L.A. paleontologists take on a dinosaur dig

Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Wednesday, Aug. 24. I’m Corinne Purtill, a science and medicine reporter here at The Times.

Last month I woke up in a tent pitched on a rocky outcrop with a sweeping view of the Colorado Plateau. I got dressed: long-sleeved T-shirt, sturdy boots, pants caked with the previous day’s dust. My sunscreen tube boasted that its plastic cap would turn from white to blue if UV rays were detected. Though the temperatures weren’t yet in the triple digits — that would happen soon after breakfast — the cap was already the color of a Dodgers hat.

Journalists often focus on the end product of scientists’ work: the conclusion of years-long study, the remarkable technology that emerges from countless failed attempts. Sometimes, we get the privilege of watching that work as it happens. That’s what brought me to southeastern Utah, trailing a team of paleontologists from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County as they took on the sweaty, dusty, heavy task of unearthing prehistory.

[Read “Bones, sweat and years: What it takes to dig up a dinosaur,” in The Times.]

The team was in the Bitter Creek area of Utah’s San Juan County to collect the fossilized remains of a stegosaurus, the plate-backed, spiky-tailed herbivore. The Natural History Museum already has a stegosaurus skeleton on display in its Dinosaur Hall, posed alongside the remains of its real-life predator allosaurus. (Those plant eaters could hold their own: Paleontologists have found allosaurus femurs with puncture wounds the exact width of a stegosaur tail spike.)

These fossils were bound for a different part of the building. Behind the scenes, the 109-year-old Natural History Museum is also a laboratory and archive where researchers from around the world study specimens collected on scientific expeditions like this one. Every fossil unearthed helps science piece together the story of life on this planet.

Thanks to new technology, scientists have learned more about dinosaurs in the last 20 years than they have in the previous two centuries. With today’s tools, “we can really bring these animals back to life,” said Paul Byrne, a USC doctoral candidate and the museum’s Dinosaur Institute graduate student in residence, as he readied a set of chisels. But “the digging part is very much the same as it has been for 150 years.”

Dinosaur digs are the slowest, dustiest, most labor-intensive unboxings you can imagine. At the start of the 24-day expedition, the team hauled power tools, generators and air compressors up the half-mile trail to the quarry, along with bucket after bucket of chisels, brushes and dental scrapers. Jackhammering away a layer of younger rock is a two-person job: one to operate the tool, and another to watch the bit to ensure no priceless fossils are nearby.

“People have been really misled by ‘Jurassic Park,’” said paleontologist Luis Chiappe, director of the museum’s Dinosaur Institute. “The idea that, ‘Oh, now you’re brushing this dinosaur with your little brush and it’s all perfectly complete’ — that is fiction.”

Fossil collecting is hard work. It’s also what makes institutions like the Natural History Museum an important resource for ongoing discovery. For those who do this job on behalf of future generations of scientists, there’s something exhilarating, even addicting, about finding these links to the past.

“The element of discovery, that’s a lot of fun,” said Erika Durazo, a senior preparator, as she relaxed in a camping chair at the end of a long workday under a sky filled with stars. “That’s always exciting — being the first eyes to uncover things.”

The team is back in California now, having brought back to the state two stegosaurus plates, one femur, one tibia, one toe bone and several vertebra, all carefully swathed in protective plaster. There are more bones waiting to be found, but those will have to wait for the team’s return next summer.

[Read “Bones, sweat and years: What it takes to dig up a dinosaur,” in The Times.]

And now, here’s what’s happening across California:

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Arte Moreno wants to sell the Angels. Twenty years after he became the first Mexican American to own a major sports team in the U.S., Moreno announced Tuesday that he is seeking a buyer for the troubled franchise, which has not played a postseason game since 2014. The potential sale comes at the end of a miserable stretch for the team, which boasts two of the league’s greatest players (center fielder Mike Trout and pitching-slash-hitting sensation Shohei Ohtani) and one of its most dismal records. Moreno bought the team from the Walt Disney Co. for $183.5 million shortly after the Angels won their only World Series championship in 2002. Los Angeles Times

Meta settles. Facebook’s parent company agreed to pay $37.5 million in a class action lawsuit that accused the company of collecting, storing and selling the location data of Facebook users who specifically opted not to be tracked. The settlement in California federal court covers 70 million U.S. residents whose locations were identified without their permission. In February, Meta paid $90 million to settle a lawsuit over tracking users who had already logged out of Facebook. The Hollywood Reporter

L.A. STORIES

Heche to be laid to rest in Hollywood. The cremated remains of actor Anne Heche will be interred in the famed Hollywood Forever Cemetery, according to a death certificate obtained by E! News. The cemetery, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1999, is the final resting place of luminaries including Judy Garland, Mel Blanc and the much-missed Times food critic Jonathan Gold. Heche died Aug. 12 from smoke inhalation and burns after crashing her car in Mar Vista days earlier. Los Angeles Times

An Oscars legend is debunked. The Academy Awards recently apologized to Native American activist Sacheen Littlefeather, who was jeered and catcalled at the 1973 ceremony while appearing on behalf of actor Marlon Brando. Legend has long held that John Wayne was so outraged by her appearance that he had to be restrained by security guards. Although the abuse directed at Littlefeather is undeniable, the Wayne part isn’t true, as film historian Farran Nehme discovered after extensive research. Los Angeles Times

POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT

DeSantis stumps in California. He may not have many good things to say about the state, but Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is more than happy to take residents’ cash for his reelection bid. The potential 2024 Republican presidential candidate is headlining a fundraiser next month at the $50-million Newport Coast compound owned by “Undercover Billionaire” star Glenn Stearns and his wife, Mindy, a former Los Angeles TV entertainment reporter. The cost: up to $25,000 per couple. Los Angeles Times

Newsom leads in poll. Though a majority of voters express dissatisfaction about California’s direction, Gavin Newsom still leads his GOP challenger by more than 2 to 1 in the 2022 governor’s race, a new poll shows. Newsom has the backing of 52% of registered voters, compared with 25% who favor Republican state Sen. Brian Dahle. Los Angeles Times

Want to keep working from home? It may cost you. About 30% of all paid workdays are now done from home, up from just 5% before March 2020, according to the Working From Home Research Project led by economists at Stanford and the University of Chicago. The project also found that 4 in 10 employers planned to use remote work as a way to ease overall wage-growth pressures. One way is to fill new openings with remote workers in cheaper markets. But they could also cut salaries of workers who elect to stay remote when called back to the office, especially if they move to lower-cost areas. Los Angeles Times

CRIME, COURTS AND POLICING

Beverly Grove boutique bans masks. Fraser Ross, owner of the early-aughts hotspot Kitson, has barred mask-wearing customers in what he says is an attempt to halt theft. Ross, whose store window displays and social media posts have been increasingly critical of vaccines and lockdowns, said the move was necessary to protect assets. Statistics from the city’s police department present a decidedly less dire reality. Los Angeles Times

Pelosi’s husband sentenced. Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was sentenced to five days in jail and three years of probation after pleading guilty to a DUI charge. He served two days in jail, received conduct credit for two days and was ordered by the court to complete his fifth day in work release. Pelosi, 82, crashed his Porsche into another car in Napa County in May. Los Angeles Times

HEALTH AND THE ENVIRONMENT

Kaiser is sued for coronavirus test charges. A class-action lawsuit accuses Oakland-based Kaiser Permanente, California’s largest health insurer, of billing patients for coronavirus tests that were supposed to be free under federal law. The suit was filed Aug. 8 in Alameda County Superior Court on behalf of a Sacramento woman who claims Kaiser charged her $310 for a coronavirus nasal swab test. Orange County Register

Toyota reverses. The Japanese automaker Toyota has backed down from a lawsuit it filed in 2019 alongside other car companies challenging California’s authority to set its own auto emission standards. The state air board is poised to adopt new vehicle emission rules this week. Los Angeles Times

CALIFORNIA CULTURE

Bottleneck at port threatens wine. California’s wine grape harvest season is underway, but oak barrels, a key component in winemaking, are in short supply. A massive backlog at the Port of Oakland means myriad barrels are sitting in shipping containers while winemakers scramble for places to store their grapes. San Francisco Chronicle

An ode to Fogust. Check out this photographic tribute to San Francisco’s iconic summer fog. And even if it is true that the coldest winter you ever spent is a summer in San Francisco, don’t attribute the quotation to Mark Twain — he never said it. San Francisco Chronicle

CALIFORNIA ALMANAC

Los Angeles: sunny, 87. San Diego: partly cloudy, 78. San Francisco: partly cloudy, 67. San Jose: partly cloudy, 83. Fresno: sunny, 107. Sacramento: sunny, 97.

AND FINALLY

Today’s California memory is from Ridge Tolbert:

If you have a memory or story about the Golden State, share it with us. (Please keep your story to 100 words.)

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