Volunteers needed to aid paleontologists

When she started with the museum 13 years ago, the classes had not yet started. "I trained on the job ... It took me a couple of years." Now training can be completed in a matter of weeks.

As a member of the club of amateur paleontologists called the Utah Friends of Paleontology, she acts as an aide to the professionals.

"We go out into the field, and survey and find bones and dig them, and then we bring them to the lab and prepare them," she said. "We're working all the time with the professionals and the graduate students, and it's a very interesting group of volunteers as well."

Presently she's finishing preparing the skull of a hadrosaur, a duckbill dinosaur. The fossil has "a lot of skin impressions," a rare discovery, and skin looks like a lizard's, with "little circles, little bumps.

"This skull is very unusual in that there was the neck attached to it," she said.

"It's kind of like treasure hunting," Walkington added, "because it's all encased in rock, and you don't know exactly what you get until you uncover it."

Those who are interested should visit the museum Wednesday.

---

E-mail: bau@desnews.com