Pups and Paleo have a long long history together! Having a good dog or two along on a paleo dig makes the whole experience come alive, so to speak, and sets the tone for a wonderful time for all. Pups in paleo go back into antiquity from Mary Anning in the 18th century to Mary Leakey in the 19th. Anning, one of the most famous paleontologists in all of history, would regularly take her dog Tray along with her on fossil-hunting expeditions to the English seashore in search of extinct marine reptiles and other creatures. I can only imagine that Tray was named after one of Anning’s trays of fossils! Unfortunately, Tray met his fate with a seashore rockfall, something I know won’t befall Chaco or Yoshi because of what happened 46 years earlier.
In 1976 fate nearly intervened and took the life of my paleo pup Blackie and I when I was 16; a rockfall came down besides us both, shaking the ground, and my nerves, to this very day and making me once cautious for the rest of my life. Mary Leakey too would regularly travel with her dalmations on her expeditions in search of the ancestors of our own human lineage. In fact, on July 17th, 1959, Mary’s dalmations were with her when they discovered the famous Zinj, later scientifically named as Paranthropus boisei.
More recently, Jon Gopsill and his trusted paleo pups Poppy and Sam were on Stolford beach, England, around Christmas time when the pups discovered a nearly complete 190 million year old ichthyosaur skeleton! And today, on most every paleo dig except contract gigs on construction sites, one can expect to see these two digging-est dogs, Chaco and Yoshi, onsite helping PaPa with sniffing out bones and other fossils, digging, deterring poachers (or attracting them as the case may be), and general paleontological support. In addition to being my paleo pup support crew, they can mostly be found chasing each other, slobbering, pooping, eating sea weed, chewing driftwood, exploring, swimming in the ocean and chasing other dogs to play.
Included here in memoriam; The Blarb or Palo, our yellow lab, and Blackie, my black lab who were faithful paleo pups of ages gone by. Also let’s not forget our supportive paleo cats; my cat Singkoo shown here on my paleo desk in 1975 along with my fossil ledger and old Royal report typewriter.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-somerset-51031114
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