No bone left unturned

GLENALLEN, Mo. -- Even the air smells 70 million years old.

Rich, earthen. Preserved alongside the remnants of long-extinct animals that once breathed it.

Millions of years' worth of sediment, broken bone and fossils are buried in a 5-foot-deep hole in remote Bollinger County.

Fifteen years of Guy Darrough's life are in the hole as well. Especially now, with his team's most recent discoveries, the toil has been worth every swing of a shovel and minute stroke of a brush.

Just reaching the site requires four-wheel drive. Down a county road near Glenallen, to a narrow grassy path lined with barbed wire on both sides. Up and down eroded hills, sometimes pausing to remove a fallen limb obstructing the path.

Along the way, Darrough tells the site's history. He knows the story well, all the way back to 1942, when a geologist named Dan Stewart came to Southeast Missouri to learn about the area's terrain. Wandering in the Bollinger County hills, Stewart found more than just dirt.

As Darrough tells the story, Stewart came across a young boy who was helping his family dig a water well nearby. When the boy found out Stewart was researching different types of clay, he offered to take Stewart to the well site, where the Chronister family was digging through layers of the rust-colored earth.

At the well, the geologist noticed large bones sticking out of the mounds of clay.

"How in the heck did the Chronisters set out to dig a well and just happen to hit right on top of these Missouri dinosaurs with all the land around here? They thought they were just cow bones, but Stewart knew," explains Darrough. "He asked if he could take the bones to an expert, and they agreed."

Later, the Smithsonian Institute payed the Chronisters $50 for the bones. The family used the money to buy their first cow.

The fossils were originally thought to be from the tail of a dinosaur similar to a brontosaurus, though they were later deemed a new species called hadrosaur. Later, the species was renamed Hypsibema missouriensis, a type of duck-billed dinosaur that stretched about 25 feet in length, had about 1,000 teeth and weighed as much as an elephant. The species was designated Missouri's official state dinosaur in 2004.

The fossils were forgotten at the Smithsonian until the 1970s, when a geologist friend of Darrough's read about them and decided to purchase 30 acres of land surrounding the site where they were found. A few years later, Darrough received permission to begin digging at the site.

On this early March day, the Arnold, Mo., man's passion is roused -- roused by the hole's most recent bones, roused that the project is getting some attention, roused by how little Missourians seem to care about dinosaurs.

Darrough doesn't understand the lack of enthusiam over Missouri's dinosaurs.

People "seem to think dinosaurs were everywhere but here," says Darrough, shaking his head at the ignorance he often faces. "They were everywhere."

The grassy path leads to a large clearing, surrounded by timber only a fraction in age of the soil in which it grows. A tin-roofed red house sits in the clearing: the original Chronister house where the well was dug more than 60 years ago, Darrough explains. Sometimes his team uses it as a bunkhouse, though there's no running water and no electricity.

A clay path curves around the side of the house to a tarped-dome structure. A work boot will occasionally kick up a dinosaur fossil or two, if you know what to look for. Darrough does. He's been enamored with what lies below the dirt since childhood.

"Growing up, my parents were hunters. They'd go after deer or bear or elk, and I'd go hunting rocks," says Darrough.

The self-taught paleontologist has managed to make a living from his passion, dividing his time between the dig site and Lost World Studios, where he creates life-size models of dinosaurs for display in museums and at exhibits around the country. His work, and that of everyone else involved with the dig, is on a volunteer basis. Any money spent comes from donations and out of the team members' pockets.

At least once a week throughout the year, Darrough, sidekick Tony Sole and site record-keeper Max Fix hop in Darrough's four-wheel drive and make the hour and 45-minute trip to Marble Hill, Mo.

"And every time we dig, we find something," Darrough says.

Even today.

Double doors are opened at each end of the domed structure, known to Darrough's team as the greenhouse. Protected from Mother Nature within and shored up with timbers is the hole. Darrough climbs inside and is home.

Eventually, Darrough wants to add a second greenhouse, and hopes to add a visitor's center to the site one day to work in conjunction with the Bollinger County Museum of Natural History in Marble Hill.

The museum, where Darrough serves as curator, is home to the finds from the dig site, as well as some dinosaur bones and eggs from around the world. Darrough created most of the museum's exhibits, including life-size re-creations of several dinosaurs.

But for now, his team -- which includes renowned scientists from the around the country -- focus on this one spot inside the first greenhouse.

There is so much to learn from this sole 6-by-10-foot hole.

Darrough points out their latest find: a large dinosaur hoof, broken into five pieces by a nearby fault line but incredibly valuable in the world of science because of its rarity. The hoof is almost completely exposed, but unearthing it has taken months of precision excavation.

On one side of the hole, a noticable chunk of earth has been removed. Months ago, the team covered that area in a plaster jacket and removed it to their lab at the museum. The clay within is what Darrough calls a bone bed. It's filled with hundreds of microfossils such as fish and crocodile teeth.

There's also a large limestone boulder in the hole that Darrough believes is about 400 million years old and fell into the clay when the dinosaur bones were deposited. The rock is covered in fossils. Darrough talks about the beaded turtle shells his team has found, the fish scales, the teeth. He talks about the different types of soil in the hole, the way gray rock forms a dome within the red clay. At that point, where gray meets red, dinosaur bones are most often found.

Some scientists, including Darrough, believe the spot may once have been a cave that filled in with the red clay after an earthquake. Lucky earthquake. Without the clay, the fossils and bones would have turned to dust over the last 70 million years.

The caved-in area may go down another 12 or 15 feet. The bones they've found so far are from the Cretaceous period -- the latter of the three prehistoric periods of the Mesozoic Epoch. Darrough wonders if bones from the Jurassic period -- the second prehistoric period -- may be below that.

By the time Darrough's done in this spot -- if that happens in his lifetime -- the hole will begin to resemble a mine shaft.

There is enough work here to go on for many generations, though Darrough wonders after he's gone.

"Anywhere else but Missouri, this would be a big deal," he says.

He hopes for additional funding to expand the site.

But he doesn't count on it. He just keeps digging.

cmiller@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 128