Alligator Online
By NOEL SANCHEZ
Every summer, Bob Boscarelli embarks on a treasure hunt in Wyoming.
The treasures are dinosaur fossils, and the hunt involves digging in extremely dry, 100-degree weather.
Boscarelli, a former UF student, has been participating in digs in Shell, Wyo., each summer for the past four years with a team of three or four volunteers under paleontologist Bob Simon.
"It's not glamorous, but sticking a knife in the ground and hitting a bone or tooth makes it worthwhile," Boscarelli said.
This summer has been a good one for discoveries. On June 3, the team found a nearly complete Camarasaurus, an herbivore that lived in the late Jurassic Period more than 100 million years ago.
More than 90 percent of the dinosaur has been found with just a couple feet of the tail missing, Boscarelli said.
He said he expects the digging to be finished in the next few weeks, and then the fossils will be preserved and sold to a museum.
It was found in "living position," which means it was not torn apart after death by predators or other disturbances, he said.
Although the Camarasaurus is not an uncommon dinosaur, finding the entire skeleton is quite rare, said Paul Ciesielski, a UF paleontology professor.
"Any time you find a specimen that is complete, they're significant to science," he said.
Having a small population of complete dinosaurs gives scientists insight into information such as growth rates and differences between males and females, Ciesielski said.
This is not Boscarelli's first time digging up a full skeleton. In 2004 he had the opportunity to help unearth a 15-foot-long Stegosaurus named Sarah.
"It was one of the most complete ever found," he said. "Most of the time you find pieces and parts."
Boscarelli's hobby involves extensive excavation. Workers use a track hoe to dig 30 feet below the surface. Then they use hunting knives to dig right above the bone and smaller instruments, such as knives, screwdrivers and hammers, for the finer details. Boscarelli sometimes asks his dentist for used dental picks for the job.
"If it's a hobby, it's a pretty intense hobby," he said. "It's my avocation."
Boscarelli described his experience with the two dinosaurs as "living a dream."
It is a dream realized later in life. Although he studied geology at UF from 1974 to 1979, Boscarelli never finished his degree after the death of his brother, he said.
He always retained his interest, however. He took his family on vacations to geology sites where they could look for rocks together, and he keeps a collection of small fossils he has found, such as teeth, he said.
He joined the paleontology team about four years ago when Simon asked for volunteers on an online message board.
Boscarelli now lives in Soquel, Calif., and when he isn't digging up "world-class dinos," he works in the lab of a physician's office and fixes computers, he said.
Boscarelli, who considers himself a Gator at heart, still keeps in touch with friends from college. Some of them even visited him on a dig in 2004 wearing their UF geology shirts, he said.
"They're jealous that I get to do the dinosaur stuff," he said. "But they're supportive."
He considers himself lucky to be able to do what he loves for fun and to see something that no one else has seen for millions of years.
"I liked dinosaurs since I was a kid," he said. "Guess I never grew up."