, the professor connected him with two of his colleagues in Utah, one of the world’s hotspots for dinosaur fossils.
With support from Penn’s Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships, Frank was able to participate on two digs.
A crocodile and a giant fang
The first, led by Randall Irmis of the University of Utah, explored a layer of rock dating to the Triassic Period, when the first dinosaurs lived. The crew spent long days prospecting for fossils and were rewarded for their toil with some new discoveries.
“We found a small footprint and an armored plate from a Triassic reptile that looked incredibly similar to a modern crocodile,” Frank says.
Later in the trip, the team visited a Jurassic site in Utah’s Dinosaur National Monument and found an ichthyosaur, a marine reptile that resembled a dolphin. Frank and the rest of the field crew were able to excavate much of its spine, wielding brushes and tiny icepicks to carefully extract the fossils and then encase them in plaster and burlap to preserve and prepare them for later study.
On the second dig, which was led by James Kirkland of the Utah Geological Survey, Frank explored a more-established fossil site called Doelling’s Bowl that dates to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, which lasted 80 million years before a mass extinction wiped out most of the dinosaurs. It’s a period that is relatively unexplored, and many of the species paleontologists have uncovered in the Doelling’s Bowl are new to science.
Frank helped uncover parts of what appears to be a new species of herbivorous dinosaur related to Iguanodon and a menacingly large tooth from an as-yet undiscovered predatory dinosaur. The fang was “probably a good four or five inches long,” Frank says.
No ‘desk job’
On his trip, Frank was struck by how discoveries in places like Doelling’s Bowl help fill in the gaps of paleontologists’ understanding, helping paint a picture of how populations and ecosystems evolved during vast time periods.
“Lots of people see dinosaurs as good only for being children’s entertainment or curiosities in museums,” Frank says, “but paleontology, including dinosaur paleontology, is helping scientists understand the forces that shape our planet, from evolution to climate change.”
Frank’s first real taste of field work has made him want to keep going.
“I don’t really want a desk job, I’ve always wanted to do something where I get to travel,” says Frank. “It was cool being in the middle of nowhere, using the exact same tools they used 100 years ago to find and extract fossils. I didn’t shower for two weeks, but it was worth it.”
via Katherine Unger Baillie/Penn News | Image via Penn
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