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Article for: The Davis Enterprise
Date: January 16, 2004
Author: Leslie Madsen

CELEBRATED FOSSIL HUNTER TALKS IN DAVIS ON TUESDAY

Many of us have marveled at the fierce reptiles of the Jurassic Park movies, and subsequently had nightmares about dinosaurs invading our urban spaces.

We could comfort ourselves, however, with the understanding that dinosaurs inhabited other places in the American West, and were unlikely to be resurrected in Northern California because there was little evidence that dinosaurs ever roamed here. The tyrannosaurs of our night terrors were safely ensconced in the soil of Colorado, Montana, and Wyoming. Dinosaurs? In California? Bah!

Enter Richard Hilton, a geology professor at Sierra College. Hilton, dubbed by one museum as "Northern California's premier fossil hunter," has spent his career chronicling the reptilian life of Mesozoic California. Hilton has uncovered the remains of dinosaurs along the Pacific Coast.

Hilton will discuss dinosaurs and other Mesozoic reptiles of California in a lecture this Tuesday at the Davis Branch Library. The free talk is part of Explorit Science Center's Cutting Edge of Science Lecture Series, and is sponsored by Novozymes Biotech.

During the Mesozoic era, which stretched from approximately 225 to 65 billion years ago, California's coastline was very different from what it is today; it extended much farther inland, and its primary feature was a range of volcanic mountains. According to work by one of Hilton's Sierra College colleagues, Frank DeCourten, a few dinosaurs may have lived in forests high in these mountains, but probably preferred the few level spots-areas covered with vegetation fed by rain and by the water rushing from the slopes of the volcanoes-between the volcanoes and the sea.

Any reptiles that lived and died along the shores of Mesozoic California were likely to have their bodies washed out to sea, where they decomposed and were torn apart by marine predators. As a result, the reptilian fossils found in California are few and far between, and tend to be fragments of a specimen, rather than its entire skeleton.

Hilton found the fossilized fragments of what is to date California's earliest dinosaur-a bipedal reptile from about 115 million years ago-in ancient marine sediments in Shasta County. These same sediments have preserved the remains of much early marine life, which is what originally drew Hilton to the area known to geologists as the Budden Canyon Formation.

In addition to the Shasta County specimens, California dinosaurs have been discovered in Fresno County, near San Diego, and in Riverside County. In his lecture, Hilton will not only talk about these Mesozoic reptiles, but also tell the story of the 20th-century discoverers of these remains-a narrative he also shares in his book Dinosaurs and Other Mesozoic Reptiles of California, which was published last August. 

"Just as interesting as these prehistoric creatures," Hilton said, "is the rich story of the work and adventure involved in the discovery, preparation, and publishing of the finds. There are folks from all walks of life and all levels of education."

Among the people contributing to research on the Mesozoic, Hilton explained, are not only scientists, but also preparators, teachers, students, ranchers, weekend fossil hunters, and illustrators. Hilton will illustrate his lecture with slides of some of these people and their discoveries.

Hilton's talk begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Blanchard Room of the Davis Branch Library, 315 E. 14th St.

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Explorit Science Center is at 3141 5th Street in East Davis. The current exhibition is "Get a Clue! Solving Mysteries with Science," which continues through Mar. 7. Public hours are Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Tuesday through Friday from 2 to 4:30 p.m. For more information, visit www.explorit.org or call Explorit at (530) 756-0191.