NPR Podcast Challenge Submission

Undergraduate student Tim James from the University of Mexico joins me today to talk all things paleontology and CRM archaeology (Cultural Resource Management). We discuss his unique background growing up visiting museums in New Mexico, and how being exposed to archaeological sites and indigenous people from such a young age really inspired him to study ancient material culture, and explore how it connects us all. We talk about ancient fossils in downtown LA, and what CRM is. Which means he and the team are called in when construction crews are digging in a site and find fossils, or the team will survey/excavate if the site is suspected to have cultural materials. He also tells us a fun story about excavating and driving a 900 pound triceratops sacrum across the country from South Dakota (all legal and with proper authority of course!) to a museum in LA where it currently resides. He expresses his opinion that paleontology doesn't take into consideration early indigenous peoples finding fossils and how they would have explained them and incorporated these extinct animals into their mythology and oral histories; and that they should start to.

https://maxwellmuseum.unm.edu/

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