Beginners' Luck:
An Interview with Dave Blackburn, Team Member
(interviewed by Gabrielle Lyon)

The expedition's youngest team member is David Blackburn, a nearly-21-year-old undergraduate at the University of Chicago. The 2000 Expedition to Niger is not only Blackburn's first field experience, this trip to Africa is his first trip on his own.

Dave mixing plaster at camp

Sitting cross-legged on the bed during the interview, his shorn curly brown hair is rough around the edges as it grows in, as is his beard, which has come in at a quick pace in the last few days.

I interviewed Dave Blackburn in the Hotel Sofitel on August 23 in the late afternoon. Throughout the interview Dave draws my attention to hawks swooping outside the window, a camel piled high with sheaves of cut grass. His eyes follow, as well, the brightly clothed women and turbaned men walking along the road, hailing taxis, zipping by on small motorcycles as they return from work.

Born in Columbia, Missouri, Dave Blackburn grew up in Houston, Texas and Glen Ellyn, a suburb of Chicago. Older brother to two sisters, Morgan and Alyssa, Dave describes himself as a "pretty normal kid." Despite an early fascination with dinosaurs (age four), Dave has been increasingly interested in archaeology and anthropology as well as paleontology.

In the last year, however, vertebrate paleontology has captured his full attention -due perhaps, in large part, to the hands-on experience he has been getting working as a preparator in Paul Sereno's Dinosaur Lab at the University of Chicago. Dave was one of the team of preparators that cleaned more than 20 tons of fossil bone belonging to Jobaria, a 70-foot plant eater discovered in 1997 in Niger. "I really like learning about the way bodies, muscles and skeletons work together," says Dave.

How did you first get involved with Paul's lab?

I was a second year student at the University of Chicago when I emailed him and told him I was interested in volunteering in the lab and learning the techniques of the trade. I was interested in paleontology in general, and working at the lab was a way to get to know how to do things without taking classes for it. I was really happy that he let me work in the lab; I was super excited. I probably talked about it for a week. I spend most of my spare time there.

What were your first few weeks of work like?

When I first started working everyone was working on Jobaria, the 70-foot plant eater from Niger. It hadn't been named yet and there were probably of hundreds of bones that needed to be cleaned and prepared. I was given - standard for new volunteers - a chunk of rib.

It took me a while to get a hang of it. I was really nervous about damaging things so I wasn't preparing things fully.  I think the first thing I learned that was helpful was that while the bones are first opened, even though they're fragile and unique, I didn't need to be as ultra paranoid as I was. Now I have gotten over that.

I think work in the lab is all about feeling pretty comfortable with what you're doing. If you're nervous all the time it's hard to do good work. But now I can blast through stuff!

What were you working on in the lab just before you left for the expedition?

I have been working with Andy, Luke, Chris and Kyle - all five of us are undergrads at the UofC -on the Sarchosuchus skull. Sarchosuchus is a huge, extinct crocodile that lived about 110 million years ago, during the same time as Suchomimus. The 1997 Expedition to Niger found an enormous, nearly complete skull and we've been working on it for a long time. Almost a year.

Since the first day it was opened, we've only worked on the top side of the skull. Not because it is so big - it's nearly six feet long - but because there are large, hard, sandstone concretions [large, very hard lumps of rock] all over the skull. There are concretions inside the skull itself. One concretion in front of the right eye was about the size of a grapefruit, maybe a melon! It was so large people had carved their names on the rock!

The other thing is that the croc skull has rugosities - like deep wrinkles - all over it. Taking hard rock and removing it takes a lot of patience no matter what, but to go over each wrinkle in the bone, up and around it and follow the curves takes patience because it's not flat. With this skull sometimes it is difficult to tell what is rock and what is bone because there is really no difference in color between the two.

The tool of choice is a pneumatic airscribe. It's like a tiny air-powered jackhammer with a very sharp point. Your hands hurt after a while using the air scribe because it vibrates as you work.

The coolest thing is that now we're in Niger, where the skull was discovered, and there's a great chance we'll find more of it.

What is the best part about working in the lab?

A lot of times it can be boring. But I like to imagine what the things I am working on looked like and acted like. You get to asking neat questions - how loud and how big were the muscles snapping the jaws shut on Sarchosuchus? What it would have been like seeing it pop out of the water? Could it have taken on a Spinosaur like Suchomimus?

For me there's a lot of imagination and play in it. The coolest part is thinking about all the muscles and nerves that would have surrounded the bones. They would have had to get the animal around, get food and eat and prop themselves up for mating. The bones witnessed it all.

Did you ever think Paul would invite you to go on an expedition with him?

Of course, everyone thinks it would be cool and imagines it, but I never thought I'd be going.

What was your reaction when Paul asked if you wanted to go on the 2000 Expedition to Niger?

Dave w/ bone at camp

I was in his office in March to drop something off and I was halfway down the stairs and he called me back up. Paul didn't actually ask me if I wanted to go. Paul asked me if it would be alright with my parents if I went to Africa. I was completely surprised and excited.The funny thing was that I didn't see anyone I knew for the rest of the day to tell them about it and I just wanted to tell everybody.

This is your first big trip away - and you're about to live for four months in the middle of the biggest desert in the world with very limited abilities to communicate with anyone. What do your parents think about all of this?

My mother is worried - and my dad is probably a teensy bit jealous because this is the kind of thing he'd like to do. They think it is an amazing opportunity and definitely wanted me to do it, provided I still graduate. I won't graduate on time because I'm taking a quarter off. But I'll make it up in the fall quarter of 01.

You've only been in Niger a week. What has made the biggest impression on you so far?

My favorite evening so far is when we were out to dinner for brochettes and fries and could look over the Niger River. The part I liked most was watching the big bats flying east, flying away from the setting sun. They were huge!

It's cool for me to be in the middle of a place where even though there are not so many large animals, you still have giant bats flying overhead. To most degrees, I haven't been around much wildlife. I like animals and any animals beyond humans are exciting to me. And we've seen a lot so far even in the city.. There's a camel walking down the street in the middle of the day. Allison saw a hedgehog; there's a big tortoise at the hotel; there are tons of birds along the river. I saw a huge hawk, and some little red ones. I'm sure we'll see all kinds of strange insects, lizards and stuff in the desert, too.

You are the youngest team member, but the team is made up of a number of graduate students, in addition to professional paleontologists, and a number of people who are not scientists. What do you think of the team so far?

I knew a lot of the team in Chicago before the trip. They're a lot of fun. It's a great mix. What's really great is that everyone is interested in different things - Chris and Allison in synapsids [mammal-like reptiles that went extinct at the end of the Permian], Greg in early mammals. I'm interested in everything so just talking with people you learn a lot. And everyone likes to joke around so it's really easy to spend a lot of time together.

What are you looking forward to most?

I am just pumped to see what we will find. I am very excited about finding something new - everything that's already been found in the places we'll be has been new and we'll be going to areas that haven't been explored much.

I'm also excited that we're going through a whole series of different ages of rock. We go through the whole Mesozoic and maybe even look at Permo-Triassic stuff. More than anything I just want to get out there and see what's out there. Prospect, see what it physically takes to do an expedition, hang out with the team.

What do you think is the biggest obstacle facing the team?

Getting our stuff seems to be the biggest one so far. Because of the delay with the cargo arriving, not only don't we have our stuff, we're losing time. It will be very hard and prospect all of the areas we initially set out to cover.

Do you have any personal goals for the next three months?

My biggest challenge is being in the position of youngest and not knowing anything. I have experience working in the lab and I have picked up some anatomy here and there, so I won't be in the worst off position. I just feel like I don't know exactly what I'm looking for.

I want to push myself to be as much a part of the team as possible. I don't want to cop out and not do some part - or miss out on anything. I 'd also like to find some pterosaur stuff. In 1997 the team found part of a wing finger of a pterosaur [flying reptile]. Now I'd like to find more of it - especially material that is articulated. A lot of pterosaur material has been found in Brazil and it's supposed to be the same age as the beds we're looking in, mid-late Cretaceous. So if we could find more stuff here, it would be great to compare it to material from Brazil.

It's only been three days, but I'm having a great time. I can't wait to get into the field!

ENDNOTE: At the time this interview was posted, Dave Blackburn had discovered a wing finger of a new pterosaur.