You're listening to Weird and Dead.
I'm Meaghan Wetherell. And I'm Amy Atwater, and today
we are pivoting from our normal content and pace to talk about
something a lot more serious than paleontology.
We're talking about the Epstein files, paleontology, and the
unfortunate fact that those two things are currently connected.
This is a pretty serious episode and we want our listeners to
take care, so here are the content warnings.
We are talking about sexual harassment and assault, and we
do give specifics, both our own and those that other people have
given us permission to talk about for them.
We are talking about pedophilia in the general sense of the
Epstein files, but not specific incidences.
We talk about a continued frustrating resistance to action
that permeates the scientific community and specific
organizations, and how that can continue to harm paleontology
and paleontologists. Having dealt with this stuff for
over a decade, we have some coping mechanisms that might
seem a little unusual or jarring, including sarcasm,
joking, and inappropriate laughter.
We also talk about dissociation and other ways that our bodies
have dealt with these topics over time, so please listen with
care. OK, so here we are.
Right. Well.
Two paleontologists with drinks in their hands.
With with drinks I made it through dry January and
February. I'm like Nope, I did good so I
don't have to be perfect. We're here to talk to you about.
This this the. Epstein files.
And paleontology. Who would have thunk it?
Shockingly related. Grossly related.
Unfortunately related. No other jokes about being
related. No, no, I mean honestly, that
would be the lesser crime at this.
I'm off to a bat. We don't know.
We were not there.
We're going to say this a lot. So we do Weird and Dead.
Obviously the podcast folks are listening to.
We have a lot of fun doing this, but this is not the first time
that you and I have been Co collaborators on science
communication projects, right? This is our current project.
However, back in 2012 when you started.
Yeah, I know we're old. Back when you started your
graduate program at University of Oregon, where I was finishing
up my undergrad. We lived together and we started
our blog, Mary Anning's Revenge, which really, I mean, still had
our same ridiculous sense of humor.
Remember when we were trying to find, like, they were trying to
find women to carry a Neanderthal embryo and we just,
like, took pictures of our butts and we were like, hey.
Yeah, exact same horrible sense of humor.
Yeah. And also we largely talked
about, you know, Mary Anning's revenge, Mary Anning, a famous
paleontologist, but never got her due credit then or now
really. And the whole point was standing
up and speaking to issues that face all that face all people,
but especially under represented voices in the sciences, such as
being a woman in paleontology. And we were both dealing with
different aspects of that and brought our sense of humor to
it. But it also got really fucking
depressing and. It's a bummer.
I like to think of it as paleontologists and geologists
weren't nice to Mary Anning, and so now you have to fucking deal
with us. Yeah, we could have been so nice
and so happy if this problem got fixed over a century ago, but it
didn't. And as a result, yeah, our blog,
we spent a lot of time talking about cool dead stuff, the same
sort of stuff we do now about weird paleontology art that we
were making. There was a very long section
dedicated to Jello shots and Paleo salty.
Cupcakes, you made the Grand Canyon of Jello shots.
Yeah, it was out of alcoholic jello.
So cool. But also, I think when we had
talked about it, I recall that we were really more interested
in also talking very strongly about some of the issues that we
were facing and some of the issues we knew that our friends
were facing and talking about some of the research behind bias
of various kinds in paleontology and geology.
But that is stuff that is God. It is hard to be bogged down and
for forever. So when we started this podcast,
we were like, well, if it comes up, we'll talk about it.
We'll do a special episode. Epstein file.
Right. I think we were like, I think
I've been like, we'll take a more subtle approach.
This is not subtle. This is not gonna be subtle.
I'm pissed off, we're pissed off, we're pissed off, I'm
pissed off. And I have felt ever since I got
this news, which you were the first one to text me, and now
since then about 12 other people have reached out to me with this
news. I have felt like really elevated
and stressed out and like trouble sleeping and feeling
like, hey, I don't want to go back down that road where we
were so bogged down with these depressing numbers and figures
and data. And I feel a sense of
responsibility and I feel like I, I, I have tangential stories
and experiences, experiences to this topic that I haven't really
publicly talked about because I've been very afraid of
blowback and being accused of hearsay and the whisper nest
network, which is largely what the only fucking thing we have
to warn each other, which has been notoriously frustrating.
And we're going to talk a lot about that today.
You know, I reached out to some, some friends of mine who are not
even in paleontology, reached out to me and was like, what the
fuck? And I was like, dude, look at
the shit I found when I worked at that museum.
And they were like, you have to say something.
And I was like, OK, all right, So yeah, we're not here to,
like, label anyone or point fingers or do any accusations of
any sort. But we're going to let y'all
know what's been going on in the field of paleontology right now,
some of the different components going on with that and some of
our own personal experiences that are relevant.
And maybe we'll tell some jokes, maybe not so.
We'll probably laugh inappropriately because that's
our stress response. Yeah.
And so here we go. Yeah.
I mean, Jack Horner, famous paleontologist, is in the
Epstein files, and that came to light this weekend.
Many e-mail communications spanning many years, multiple
years of this. So you were the one who told me
about it. So how did you hear about it?
Group chat. Yeah, I have a group chat with a
bunch of the ladies that go to the Western Science Center
conference, which is the only conference that I go to now
because of some of the reasons we will discuss today.
It's one of the few conferences where I feel safe.
And yeah, so of course, that's also the group chat where I
think earlier that day I told them that I found a pair of
testicles in the field because the sheep.
Losing their testicles? My God, that's not like
legitimate testicles. I thought you meant like the end
of a femur or something like that.
No, I'm. Sorry, I thought that I talked
to you about this so frequently that I didn't bother to send you
a picture. That's my mistake.
Next time there's we have 3 bummer lambs that are boys.
One of them's already lost his balls.
When the next two go, I'll send you some photos of it just for.
You. Anyway, so like, that's the
normal stuff that we talk about, right?
Yeah. The group chat was like, Oh my
God, Jack Horner is in the Epstein files.
So then I went and looked it up because you can technically be
in the Epstein files, and that's not bad.
For example, I don't like Don Prothero.
He does not like me. I Googled his name in the
Epstein files. It's like, come on, come on.
No, no, He's got many other problems.
He is mentioned twice, but he's mentioned because he was part of
a skeptics conference that Jeffrey Epstein was stoked
about, right. So Jeffrey Epstein for a lot of
various reasons that we will probably not talk about, was
into science and scientists. So sometimes you do just show up
because he was stoked about it. That's not we're neither of us
are in the Epstein files like that's.
Not a thing I should. Have I did.
I'll look for you. You're not, I thought.
Maybe find some juicy gossip of like Jack Horner being like God
that eat me out water. She sucks.
Nope, nothing. I don't know.
Yeah, never mind. I don't know how he felt about
me. He does know who I am, and I
don't love that. But anyway.
So for the few folks who may not know who Jack Horner is, I mean,
this is he is by far, in a way, the most well known person in
paleontology, and it's been that way for a couple decades.
Yeah, pressing. Yeah, yeah, Yep.
So he is really mostly famous because he served as the
technical advisor for the first whatever, however many number
like first five Jurassic Park films.
And supposedly he served as at least partial inspiration for
the lead character, Doctor Alan Grant.
A lot of folks since seeing this connection have said that the
intro to that movie, which I don't really know Jurassic Park,
neither of us are Jurassic Park paleontologist.
So like, I don't know it by heart, but apparently that makes
the beginning of the movie even, like, creepier.
But I don't It does. Yeah.
Why? When we start, OK, we'll get
funding stuff. I think we can bring that up
because I'm not a huge Jurassic Park fan, but I do really like
the first movie. It scared the shit out of me.
It's great. I had nightmares about Raptors
for most of my childhood. But yeah, there are some some
interesting aspects of the way that those projects are funded.
And apparently I honestly like, I don't see a lot of Jack Horner
in Alan Grant. I think that that's a story that
maybe someone made-up to make Jack Horner feel better about
himself. The one place I do see it is
taking funding from bad sources, because that happens in the
movie. And admittedly that source gets
eaten in the movie. But like, I guess Jeffrey
Epstein did die. Oh my.
God, see, here she goes. It's.
Perfect parallels. Still, would it be better to be
the the lawyer right getting eaten on the on the shitter?
On the on the loo. Right.
Yeah. And I mean, is Alan Grant's
character. I'm so sorry, guys.
This is like some people will think I shouldn't be.
My whole point is, you don't have to fucking like these
movies to be a paleontologist, but I don't know them.
Aren't the Paleobotanist, the chick and Doctor Alan Grant like
an item even though it's like, are they together?
I think technically they're not together.
They are, which actually is one of my.
I love that that's the case, that you can have two
paleontologists who aren't fucking married.
She's a paleo botanist. He's a paleontologist, and
they're working together on the same project.
I think she's technically, like, his postdoc.
Oh, OK Grad student. OK.
Which does not make sense if she's studying leaves.
But like, still, it is not a romantic relationship between
the two of them. Yeah.
Welcome to our review of the Epstein files and Jurassic.
Amy does not really remember, so that's the big reason that Jack
is famous. He's also very well known
because of his research, which I want to talk about as well at
some point. You know, he gets a lot of
credit for discovering Maiasaura, the good mother
lizard. Also, with that went the
parental care hypothesis. So the idea that dinosaurs
actually did care for their young.
I will show you with citations that that is fucking bullshit.
He did not discover Maiasaura at all.
A woman named Marion Brandvold discovered Maiasaura and he took
those eggs and he described them and he came up with the name
Maiasaura. And then she had to sue him to
get those fucking fossils back. It took over like, I think it
took like 20-40 years, like many decades that she had to sue
multiple institutions to get those eggs back up to Bynum and
where Egg Mountain, this site famously is.
So again, like we can dive it. I want to dive into more of his
research. But you know, he, he's, he's
given a lot of credit that when you start to dig into it, you
see that it's a bit of smoke and mirrors.
And he's, I've always, you know, I give credit where credit is
due. I admire a con man.
You know, I'm not saying that he is not saying that.
I'm saying in my personal history, I admire charisma.
I'm not going to lie. However, you have to do good
with said not saying he did it anyway.
He's very good at getting credit for things that when you again,
start to dissect it a little bit more, it's a little more
complicated than that. And he's also very famous for
marrying a 19 year old undergraduate student of his at
Montana State University in 2012 when he was in his late 60s.
I think it was. Yeah.
It's. 65 I think. Yes, so that made a lot of news.
The photos were interesting. Very disturbing.
I saw someone on Reddit discard this.
Like, who is this Benjamin Franklin motherfucker doing with
this this like beautiful woman? It's just like who does Jack
Jack Order has has made the scullet as infamous as you can.
Yeah, he. It's true.
That is 1 defining characteristic of that
generation of paleontologists is the scullet.
And you can have that on the record as facts.
I don't care. That's not hearsay, that's
facts. You go to a conference with
aging paleontologists, you see 1000 mullets, and you see
inappropriate use of cowboy boots.
Oh my God, I've seen a fucking leather whip at SVP and I'm just
like, I have as well. And these I mean folks,
literally it's usually fanboys and they're dressed in all
leather. I don't know why.
I don't know. I've never done paleontology and
leather. I've never worn the leather
vests. I've never but they follow
their. Gloves.
Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, I've used like a leather
belt. Like a hobo.
Right. Well, it's Paleo, but people
like, he'd have like crowds follow him at these meetings
Like they're in. They're usually younger,
usually, usually men who are all dressed like Indiana Jones.
I'm just, I'm like, that's an archaeologist.
I'm so confused. Yeah, straight up leather.
I know you guys are making the problem worse.
Serious, but yeah, he's. The problem of being confused
for archaeologists, of course. That problem, That's really what
we're here to talk about today. The serious shit.
We're not fucking archaeologists.
So get oh, do we have that photo?
I want to we should look at the Vanessa.
Do we have to? Yes, because this one, this is
not just for us. We've seen it but but that's
their wedding photo. OK, Yep, I remember that.
Yep, Yep. I mean, I wasn't there, but I
remember seeing this photo. Well, if you recall Meaghan this
they got married in January of 2012.
SVP, the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology conference in 2011
was at was in Vegas. Some folks have said that it
happened at the conference, but the record state that doesn't
look like they officially got married until January of 2012.
Yeah, I had also heard that they'd gotten married at SVP in
October, but. And maybe they took this
picture. I don't know.
I don't know, you know. I mean, the timing doesn't
matter. They got married in 2012.
So my God, this, this picture is literally on Google.
The first one that pops up is caption Ben Franklin marries
Snooki. I'm sorry Vanessa, you don't
deserve that. You were.
You don't look like Snooki. No.
Jack does look like Ben Franklin.
Jack Ben Franklin died and then was resurrected.
Looks kind of like he's melting. Look, I think that's maybe the
pixelation here, but like all the same.
Oh God, I don't know if I should tell the joke that I know I
made. I know exactly where I was when
we heard that Jack married Vanessa.
Were he measuring things? Probably I was.
In no, that would have been an SVP.
Right. Yeah, I was going to say that's
what we were doing. Let's not, let's not talk about
that. I remember because I was working
in Edwards office. That's where I had my little
desk. This is my undergrad advisor,
your PhD advisor. And he was like, Oh my God, he
married that 19 year old and I was 20 at the time.
And I like I remember immediately going Shuck.
So I'm too old for him. That was my response.
So I mean, it was like notoriously like we all thought
it was creepy. And I want to say like no one
was accusing them of any like wrongdoing, or at least that's
it. No, we all thought it was gross
because I'm sorry, in my opinion, it's fucking gross.
But you know, she's an adult and they decided to to do this and.
She's an adult, she can be into zombies.
Like it doesn't, you know, it's not.
Nothing of what they did is illegal.
And I don't think it's immoral either, necessarily, without
knowing significantly more details than I do.
Sure. So that's it.
But it was weird. It's weird, it's weird.
And I guess she wasn't his student.
She was a student in his lab. Yeah, she took a class which.
Seems like a fine scale distinction.
Yeah. Yeah.
So she had been his student, but wasn't at that.
Listen guys, you can date students.
Wouldn't recommend it, wouldn't recommend it.
But you can. They're talk to HR.
Talk to HR and if it is genuinely true love, talk to HR
and they'll help you figure out a path where it's not weird and
gross. And also wait.
Wait till they graduate. Just wait.
And he says and you this is you know, this is in People magazine
and all around that he he married her as a bit of a my
interpretation, a fuck you to his his institution museum
Rockies at Montana State University.
Don't do that. That's not a great way of
approaching it. Right.
And he claims that marrying her is what led to him being pushed
out of Museum of the Rockies, where he retired in 2016 and
claimed and went to media sources saying it was
essentially A conspiracy and that the executive director and
the director of paleontology who were married, we're forcing him
out. And I've got some stories about
them if we have time. Didn't he get divorced in 2016
as. Well, I mean, we don't know, but
the timing would indicate that it was it was performative.
He calls himself like a, you know, contrarian like that.
He like, he's a rebel. I was.
I spent my evening last night going through his Instagram,
which was depressing as all fuck.
And yeah, I love it when, like old white men in positions of
power are like, I just always go against the grain and I'm like,
I'm a rebel. And I'm like, on what fucking
planet are? You going against what?
Like he's like, I challenge authority and I'm like, how, how
do marrying a 19 year old that's the most fucking like midlife
crisis or like past midlife crisis thing that you can do?
That's not that's not challenging.
Classics, right, dude? That's classical, dude.
But isn't it classical dude to also think doing that is is the
challenge? Like they don't get it, the
self-awareness. Is radical.
I'm not going to say anything about my own father in that, but
he has some of these traits that are also interesting.
So, yeah, I mean, we'll probably touch on the Vanessa side of
things. She still is somewhat involved
in paleontology. Oh yeah, no, she's she's working
as a paleontologist. Yeah.
So, yeah, I've heard it's been, you know, through the Grapevine,
I've heard things have been bumpy and things have been, you
know, interesting. I can't confirm any of those
details I heard from my. That's also paleontology, right?
Who doesn't have a bumpy career path in Paleo?
But so I worked at Museum of the Rockies.
One of the reasons I feel passionate about doing this is
to to cleanse my soul of that. Yeah.
And to just be transparent about it.
Because he was gone by the time that you were there.
When did you start working at the Museum of the Rockies?
I started working at Museum of the Rockies on like November 4th
or 6th of 2017. He retired, yeah, in 2016 I
think. Like the spring, summer of 2016.
And yeah, I can talk about what I was told literally during my
interview. I guess what I can say is from
everything I've known and heard when I saw that he was in the
Epstein files. I, like many others, were not in
the least bit surprised. I mean, I was surprised because
it feels like a a worse level of stuff, like just the implication
of being in the Epstein files, not anything he necessarily did
in the Epstein files. But if I had to pick a
paleontologist that I thought was going to be in the Epstein
files, yeah, it would, it would have been Jack Korner.
Yeah. And then but.
Yeah, you know what? That is the name.
I was hanging out with Josh Lively this weekend at Dino
Fest, and when I told him he's like, yeah, just like, and I was
like, hey, I was on that investigation too.
I've been a part of three campus investigations about luckily, I
mean, luckily I can't, you know, I'm not going to speak for you
on this, but luckily I was not a direct victim of any of these.
Well, that's not true. One of them, I was two of them,
University of Oregon, I was more of a witness.
University of Texas, I was more of a witness when it happened at
Montana State University. I was one of the victims there.
So yeah, I've been a part of like three of these
investigations and they are not fun.
They are not. Fun.
No, I have also been a part of these investigations.
I have been part of these investigations through the
private sector. Then I was part of the
investigations at University of Oregon.
And yeah, it's, I mean, it's not fun to be a victim of sexual
harassment and assault, but it's also not fun to have to talk to
people about it. That's.
And they make it deliberately challenging to do so.
And I'm saying they, I went through pregnancy discrimination
at the USGS and I had to fight tooth and nail.
And even though the system was in place, being the federal
government, all of the hoops and obstacles that they put on me
within time limits and details and how much time and making me
repeat the same stories like 5 or 6 times to different people
who are. It's like it takes every little
bit out of you. It's a huge time suck.
It reopens every single the worst things that have ever
happened to you, they want you to describe in the most bland
detail over and over again to all.
These multiple times because they want to make sure you're
not lying. They want to make sure that
you're telling the same story over and over again and what a
way to relive the traumatizing event.
Yep. Over and over and over again,
yeah. Yeah.
And so folks are just like, oh, well, people didn't report it.
And it's like, well, First off, a lot of people do report.
And we're going to talk about that in the context of the
Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.
And we we can't talk about that without addressing the fact that
the reporting process is notoriously problematic.
And this is well documented. We're not the only ones who've
who see this and understand this.
This is this is relatively well known.
So it's complicated. And I was luckily never an
investigation involved with anything with Jack because
again, I started working at. Museum.
Movies a year. We're talking about completely
other people because that's how fucking pervasive this.
Unfortunately, yeah. I mean, on one hand, I mean, I
was, I was just in front of Jim Kirkland and I was like Greg
Retallack, Don Prothero, you know, like, and he was like,
whoa, whoa. I had no idea.
And I'm like, what a fucking privilege.
Well, how nice that you don't have to hear about what young
women tell me about that. What?
When I oh, yeah. I mean, we're going to bleep all
these names just. I think we cannot bleep Greg
Retallack. I think maybe it's time to
that's what I was a part of at University of Oregon is after
years of sexual harassment, he groped my boob.
At a party, like, at a fucking like, it's like a department
event, yes. And I just remembered during the
like this has happened, not that specific event, but like that
sort of shit has happened to me. It's happened to you multiple
times to the extent where now I fully dissociate when things
like that happen to me. Which made it even worse when I
was trying to give testimony because I just remember like at
one point looking at my e-mail inbox after they'd started the
investigation and seeing 2 emails in a row.
And one of them was from a mom who wanted me to talk to her
daughter about becoming a scientist.
And the next was from HR at University of Oregon asking me
to confirm the dates on an event that I had already told them.
I was so dissociated. I can tell you vaguely what
happened. I cannot tell you when I can't
tell you what time. Like I don't.
You have to like, I don't know. I was out of it.
I was a fucking zombie. I was out of you were
protecting. Yourself, yeah, you were going
into fight or flight and shutting down to just be able to
get through, which means your memory is going to be not as at
its best. But that's like part of being a
woman in STEM, I feel like, is that disconnect where everyone
wants to get more women in STEM, and for what?
So the right, right, we don't want to actually protect the
ones that are already in STEM, which would make it safe for
more people to join STEM. Yeah, and I remember.
Although you and I have a good success rate.
And we might have to, I mean, I don't know, he got himself fired
and like, yeah, what he did to me was fucked up.
But that was actually not even I think what got him in the end.
He was well known for just really some sketchy, some
sketchy shit that he was pulling.
But I do remember when HR was they had a climate survey and
they were talking about like, OK, so what's it like?
Like, what's like? And I was like, Oh, well, he
gets like crazy drunk. Like he makes let's go to his
Country Club, which for every like, staff related workshop or
dinner or meeting, Lord knows the number of times I was at
that Country Club. And he would get fucking
plastered. I mean, this man, I've never
seen someone drink. Like this guy would drink.
And then he'd get handsy and then he would give us these long
hugs and sloppy kisses on our cheeks.
And I remember when I was telling HR about that and
they're like, well, yeah, but did he grab you?
And I was like, are you asking if he like, literally put his
hands on my ass or my tits? Like, no, he just kissed my face
drunkenly and they were like oh OK.
And I was like what the fuck? Like, Oh my.
God, Oh my God. OK, so that's chill.
I mean, it is Montana. Everyone has a drinking problem
in Montana, so. I don't get like that when I
drunk. I go to sleep so or I play hide
and seek and don't tell people that we're playing, which just
means I run away. It's called an Irish exit.
Megan problems. I'd like that too.
I would just disappear. Yeah or yeah, I just yeah, yeah.
Take a long bath. Yeah, we just start.
Yeah. We're built from different
stocks. So let's chat about what is
with, right? Let's get back.
To Anyway, so Jack Horner is in the Epstein files.
It isn't just one correspondence.
In fact, let's see on Reddit, Benjamin Molar, who is also on
Blue Sky, put together a timeline of Jack Horner and the
Jeffrey Epstein contact based on the Department of Justice newest
release where he said he goes through about 100 or 470 Epstein
files and looking for things for Jack Horner, his MSU e-mail
address or the phrase Dino Chicken.
And then like sites, a bunch of them.
The one that has been cited the most.
So a lot of the Montana newspapers have picked this up.
And the thing that has been cited the most is that Jack went
to visit Epstein on his ranch in New Mexico.
We see the tickets. There's a confirmed that they're
paid for and we can see the names, everything.
Jack definitely went. Jack has said he went, he's made
a statement. He has confirmed that he did go.
And in that e-mail, thanking Jeff Epstein, he refers to
spending time with you and the girls, and he consistently
refers to it to as you and the girls.
And he ends his e-mail on September 1st, 2012 with please
give all the girls my very best wishes and to you whom I envy,
thanks again, Jack. Yep.
So he claims in his statement that I think you have the
screenshot. Of I did Google this because I
don't know very much about Jeffrey Epstein other than, you
know, like the biggest news headline.
No, they don't have kids. Or maybe they have a secret
baby, but that's not like, oh, your daughters.
Yeah, congratulations on your daughters.
Well, well, I think it's even. I think it's really worse.
Than Jack's statement that he says yes, I went there and he
says there were four female students who I regret referring
to as the girls. So now many, many years later,
14 years later, 413 1/2 years later, he is claiming they're
actually, they were actually students, but we don't have.
He's claiming they're college students.
Yeah, who were introduced to me as college students, two of whom
claimed to be adept in genetics. Which is?
That's from his statement posted on February 5th.
On Facebook, right? Which is when we're filming
this. And yeah, I mean, it sounds like
there was some interest in. I knew I wasn't surprised at all
that Jack's explanation started with how hard it is to get
funding in the sciences. I predicted that that would be
his excuse is that he was just trying to find funding and
scientific funding is so hard to come by.
You just have to just bleed the beast and get the funds where
you can because it's. I literally write grants for a
living. I've raised almost 750,000
fucking dollars this year on an exhibit.
So I'm sorry. I feel really good about all the
foundations and organizations I have worked with to make that
happen. So I'm not the right person to
be like, oh, it's so hard. You and I have both been awarded
NSF grants. You can get funding to do your
science if it's good science. I mean, at least in my
experience. That's my opinion.
Yeah, so maybe we should talk about the link to Alan Grant.
So Alan Grant, fictional person, Jurassic Park, the way that
Jurassic Park. This is a review of Jurassic
Park for Amy Allen, who does not remember the crowd and fucking
crowd. Yeah, the movie starts with the
crazy benefactor flying a helicopter into the dig where
they are using technology that does not exist to view a
dinosaur under the ground. Dad, I have used the real
version of that technology and it does not look like that.
Way harder to interpret. The one thing I do know is it's
a velociraptor specimen and they're in Montana.
Suck my Dick. That's a Mongolian taxon.
Come on. I mean, I've used that sort of
like ground penetrating radar. It's still hard to identify
pipes, let alone a velociraptor. So anyways, flies in, does some
fake science, and he basically informs the two paleontologists
that he's willing to fund them for an amount that I think it
was like 100 grand, which seemed insane in the 90s, but now it's
like that's a year. So.
But as long as they just come to his park where people end up
getting spoiler alert for Jurassic Park.
And killed. Look at that.
That part I know. His island today, Oh my God, a
wealthy benefactor flies in and promises the money if they come
to his fucking island. Jack Horner, we don't know if he
went to Jeffrey Epstein's island.
We just know that he. Went we are not saying anything.
We are just presenting this curious evidence for every
person to make their own decision and connection to.
But great, wonderful. Yeah, OK.
And it's all this like genetic modification and engineering,
which I've heard that Jeffrey Epstein was very interested in.
I think a lot of this starts to get really close to a eugenics
kind of argument, which is. Oh, not close, but right.
Yeah. Yeah.
So Jack Horner is not the only person mentioned.
I mean obviously not the only person mentioned in the Epstein
files. He's also he's just paleo.
He's not our pony. Scientist mentioned in the
Epstein files, He's not the only paleontologist mentioned in the
Epstein files, but what he is mentioned for quite a lot is
this chicken asaurus project. And when you look at like,
Jeffrey Epstein's interactions with science, it seems very much
like a he had a very strong interest in science and
scientists, Like a lot of the emails where things like Don
Prothero popped up are just like conferences that it seemed like
maybe Jeffrey was interested in attending and watching or like
letting Jeffrey know that something was interesting.
Like it's not necessarily, you know, that that's scientist knew
that something was going. I think this is the case with
Neil Schumann is that he was invited to go do something and
he said no, Yeah. And that's why he's in the.
He's still in there, right. Yeah, right.
But like, it sounds like Jeffrey, in addition to curating
politicians, he also seemed to curate quite a lot of
scientists. And it sounds like part of that
is, you know, his interest in science, part of it is interest
in controlling people. I imagine that if you need
somebody to vouch for you, it probably looks better sometimes
if a scientist of some kind for you.
And part of it was that these rich motherfuckers all seem to
be really interested in eugenics.
And so a lot of that research was about genetics and
specifically getting at things like genetic programming.
And even then, Epstein did not fund Jack Horn.
Dino chicken. Dino Chicken.
Breast well, cuz he. Eventually gonna work.
But he did eventually pay $10,000 to the Conference of the
Rockies for a conference in which that was like some of the
topics, right? But there was someone who did
fund the Chickenosaurus project, which by the way, we just double
checked, doesn't seem like anything has actually come out
of the Chickenosaurus project. There's no publications.
Yeah. Oh, by the way, yeah.
To just explain the Dino chicken chickenosaurus, he's quite well
known for these pretty kooky ideas.
Or just, you know, again, he's a big personality whether or not
anyway he wants to essentially reverse engineer a chicken back
into AT Rex and he believes that this didn't possible.
Learn the lessons of Jurassic Park.
Right, right. And I've heard that even places
like Tyson and all these other chicken processing plants are
interested in some of this research because they do want to
make bigger chickens. Of course, has to eat.
Yeah, yeah, of course. Also fucked up SO.
So yeah, he had this project where he wanted to reverse
engineer a dinosaur out of a chicken.
It's called the chicken Asaurus. That's not like a derogatory
term. I think he even he uses it.
But it's a crazy project. Scientifically.
It sounds pointless and stupid, and that's my opinion.
But also probably it's fast. I think that's why he probably
couldn't get funding anywhere except right through Nathan
Myhrvold. I realized I didn't know how to
say his last name, but I decided that I was going to refuse to
look it up because guess who else is in the fucking Epstein
files? This dude Nathan Myhrvold.
Who is he used to work for Bill Gates.
He's like a big tech guy. Yeah, he then went in like
helped fund a whole lot of paleontology stuff, not just
Jack Horner stuff, but other people's stuff, too.
Also involved with Robert Reisz, who again, I don't want to, I
don't care to learn how to pronounce his fucking last name.
But the dude from Toronto who's a piece of shit, you can also
Google that. Problematic person, Yes.
Not one of the names we bleeped earlier because there's.
Lots. No, and that one has already
been public and is public knowledge, but not that anything
has been done about it as far as I know.
But yeah, this this other guy who has also then ended up being
a co-author on quite a lot of these paleontology papers.
I mean, he's paying for people to like go to Mongolia and stuff
and like dig up dinosaurs. And he is not only in the
Epstein files, he is in there despite his deny.
He denied, I guess, like before this last round of Epstein files
came out that like, oh, he had like met Jeffrey Epstein, but
they weren't close friends or whatever.
And then in the fall, Jeffrey Epstein's birthday book was
released. And I guess this birthday book
was like, just like a set of horrendous signatures and weird
letters to the known pervert and child molester Jeffrey Epstein.
And it was divided up into things like family, friends,
science and then like a couple other categories.
And Nathan was not in science. He was in friends.
Oh, and his letter, I do have a copy of it.
And yeah, like, it's, It's long. First off, I think it's longer
than Donald Trump's weird letter with the weird illustration of
the girl's body. It starts out with, I've
agonized long and hard about what to write for your birthday.
And then it goes into la, la, la, la, la, la, la.
A few years ago, somebody at a party asked me, does Jeffrey
Epstein manage your money? I replied no, but he advises me
on lifestyle. Eyes bugged out of his head.
And he said, really? So yeah, very funny, very funny,
right The. Things you choose.
To brag about. Yeah.
And you know, I'm, I didn't look too deep into it 'cause it was
just too depressing. But I wanted to know a little
bit more about this dude. I didn't know too much about him
because I don't study dinosaurs so I haven't been on projects
that would be funded by this guy.
Right. And I found an e-mail from
December 21st 2011 that says from Nathan Myhrvold to Jeffrey
Epstein. Are you on the island?
I am on the boat in the area and might be able to stop by in the
afternoon. Which implies to me that it's
real casual visiting Jeffrey's fucking notorious island.
So if. You're in the inner circle.
If you're in the inner circle, potentially, Hypothetically,
yeah. When was the birthday letter
written? Oh, I don't know.
Is there a date on this one? So no, I don't know.
That's where. Google it, we got it right like
we have to like for timeline wise.
So some folks might be saying too.
I mean, Jack's his other excuse besides the fact that he said it
was that they were students, not girls, and he was envious
because let's read fossils that they found on his layout.
Let's read his statement really fast.
Why don't I read that section? So he's got a long statement,
Jack Horner, because of course people have been calling him out
for several days now and he's got a long letter la da, da, da
da. But he says, and I feel like
this is a very important aspect, you know, the the files that
have been released show him corresponding with Jeffrey
Epstein in 2012. And 2016.
At least with someone from
Jeffrey's estate. Yes.
And so he says that I was aware he had been previously charged
with soliciting a prostitute and had served a sentence, but I was
not aware of any additional allegations.
Or I want to make it perfectly clear that I knew nothing more
than that exclamation point. No amount of money in the world
would have lured me to meet with a known sexual predator.
Exclamation point. So Jeffrey Epstein was not
convicted of prostitution of using finger codes here.
He was convicted of prostitution of a minor.
And Yep. That's in what year, Megan?
2000 and eight. 2000 and. 2008 when Jack was talking him to
2012. So you're so Jack just wasn't.
Oh wow. But Jackson just whoopsies,
missed the word. Which was all over the news, all
over the news when Jeffrey Epstein was convicted because he
went to prison for this, right? But right.
So Jack is saying he wasn't aware.
It was just yes, he knew he was doing sex crimes, just not with.
He just scared the headline components that said.
With a minor. Which listen, I I have some very
liberal feelings on the legality of prostitution, but sure,
Jeffrey Epstein's a really fucking rich man.
If he's going to prison for prostitution, it's not because
he was just visiting a nice lady.
You know, like that's and also if I am going to be talking to
someone that when I Google them, prostitution comes up, I'm going
to do some fucking digging and I was alive in 2008.
I was graduating college. The Internet fucking existed.
You could Google this. This was not hidden information
were hard to. Find it.
Yes, it was very. It was very much out there.
It was very public and right to have knowledge that he was
soliciting a prostitute. It just like if you learned that
that would have been in the exact, I would suspect that that
would be in the exact same context of the fact that it is
with a minor with with a with a girl right here.
And what does he say about his use of the word girls in his
e-mail? Yeah, so he says.
I just, I really did the the. I love that you included the
exclamation points because I was like no bro, this is not the
place. Like this is not the time.
Those present beside the ranch manager and his wife included
Epstein, a chef, Epstein's secretary, and four women who
were introduced to me as college students, two of whom claimed to
be adept in genetics. There's nothing weird,
inappropriate or out of the ordinary.
So he's saying that the girls that he's referencing are just
these women. College.
Students And later in Jack's response, he says, I now
understand the students may have been victims of Epstein.
So, you know, make of that what you will.
I will say that I, you know, I, I did look through the Epstein
files for the words fossil and dinosaur.
And the things that primarily pop up are this series of
letters between him and Jack Horner.
And also some interviewing stuff where he was interviewing a
replacement personal assistant. And he was being told that he
should really interview this woman because in addition to
meeting the criteria, she also said she was interested in
fossils, exclamation point. So like Jeffrey, his recruitment
first scientists also extended to personal assistants I guess.
Right. And then I found it very
interesting in in Jack's reply about the just keep reading it
with the order of what happened that day.
I just found some of it to be such a like, I was just like,
OK, that's weird, but all right. So yeah, he meets him, he tries
to present and convince Epstein to fund his dumb chicken asaurus
idea. Epstein declined my request,
stating he was not persuaded of its feasibility, blah blah blah
blah. We had dinner and then everyone
scattered. Nothing weird or suspicious.
The next day I took an ATV and drove around the ranch looking
at the geology so I would be able to explain what they would
be looking at, which this was 2012.
Geologic maps did exist, but Rock D, which is a very fun
geologic map app, did not. So you know, I guess he had to
go look at things. Later in the day I took them out
fossil hunting in what I determined to be some near shore
estuarine Cretaceous sediments where he picked up some shells.
Other odds and ends later, Epstein LED us all to an igneous
Cliff that had petroglyphs on it.
And then they're gonna go look at a railroad bed.
They doesn't just tell us who they is.
Seem genuinely interested in the rocks, the fossils, and science
in general. I did not observe any behavior
that raised concerns. Feels like every passage ends
that way. Epstein and the students went
back to the house and I poked around some more rocks until the
ranch manager came to get me. That sounds like he was kicked
off the ranch. I was driven back to
Albuquerque. Once back in Bozeman, I sent a
brief e-mail thanking him and the students, the girls, for
allowing me to present my project and to explore the
ranch. The ranch was beautiful.
I told him how lucky he was to have Cretaceous sediments right
there where he could go out and collect fossils.
An envious situation in my opinion.
Do you think that's what he was envious about?
Amy was. I mean, we can read this, this
summary e-mail, right? Read this right.
I've given you pieces, but this is the letter that he's
referring to. Dear Jeffrey, Many thanks for
the invitation to your ranch. I had a great time, especially
spending time with you and the girls and seeing your Cretaceous
sediments in the old railroad. I don't get me too many chances
to spend time with non paleontologist or see things and
places like that these days. I talked to my postdocs and Co
Pi when I returned and got the scoop on the transgenic chicken
situation. For as you know, I was very
surprised to hear that such a thing existed since my Co
researchers were saying it didn't as it turns out.
Oh, there although there was such a thing, there's simply no
established protocol to create them and they are at present do
not pass on their characteristics, so in effect
are useless for our project. What it is that we need to do is
to be able to target a specific region of DNA and that
technology is not yet available in birds but is expected in
within a year or two. So within our time frame, we
hope someone else will do it first so that we can use it as
this technology. Homologous recombination of
technology, AKA knockout technology is essential to the
success of this project. We do not aim to generate
chickens that express any extraneous genes, a trans gene,
but we plan on finding the very small changes in the regulation
of existing genes that curb tail, hand and tooth
development. In order to make these small
changes in the chicken genome, homologous recombination
technology needs to be developed.
Anyway, this is the sort of stuff we will discuss in our
summit meeting. I very much appreciate your
considering of funding this meeting.
It is obviously the most important first step and I thank
you for suggesting we do it. Please give all the girls my
very best wishes and to you, whom I envy, thanks again, Jack.
OK, so he briefly says Cretaceous sediments in the
first paragraph, but they're not mentioned again when he says who
am I envy? So I mean, sure, OK.
Yeah, sure, totally. A famous dinosaur paleontologist
will envy clams having access to.
Clams a guy who has multiple sites that he runs in Montana
that are literally world famous for producing some of the
highest density of dinosaur fossils.
Man, who's in the? Entire multiple times.
A man who is been, I was told, hated turtles and a lot of other
marine things because they weren't dinosaurs, right?
And is claiming that yes, it was those Cretaceous clams.
OK, Nope, I'm not going to make a clam joke.
That's definitely with him. Literally considered the state
paleontologist of fucking Montana.
He was really envious of those Cretaceous invertebrates.
What else could there possibly be to be envious of with
Jeffrey? Oh, I mean literally, you know,
genuinely speaking, there are many other things, and I
wouldn't even say the pedophilia could have been the top of his
list, but like the money or anything else.
But regardless, the fact that his defense is that he's jealous
that the guy lives on a ranch with clams is dumb.
It's weird when you think about what Jack had access to and
where Jack grew up. Which?
Is. Western Montana and right, and
the fossils that Jack has focused on in his career.
And the fact is that he could have gone anywhere to work any
site at this point. I mean, he is a big name.
And so again, it's just like, OK, so you literally have all of
Montana paleontology, but you're going to turn around.
And I know for a fact that we have, you know, like bear paw
formation stuff and Western Interior Seaway stuff in
Montana. And as far as I know, like those
weren't worked as heavily as the Hell Creek, the Judith River,
the two medicine formation, you know, like the the ones that
were on his radar and were heavily worked are the dinosaur
bearing formations. So I mean, yeah, he did do some
stuff with marine reptiles as well.
And he's a Dino guy. That's that's what he's been.
He can't get Jeffrey Epstein to fund him.
Nope. But he can get Nathan Myhrvold
to fund him, who has funded his Chichenosaurus project.
Nothing has necessarily come of it.
But, you know, like being in the Epstein files is not necessarily
bad. He, you know, there's no obvious
and of like pedophilia. Like I think my opinion is that
these letters give me the creeps, but that's not
necessarily a crime, right? I'm also creeped out by fossils
sometimes. So like that's not necessarily a
crime. So SVP, the Society of
Vertebrate Paleontology has of course been receiving quite a
lot of messages about Epstein files, plus Jack Horner and the
fact that Jack Horner is still a member of the Society of
Vertebrate Paleontology, has gone to many conferences.
Was a awarded a prize in 2013. Yeah, the Romer Simpson Prize.
Simpson. Yep.
And there's been a lot of requests to maybe reconsider
giving him that, to at least ban him from future meetings.
And SVP's given us a response which is.
Yeah, they sure have. Yeah.
Classic SVP firing me to be here right now.
Is that response? Yep, and by response we mean
fucking non response as per usual.
So with these societies you have to understand that they are
they're clubs. They are legally just clubs.
They are not supported by private or public institutions.
They are groups of people. As we saw with Mary Anning, they
are historically allowed to exclude however the fuck they
want to exclude? Sure.
And in their charters. All of these clubs have rules
and those rules say things like you can't sexually harass
people, you can't make people super uncomfortable or endanger
them in the field. You can't do this, you can't do
that. And then they have these forms
to report things for when because you know, you can't know
every paleontologist, you can't know everything about everybody.
So they have these forms for you to fill out when there is a
problem so that they can go and look into it and then
subsequently potentially remove that person from the society and
make sure that especially if they're a safety hazard that
they can't come to future conferences because.
They're so good at that with. SVP, Yeah, yeah.
So SVP statement, do you have it in front of you?
Do you want to read? Some I got it to the members of
SVP. I am currently not and I've
never been more proud to not have an active membership.
We write to acknowledge the recent media coverage and the
public release of documents related to the Epstein
investigations, which has prompted questions with and
concerns within our own society. We are aware that names of some
SVP members have appeared in these materials.
At this time, we must emphasize that the appearance of a name or
even an e-mail in release document does not in itself
establish wrongdoing. Additionally, many references
remain unverified and or lack context.
We are closely monitoring developments.
Any responses by SVP will be thoughtful, fair, and consistent
with our bylines and ethics policies.
OK, I thought I was going to be able to do that without it and
I'm not OK. We are committed to the
principles of integrity due process.
Like I can't say this without laughing.
Due process and respect for all individuals because I've
experienced how they're not on other separate things.
As a view other such credible information emerge that warrants
action under our existing policies, we will address it
promptly and appropriately. Until then, we asked my members
rely on verified sources and refrain from speculating and
demanding action without due process.
Please note that the Ethics Committee does not disclose
information regarding the ethics investigations, including
findings or or sanctions. We appreciate your
professionalism and your trust in the society's leadership as
the situation unfolds. And this is my trust in the
SVP's leadership. Right, she's flipping off the
camera. Double bird, double bird.
I hear you guys really like bird evolution.
So. Here's a couple more.
Yeah, so that response is really bland and lackluster.
And if the only problem with Jack Horner was, OK, he had a
weird relationship with his student, which led to him being
forced out of his job, which, by the way, it doesn't fucking
happen. So something tells me that it's
really hard to get somebody fired.
Amy and I both know this. My intention in all of these
cases have been to live my goddamn life and do my job
without harassment. It's not my choice that other
people have decided to take away my ADA recommendations and
accommodations. That's their choice.
So. If it was just OK, he had a
weird relationship with his student and he's in the Epstein
files, he went to Jeffrey Epstein's ranch and did some
paleontology stuff there. If that was the full end of it,
this would almost make sense. But I know for a fucking fact,
and SVP knows, that it is not because our friend Win
McLaughlin has complained multiple times to SVP about Jack
Horner groping her at conferences twice.
At the SVP conference more than once.
And did she go through? And more than her, she watched
him grope other people. Yes, yes, yes.
And what did she do? She obviously didn't report it
because they just said that we are committed to the principles
of integrity, due process and respect for all individuals.
Yeah, she did report it, though Amy isn't that sure.
Well then, but, but they, I have to trust the society's
leadership. Megan I I mean, obviously, I
mean, well, isn't it? Shocking how all these people in
power have no fucking ability to read.
Like I imagine that Jack Horner's next statement is going
to be how his dyslexia made it impossible to read.
He couldn't. Handle the emails.
He didn't know. He didn't know that he was
emailing Jeff S Dean. I'm sorry if you have dyslexia
that is a valid, but it's not a good reason for not looking up
whether someone is a pedophile or not.
Yeah, you can do fucking, you can make your computer read this
shit these days and probably even then too, right.
So I mean, when I know for a fact went through the proper,
and I mean I've, I've read from what she has shared on Blue Sky
and others that in some cases she didn't even get a response
from the society vertebrae paleontology, no
acknowledgement, let alone anything happening, just no
acknowledgement that they even received her complaint.
And I know other people who've had that exact same situation.
I mean, I've I. Know and then guess what?
Yeah, guess what? They're all women.
All of the people who I have heard first hand, first fucking
hand about issues and reports to SVPI know.
I mentioned in one of them because I was again, tangential
to another creep in Paleo and it's like, yeah, Nope.
Oh, guess what? That person is good friends with
the people in the leadership of SVP.
And guess what? Nothing ever came of that one
either. Yeah, I distinctly remember
filing on behalf of and who Robert Reisz's had like fucking
terrorized for years. They had come out to the public.
They had like a whole big, like, news article about it.
Robert Reisz's was not denying any of it at all.
But he was still not being removed from his University of
Toronto position. He'd been racist.
He'd been sexist. He'd put horrible positions just
so scary. And so I decided to go ahead and
just submit that news report as the fucking complaint.
And I never got an official response, but the president at
the time did DM me on Twitter to tell me that, you know, they
were looking into it and they were trying to see what was
legal. And, you know, they just had to
be really careful because what if the guy retaliated and
counter sued them and and. What if we all leave your shitty
fucking society because you don't give a shit about
protecting your more vulnerable members?
Yeah. What about that?
You can have a fun little club with all the people you're
worried about retaliating. You all have a nice little tea
party together. That sounds fun.
Yeah, I don't think the guy was ever permanently banned.
I'm not even sure he was banned from that meeting.
No, oh, I think he was, but only because like literally I think
and like made a public stink again.
And it only he only got banned from that meeting and it was
because they were like, we're afraid to go to this meeting if
you're not going to protect me. And I mean, I have first hand
experience with SVP and this this garbage too.
It was it's different. But yeah, I mean, it's it's just
like I was moderating a session at the 2024 meeting in
Minneapolis. So I was introducing speakers.
I was on stage next to this very problematic person who had had a
lot of complaints lodged against him.
And he gave one of the scariest, most threatening talks I've ever
been that, I mean, it was really, really scary.
This is a paleontology conference.
The talk This is a. Paleontology, right?
There's no reason for this. I I had just given a talk about
how we take care of the Dinosaur Ridge track site.
And then this guy gets up and start talking about how
oligarchs and all of these mobsters are evil.
And he started calling out people in the audience and
threatening people in the audience and telling everyone
that he was punched in and out of Afghanistan to be here and he
had a dead girl in his arms. Just a few hours before he was
there that day me and my Co moderator were writing on a note
going we are so scared. We literally were writing to
each other about how terrified we were.
I kept envisioning my husband receiving my blood soaked
clothing because I thought this guy was going to turn around and
blow my brains out. I literally this is the time.
This is the only time I thought I this is the closest I've ever
felt of I'm going to die. And we later found about an hour
later that he was armed and he had been armed and he had
brought a bunch of assault rifles to that meeting.
And his roommates that were staying with him were fucking
terrified. Has SVP followed up with me
about that once? No, no, I don't.
Do we even? Know where this this human being
is. I'm still afraid.
What if he just shows up at my work?
Like they have never followed up?
They have never. I feel like I was set up to
moderate. Did they ban?
Him. Did they ban him from that
meeting? Yes.
How long did it take though? They didn't want to call the
cops. It took me and my Co moderator
bursting into tears and begging them to call the cops.
Yeah. And they finally called the cops
and he was finally escorted out and he was supposedly banned
from the meeting. And he immediately went on
Facebook and started making death threats to some of the
leadership in SVP. Yeah.
And then his roommates came forward and said we're
terrified. He brought a ton of guns.
And and this is not unknown individual is they didn't they
give him a chance to revise his abstracts?
Yes, which is not how I heard it was supposed to be.
He had supposedly given a pretty unhinged talk at the, I think,
Toronto meeting. Before this, people knew he was
essentially not well and in not a good headspace.
After this talk, I had a prominent dinosaur
paleontologist who I cannot stand to be like, oh, Amy, I had
to leave and I was like, well, fuck you, fucking cool.
I couldn't leave. And he was like, he was like,
oh, well, I knew he was crazy. This summer I had to kick him
out of my field program because he was scaring people.
And I was like, did you report that?
He said, oh, no, well, it wasn't my place.
And I said then whose place was it?
And I said, well, did you know he was giving this talk and
doing this abstract? Well, I thought that they
wouldn't accept it. Did you say that?
Well, no, I just assumed that they wouldn't have done that.
They wouldn't have accepted it. So then when you saw it was
accepted, did you say anything? Well, no, it isn't my place.
Fuck you. Yeah.
Fucking. I'm still like, I've just like,
I'm terrified. I mean, I've never I've.
I've spent a lot of therapy sessions on this.
Let me tell you that. Yeah, a lot of therapy on that.
I thought I was going to die. I thought he was gonna just
shoot me. And I'm not saying that that's
an easy situation to deal with, but I do feel like the number
one thing would be calling the cops.
Actually, you know, the number one thing would be you know that
this individual has a history. If you're not familiar with how
these conferences work, the way that they work is that if you
want to present, you have to in months ahead of time, submit an
abstract of which you want to talk about.
And SVP sends that out to peer reviewers and they are
technically considered peer reviewed abstracts where the
peer reviewers say, Oh no, that's crazy bonkers or oh,
that's good. And they told SVP, you know,
something to the equivalence of like basically the guy got the
usually you just get rejected. This guy got the awkward.
Rejected because he was using specific names of like straight
up like criminals and oligarchs. And so you're and so they just
said take the names out. So when he was giving his
presentation, one of these SVP leadership members stopped his
talk and said you agreed to not use any of their names.
That's all he did. He didn't stop the session.
He didn't say you're done. He just said you need to stop
saying names and he let the guy continue.
So it's not like they didn't have warning.
The guy had been there before. The guy's abstract was crazy.
It's been confirmed that well, OK, actually I shouldn't say
that. It is very much assumed and
known highly that he was faking his credentials.
Yes, he was making up like making up his affiliation.
And when we asked the person who did this session, who
interrupted, who like paused it, he laughed and said no, we don't
check affiliations. Do we want to say who this guy
who said that he was affiliated with?
He said he was a part of Department of Homeland Security.
Yeah, so he said that he was part of Department of Homeland
Security and then went on a rampage claiming that
paleontologists were, like, poaching things and funding,
like, horrible stuff and. Working with oligarchs to get
fossils. War crimes, war crimes.
He was accusing all of us in that room of of of being war
criminals. And it turns out that maybe his
affiliation was not correct and SVP.
Claimed to be a part of like never checked like no SVP did
not check. I know that someone else
reported him for or impersonating.
I don't know, you can't really fake a Homeland Security e-mail
address, right? So did they look at his like
Yahoo? Submission didn't address they
like oh so, so going back to the statement that SVP made where
they are talking about their Ethics Committee.
And then if you go to blue sky, people who are on the Ethics
Committee and who are on the diversity committee are openly
saying that this letter was not run by them.
And then my friend who's a part of the, our friend who's a part
of the communications committee reached out to me and said they
did not include this with the communications committee either.
So that means that they didn't check with any of these supposed
functioning committees, which confirms to me what I've
suspected for a long time, that they're all performative.
The society is not actually interested in opening things up
and making things more accessible and like giving these
different roles. They're going to keep their
power within these few elite leadership positions, and
they're going to just let these committees go for.
Yeah, you kids stay busy is what it feels like.
But there's obviously no actual function to these committees.
So if you go and say I'm going to make a.
Difference too. It's often super young compared
to the. Early career because they tell
you they tell you that if you want to get higher in SVP
leadership that you should be a part of a committee and work for
free to do a bunch of unpaid labor that we don't care about.
I mean, it's just, yeah, it's it's taking advantage of the
rosy glasses that you. It's just, I've never been more
like I was super hurt by what happened to me last November or
October. I still have hoped, I guess in
some ways that SVP would do the right thing or that I might hear
from someone someday. And then to have this come out
that they're going to go and say, OK, like this isn't just
like, oh, hey, Jack's name is in this here and there.
He went to this fucking place. I don't give a shit.
If anything else happened, he is admitting that he worked with
someone, one who we knew at this point in 2012 was a fucking sex
criminal against minors. Like it shouldn't the
association, Like why are we not?
I don't understand. I'm not saying Jack did anything
inappropriate while he was in New Mexico.
I don't know. I wasn't there.
Isn't he's associated appropriate stuff at SVP and
that SVP has been warned about it, Yes.
We know that for a fact because guess what?
It turns out even though we're ladies, we still have vocal
cords and apparently we can sometimes still use them.
And it's not as easy to silence us as the Mary Anning Day,
thanks to the advent of many social media.
And I just want to say that I knew and wasn't surprised to
hear this at all because when I got hired, well, when I had my
interview, they flew me to Bozeman in September of 2017.
I had this marathon day of interviews and my last interview
of the Today was with the executive director of Museum of
the Rockies at that time. She's now retired.
And she and I, it was a one-on-one interview.
I, she, she's the one who brought up Jack because it was a
bit of the elephant in the room about like, you know, Jack's not
here. And then she looked at me and
she said, I never thought I'd have to make a policy that no
one under the age of 18 can go into the field.
And I wasn't even hired yet. This was during my interview.
I still don't entirely know why she said this to me.
I'm sure she would deny it. I have no evidence it was just
me and her, but she told me that when I interviewed.
And then, yeah, as I continued to work there, more and more
creepy things just piled up between essentially soft porn in
his office that I cleaned out and pictures of just some really
disturbing pictures with him. And then you dig into the
science part and it's like, OK, so whatever you want to separate
the scientists from the science. Fine.
Well, then let's talk about his science.
It's a bunch of bullshit, too. Like he's just not very, very
well respected. Everyone calls him Doctor
Horner. He does have an honorary
doctorate and I'm not trying to say that you'd need to have
advanced degrees. However, he did not even get a
bachelors degree. Okay.
He claims it's because of his dyslexia.
That's fair. Probably before a lot of
accommodations. However when people just go, oh,
he's a doctor, they assume a level of education that he then
doesn't actually have. And if you start to look at a
lot of his hypothesis and this stuff, he likes to throw a lot
of big sexy ideas out there and then really doesn't have a ton
of evidence to back him up. He did not discover Myosora.
That was discovered by Marian Branvolt, a woman who owned that
land out in Bynum Shoto area of Montana.
She knew when she found these eggs and baby bones what she
had. I've read that it was actually
her that said, hey, they must have been cared for.
You know, again, this is just this family's word against Jax.
But he, he is written in books. It's the best discovery I've
ever made. He didn't fucking discover it.
Like you named them. You named Myasora.
But I'm so tired of people saying that he discovered
Myasora. He didn't discover those
fossils. Did he?
Then go excavate more of them? Yes.
But if it hadn't been for Marion Brandvold's discovery, none of
this would have ever fucking happened.
And it it just, there's so many layers to this.
The Dino chicken thing is ridiculous.
Everyone has heard of his obligate scavenger hypothesis,
which is also just like, not backed by a lot of evidence.
Oh my gosh. He's also this huge proponent
of, you know, none of these are different species.
They're just babies or or really old ones.
So I keep begging Amy to let me do a Do Dinosaur Babies Exist
podcast episode. For Jack would say yes, so he
has. He believes that Torosaurus is
actually the largest growth stage of Triceratops, which is
pretty much bullshit. We have found juvenile
Torosaurus fossils. He used to claim that Jane and
Chomper, which they were called juvenile T Rex specimens are
actually Nanotyrannus, which has been news this year.
He also said that Stiggy, Moloch and Draco Rex are just juvenile
forms of Pachycephalosaurus. And that is also been, you know,
not supported with more recent discoveries and all of this.
I mean, and then it's just like the science isn't even that
good. And then the personal stuff is,
Oh my God, he went on this thing back in like 2018.
It was so funny. He's putting it all over social
media. And he was like, the best way to
look at a dinosaur egg for an embryo is to smash it with a
hammer. And like everyone, I mean, these
are some big names who come out and are like, dear God, no, like
CT scan it, X-ray it. Like, please, like do anything
but destroy it. And him being like, you can glue
it back together. And it's just like, bro, like,
it's not the 1970s anymore. We have technology that would
preserve these fossils. So it's just like, there's just
so many layers to this, and it is really gross.
And I worked, my true boss at Museum of the Rockies was who
was the. Oh, my God.
Yeah, he was. He was a lot.
He hated me. He got really mad at me in 2019
because I went to the Dino shindig at the Carter County
Museum in Ikalaka. And I was very disappointed in
their speakers. They had like 14 speakers at the
event and 12 of them were white men or like 11 of them were
white men or men, I should say. And when they were called out on
social media about this and the Paleo education group, their,
their curator, their executive director was like, what are you
talking about? We had lots of diversity.
Some people talked about Pachycephalosaurus, some people
talked about Mosasaurus. We even had a mammal talk and
the whole community was like, that's not what we're fucking
talking about. Like this isn't.
So anyway, I went on then Twitter and said Dino Shindig is
pale, stale and male because it fucking was.
And about a month later I got called in to office and he
pretty him and the curator sat me down, blocked me in there and
yelled at me for like 2 hours. The curator blocked was like
sure he's like this unassuming guy, but he was literally
blocking my exit and says to me, you know, because he was
horrified that I had said something out against the Carter
County Museum, who is one of our sister museums of Museum of the
Rockies. And he says to me, we always
stand by our friends. We always stand by our
colleagues, even if we don't agree with them, even if we're
no matter what, even if we do not like what they're doing.
We stand by them. And I swear to God, Megan chills
went down my spine because I was like, what are you covering up?
What are you covering up? And he kept yelling at me for
like another hour or so. I just remember having snot
running down my face. Not neither of them gave me a
break. Never of them offered me a
tissue. I'm just wiping my tears and my
snot on my shirt like as they're just screaming at me.
And that was because I should have had loyalty to Museum of
the Rockies. This man who was just screaming
at me. I was supposed to be loyal to
him and that because he said so. And he used to tell these
stories about how him and Jack would go party at the dorms at
MSU 20 years ago. And he was in his 60s at that
point. So I'm like, so you guys were
creepy 40 year old men partying in college dorm rooms.
Like just some fucked up shit, man.
Some super fucked up shit. So it's just like, like, yeah,
none of us have ever had the people closest to this situation
are not going to speak up. If you have noticed, Museum of
the Rockies has gone radio silent in the last couple of
days. None of them who are usually
avid Jack Horner supporters. In fact, you can see people who
are employed by their commenting all over his Instagram posts
with admiration and they're not saying anything at all.
And again, it's just they know the most.
And I, I'm horrified that, I mean, I knew at the time that
they were never going to do the right thing because he was
telling me we don't do the right thing.
We do the thing that holds up these relationships and these
partnerships. He said it to me.
And so with all this. Motto.
Yeah, right. So what the fuck yeah.
And then he tried to get me put me on suspension, tried to get
me fired because he didn't like that I didn't Olay ad on my
Instagram. It was so stupid.
So it was time to leave. But it's there's just so many
layers to this that SVP has known for a very long time about
these issues. It doesn't make any sense.
My friend again is telling me you should report it and I'm
going why they don't listen to our reports.
I would rather make a stink. I would rather make some noise.
Well, and like they had a community meeting this afternoon
and they specifically said that if you weren't a member, you
weren't allowed to talk at the community meeting, which I
haven't been a member for a long time for a variety of reasons.
Not just because I have a policy, which is that I don't
pay to be sexually harassed, which would include not paying
to go to these conferences, but also I definitely don't pay
through the fucking nose to go and be sexually harassed.
And SVP, if you're listening to this and you're not a
intelligence and you're not a scientist, you might not
understand why these conferences are such a big deal.
And you would be correct. But The thing is that
conferences are like this weird conferences and society
memberships are like this weird, implicitly expected part of
being a scientist where you go to these conferences before
you're done with your research. And the idea is theoretically
you're supposed to present them and then like maybe get some
ideas and feedback from people before you finish.
That's never what happens. People go to piss on their
section of research and tell the world about it so that nobody
else bothers to go and do it. Like that's what conferences are
for. And SVP is particularly toxic to
the extent where I don't think it's truly an SVP poster session
if a older man has not made a student cry.
If there's not a crying student at the poster session, it's not
a fucking SVP poster session. So I don't go to that conference
because why would I? It just seems like there's so
many things in science and academia that just seem like
they don't benefit me, they don't benefit my students, they
don't benefit my friends. They don't even, at this point
really benefit old men. I guess they wouldn't have
anybody to yell at if we didn't have post or something.
But yeah, it's just, it's this weird habit that we're all kind
of told that in order to be a scientist, you have to be a part
of these memberships. And there's also this like thing
where a lot of people wanting to go to Graduate School and people
wanting to, like move to the next stage in their career are
often told that they need to go to these conferences to network.
And sure, you're going to meet a ton of people to network with.
And that's part of why these conferences are important and
why they have stuck around despite like being toxic fests.
No, but I just, I don't, I don't think it's personally worth it.
And I do tell students that they, if they want to go and try
and meet some of their advisors and talk to them in person, like
potential advisors, that it is a good way.
But frankly, there are cheaper conferences that paleontologists
go to that are better. That's.
True. Yeah, that's true.
I mean, and it is. It's tricky.
It's so tricky too, because I think a lot of us too have a
nostalgia aspect. I loved my first few SVPS, like
they were like, they're so exciting.
And I have had a lot of good successes come out of SVP for
whether that's, well, actually in hindsight, pretty shitty.
That's where I met my master. That's where I met my graduate
advisor. That's where I heard about the
Mor job. The guy who's doing all of our
exhibits right now, I've known him because of SVP meetings.
So yeah, like there is important key networking that happens.
And now I love to just go to just like show off my successes
so all my enemies have to see me and be like, ha, ha, ha.
But it sucks because like I love what they in theory stand for.
I love what this field in theory stands for.
It's really hard to grapple with the reality of these places that
I want to be a part of. I love the socializing.
I never go to talks, dude. Sitting in that session was the
longest I've ever sat in one session because I was moderating
it. I was like, I'm so bored.
But I go for the networking. I go for the connections, I go
to see friends. I go for all of those reasons.
And it is shitty to have to be like, OK, I mean, I'm just going
to create my own like Paleo Fest at Dino Ridge or something to
invite those people to see me or something.
But it sucks because in theory they're good.
In practice they're done by shitty humans who are not good.
And that is it's. Really.
And if that's really sad, rid of those people right there is no
point to you. Right.
No. And that's where I've come to.
Oh, SVP does not care about me. They're not interested in
protecting. They're much more interested in
upholding the old guard, the ivory tower, the exclusion game.
And that's what, for whatever reason, it's not going to age
well for them. These are choices that they have
to live with. I'm disappointed in my friends
who are are in leadership who are kowtowing to this and who
are holding it up because again, it's their own reputations.
They feel like they have to. But that is how we get into
these Jeffrey Epstein situations anyway, like do the right thing.
And, and I also want to say I should have said that at the
beginning. A lot of people have had really
great positive experiences with Jack.
And I am not here to say that this man is pure evil, that this
man is horrid, that everything he touches turns to horrid.
Like, I'm not saying that at all.
I know quite a few people who have had great experiences with
Jack, and guess what? Both of these things can fucking
exist. 1 does not. Negate the other or white?
I feel like yes, yes, people are like barcodes.
They're just a series of good and bad and mediocre things.
And yeah, and I think that it's important to recognize that, but
it's also important to recognize that how it can hold you back
sometimes. Yes.
I remember when Greg Retallack wiped ice cream off of my boob
at a fucking party. After years of making extremely
inappropriate jokes and making me very uncomfortable and having
a lot of rumors about him, I didn't want to get him fired
because I knew that he was the only person who would work work
with some of our like, more disabled grad students who had
to, like, leave their advisors because they've been
discriminated against. And like, he was really great
about working with those people. And he was really kind if you
were sick. And I didn't want to fuck that
up. But at a certain point, you and
I both know this, they escalate like you have to draw a line
somewhere, because if you keep giving that inch, it just gets
worse and worse and worse. And sometimes it's boundary
testing and sometimes it's them just revealing who they are.
But like, yeah, just because someone could be a good person
in some ways doesn't mean that they're not fucking awful in
ways that would require them to be removed from a position.
Right. And for me, so much of it is
about taking that acknowledgement, taking the
responsibility. I don't even need you to fucking
apologize. It's just owning like, you know,
Jack's response, it's, it's not taking ownership.
It's again making excuses. It's essentially being
defensive. That don't impress me much.
I'd really rather you have be like, I know this looks really
fucking bad, like I just like just own it.
Like it's same with SVP like oh, this doesn't look good.
You know, it's just such a choice and it's a generation, it
seems to be a generational divide in some ways, which is
also interesting. And I'm just going like, you
know, OK, Like, and I'm sorry to folks and especially women who
have of the of a different generation who did have to
tolerate a ton of this shit and now is almost normalized it in
some ways. That does not mean that you and
I have to tolerate this shit in 2026 or anyone else.
But I'm not over here encouraging people to go into
paleontology when it's going, especially if they look like me,
if that means that I'm just setting them up for a hell of a
lot of heartache and a bunch of just conflict and it's not worth
it. But it's so hard.
I love this field with every little piece of me.
It's a part of me. It's my community, it's my
friends, It's my, it's my everything.
And it's just. And that's why I feel so like,
yeah, I worked at Museum of the Rockies, which benefited from
being associated with Jeffrey Epstein.
I have to. I have to grapple with that.
And I'm over here going. I did that.
I'm taking accountability.
I fucking did that and I fucking got out when I could because it
was a shit show. And yes, it probably did help my
reputation that I have that institution on my resume.
Come on everybody, like let's own our shit and be real.
And just like meet each other with instead of this just like,
Oh my God, the smoke and mirrors and pretending that stuff isn't
going on in gaslighting. It's just like a whole Society
of gaslighting and it's just making me very, very, very
disappointed in SVP. I'm super disappointed in SVP.
And unless they just dramatically change theirs,
their ways and change the dialogue around this and own up
that let us do our investigation and we agree this is pretty
concerning, which is kind of what I wanted until you're
willing to do that and actually like maybe follow up with when,
Maybe follow up with the other women I know who have made valid
ask complaints that you guys just said.
It's just hearsay because that's the other problem, Megan, we
know this well. There is no way there.
What other way is there? There are no there's no recourse
for us when we just when we submit an ethics complaint and
they go well, it's just hearsay. It's your word against usually
his. So what the fuck are we supposed
to do if it's not hearsay? It's true, but there's no Ave.
for us to do this. It's we've just we all we have
is the whisper network. All we have is I just tell
students, hey, you don't want to work with so and so, or hey,
before you go do field work with this person, here's what I know.
It's your choice, but I just want you full transparency to
know what has been heard about this person.
But that's all I have and it pisses me off and we've talked
about this for years, but how the fuck do we hold people
accountable when it's constantly, well, it's just
hearsay? Well, and I mean, in Win's case,
it's she was not the only person in the room, right?
You can ask other people. They saw it.
Yeah. Like it's.
How are they excusing? Like how is this so easy to just
disregard, to sweep under a rug? And just what excuses are they
telling them they're? Afraid of being sued.
They're afraid of being sued even though by their own rules,
they would win. And frankly, if SVP was getting
sued by somebody because they kicked them out for bad
behavior, I would be happy to rejoin SVP and give them my
money to fund. Defending themselves like that
is a valid use of our money. What we're currently using it
for fucking sucks. Right it's it's it's super true
yeah it's it's really sad so yeah, I'm being I'm I didn't
want to be done. I was low key like looking
forward to doing a presentation on our cool research at SVP down
the road and now I'm like now fuck it, GSA.
I mean, GSA isn't perfect either by any means, but you know, it's
at least. They get back to you.
Yeah, at least they get back to you.
At least they're cheaper. Yeah, but I mean, yeah, it's
really hard. And to some of our friends who
are trying to change SVP within like, I, I admire that, but I'm
also like, save yourself. Like it's not worth your time
and effort. They're not they're it doesn't
seem like they're they're not giving me any indication that
they're willing and open to change.
So how much more evidence do we need to see that?
Just let's just wipe our hands of of this society.
Let them be their little esoteric group.
Let them enjoy their little ivory tower circle jerk.
And can we? Start a new society.
Like, you know, like, right, but I want to create ways for people
to network safely and for people to share their research safely.
And SVP is just really crumbled my confidence in the last two
years especially. And The thing is like, you never
know who it's going to be. I have written with people who
got fired for sexual harassment. I've got a paper out with a
person who at the time I had no idea she got fired because she
was sexually harassing a graduate student.
We're on a we're co-authors on a paper.
She stopped emailing us back. It's a certain point because,
well, we thought that she was having trouble getting tenure.
Turns out she was being investigated to be eventually
fired. But like you have to be.
And like. I'm currently Co authoring 2
papers with someone who I won't name but like has a not great
reputation that we know isn't awesome.
But also I don't want to cut him off of the papers because he was
a very big part of the contribution.
And I do feel like you you can get into some trouble by cutting
people off of papers if they have actually genuinely
contributed to them. Intellectual property, you know.
And it goes back to how insular and tiny our field is.
You can't really publish on that topic that I know you are
working on because without that individual, because of how small
the field is and yeah, it's like it's pretty much impossible to
avoid that person. And so it's that's right.
And so I'm in that quandary too, with someone that I yes, that I
does not work at my organization, but I sometimes
right. And I'm just it's, it's the
thing. Is like, you know, and I didn't
know for sure when we started that project.
If I had known, I wouldn't have started that project.
But how do we tell people right without it being hearsay?
Yes. And The thing is, I think that
when you are in charge of something like a conference or
honestly even like a Discord group, you have a responsibility
to be the person who is willing to lay down the law.
Like you have rules, you have to be willing to follow them,
right? Because I think it's very, I'm
part of a Discord group in paleontology where I haven't
checked in on this in a while, but there was someone who, you
know, stalked another member and was really scary and crazy and
lots of valid complaints and lots of people watching it.
And I don't think that the moderator has kicked them out
still. And I understand that it can be
very difficult to hear that someone that you like and no is
doing things that mean that they are not worth associating with.
It's unpleasant. I know that I saw a blue sky the
other day, like someone was like, why don't we start
listening all listing all the people that are like amazing and
wonderful to work with in paleontology.
And I was like that. What a surefire way to ensure
well, and you now you don't know, you know.
You don't know, right? Yeah, and I saw another Pat.
Lebinsky. Pat Lebinsky's amazing.
He's been fantastic to me. I only know my experiences with
him and I'm worried that if I put him on that list.
Right, right. I think this should be evidenced
in itself and lists in general are are crazy.
But then I saw someone commenting on that being like,
ha, really interesting to see someone super problematic and
paleo like listing a bunch of people who are good and but you
know, like when there are no guidelines, parameters agreed
upon conditions, then it then quickly can be a way of covering
your ass or trying to make a a positive like legacy for
yourself. Like, it's a good way to cover
your tracks. And it's just really icky.
Like I hate. Yeah, a lot of times groups in
general just don't. It's it's a.
Slip, you got to be willing to be the bitch.
Amy and I have been the bitch. We have worked to make sure that
that is on the record and it fucking sucks and it sucks
especially if you respected somebody.
It really hurts but. And to me, they can come back,
especially if it's not being associated with a pedophile.
That is a bit of a like because I face this in like a cancel
culture in other fields and things, things like that.
And I really do think for me it's all about like taking some
accountability. I will give you a lot of do
overs or another shot if you're able to self reflect and be
like, my bad, I fucked up. Yeah, that is apparently very.
Hard no. I had this project.
I was incredibly passionate about it.
I couldn't get funding. The only person I could find
funding from was Jeffrey Epstein.
I am embarrassed that I ever sunk that low.
I'm going to work really hard in the future.
Here's X Z things that I'm donating to.
Here's the things that I am involved in to improve the
field. Those here's the therapist I'm
fucking seeing like right, right.
Giving us action actions. Own it and show us how you are.
Don't just making the world a better.
Place don't just try to do. Right and deflect and try and
distance yourself from it. Be an adult, own up.
This shit happened that you were, that you played by it for
maybe psychological reasons and maybe some of you know, but
it's, it's just, I can do a lot of forgiveness as long as people
actually own up. But the problem I've seen so
often in paleo is that they are in denial and very headstrong
about having done nothing wrong. And then they do turn around and
sue when they finally get forced out.
And it's, it's just, and then they, they win in some ways.
So, yeah, I don't have a conclusion for what should
happen. I just am disappointed in the
Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.
I'm disappointed, but not surprised by this new
development with Jack Horner. I'm, I feel good about the
stance I've had towards him for a very long time, which is, Oh
my God. There was one time he was
visiting. I did have to work with him a
couple of times and I was doing a tour upstairs in the exhibit
hall and he was there with wife #5 who I think he's still
married to. And yeah, this group was like,
oh, could we get a picture with our group and Jack and you?
And I was like, no. And I did it.
I took this picture. I stood as far from him as I
possibly could. I'm probably grimacing.
So somewhere out there, somewhere out there, there is a
picture of me and Jack. And like, I don't like that.
I didn't like it at the fucking time.
I just remember at the time being like, oh, I don't want to
be in this picture. It's just so, yeah, I mean, but
again, he can, you know, he could change my mind on a lot of
this and SVP could totally change my mind on a lot of this.
But stop treating us like we're Dum Dums.
Stop treating us like this is hearsay.
Stop treating us like our experiences aren't valid.
It's just because other people's experiences are good, that
doesn't invalidate those of us who've had negative experiences.
Let's be holistic about this. Let's be transparent about it,
and let's just own our shit. But until then, I'm going to
GSA. It's in Denver this year, guys.
So come on by and visit Dinosaur Ridge.
Yeah, you should come. Yeah, because now we could do
IGMA there because I'm definitely not going to do it at
SVP. So yeah, Yeah.
And it's going to be here. You can stay with us except for
our house is pretty far from there.
Any final thoughts? We've been going a while.
I know we've been going for quite some time.
It's just I feel like there's a lot of people who come into
paleontology expecting it to not have predators and not have
problems. But anytime that you have hero
worship of any kind, it does start to elevate someone's.
Yeah. It gives them a sense of power.
And I think in science it becomes particularly obnoxious
because a lot of us when we were in high school and younger,
we're told that we were weird. And so to suddenly be given like
this power and this prestige I think makes them even even
worse. Which does not excuse it at all.
Very well, because of your terrible dyslexia and now you're
treated like a rock star. Like yeah, of course we are
human, we are fallible to ego and all of this.
But go to fucking therapy man. Get a therapist.
Yep, and if a man helicopters himself into your dinosaur dig
and he tells you that he's going to make all of your dreams
monetarily come true. At least Google if he is a
pedophile first. Yes, yes.
Just a general advice. There you go.
And then you know what? Actually, the way I want to end
is we're paleontologists. We're not finding a cure for
cancer. There's no fucking timeline on
paleontology. They've been dead for a very
long time. They can be undiscovered and
understudied for a very long time yet to come.
And yes. You.
Don't need to accept money from a pedophile because nobody will
fucking die if you don't. Exactly like it does go back to
we are not saving lives. Even if you reverse engineer a
fucking chicken, that's going to take more human lives.
Apparently based on that movie and so, but like, that is such a
good point because I hear this a lot too.
It's like, you know, this justification for what?
Some Cretaceous seashells and for some dinosaurs that was
work. Projects I have that I couldn't
get funded and I just didn't do right on.
But it's true, we are not saving lives so and we're not saving
the planet. We are not causing like at least
not this brand, not his brand of paleontology so and or any for
that matter. But it's like some people study
like cancer and deep time and that might have helped helpful
things. But not to take money from
pedophiles, but like, you know. Right.
But it's such a little bit of a better argument.
Why on earth was reverse engineering a chicken worth that
association? Yeah, exactly.
I could justify it if it was my dying child.
The only thing to save these unhoused children if it were,
you know, like something that actually seemed worthy.
But we are just talking about big dead chickens.
So it it is not rocket science. It is not Cancer Research.
Let's put it in perspective that there is no funding for a Dino
project that is worth the suffering of another human
being. Yeah.
And at some point, we're going to talk about Blood Amber, right
along those exact same lines. Oh goody.
If you feel frustrated about this like we do, and you want to
do something about it, might we suggest that you reach out to
SVP at vertpaleo.org? That's SVP at vertpaleo.org and
we hope that you get a response. Special thanks to Max for his
extra work editing on this one, it was a beast to work with.