Michael Bergeron
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Dinosaur 13 at HMNS this weekend

Dinosaur 13 at HMNS this weekend
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Todd Douglas Miller had been working on a documentary about the history of paleontology for several months. “About a year into the project I met Peter Larson and the direction of the project changed,” Miller tells Free Press Houston in a phone interview. The subsequent film “Dinosaur 13” unwinds like a legal thriller combined with views on the commercial aspect versus the academic viewpoint of paleontology. “The majority of what we shot up to that point ended up on the editing room floor as they say, maybe there are a couple of B-roll shots we used,” says Miller.

Larson, who operates the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research in South Dakota, discovered the most complete skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex in 1990. The dinosaur was named Sue after the member of Larson’s crew (Sue Hendrickson) who found the first bone. The specimen would measure over 40-feet in length and would’ve weighed over nine tons.

Larson, also in a phone interview, recounts the moment of the discovery. Hendrickson came running to their camp with a couple of small bones she had picked up at the bottom of a cliff a short distance away. “I instantly recognized the bones as belonging to a theropod. From the contours I knew it was from a T Rex,” says Larson.

Shortly after the bones were excavated they were seized by the feds, setting off a complicated decade-long series of trials between Larson and the government. Along the way the FBI, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, among other government agencies, as well as the landowner on whose property Sue was found were all involved in the legal proceedings. The end result was Larson spending 18 months in prison on a technicality.

“Larson was by far the most open of all the people I had met in regards to his digs,” says Miller. Usually when you contact geologist on digs they meet you in a town nearby their dig and then transport you there. “They don’t like to give out GPS positions,” says Miller. Of course at the time of Sue’s discovery GPS was not widely used, which accounts for some of the confusion as to the actual location. To add insult to injury Larson had paid the landowner $5-thousand, which they later denied receiving. After the court case came to a close that landowner was awarded custody of Sue and later sold the bones at a Sotheby’s auction for over $8-million.hero_Dinosaur13-2014-1

“Dinosaur 13” explains all the complicated legal maneuvering in the manner of a narrative procedural. Additionally, the movie digs into the methods used by field paleontologists. “The initial removal of the bones is done by hand using small knives, picks and shovels,” explains Larson. The bones are then moved in blocks using a combination of plaster casts, cables, pull blocks and plywood sheets. “The fine work of removing the soil and brushing away dirt is done in the lab.”

Miller gives “Dinosaur 13” a solid cinematic look. The very opening of the film takes in the stars above and what lies in the soil below and the millions of years between them and us. Miller follows with a jib-shot, a boom device that allows the camera to obtain high angles, which floats over the edge of a cliff and thrusts the viewer into open space. Once Miller hooked up with Larson he obtained over 300 hours of video footage that Larson’s team had digitized, some of which ends up in the film.

“Dinosaur 13” is currently in rotation on the Wortham Giant Screen Theatre at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. One of the film’s distributor’s CNN Films will broadcast the documentary in upcoming months. “Dinosaur 13” is as entertaining and informative a documentary to appear theatrically this year.

This Saturday, September 27 (7 pm.) both Todd Miller and Peter Larson, along with members of the film crew, will appear at the HMNS, and participate in a Q&A following the screening.

— Michael Bergeron