May 23, 2016

By Phil Anderson

A seven-person team of paleontologists from the University of Kansas is hoping to recover additional remains of a Tyrannosaurus rex this summer in Montana and is turning to an online platform to raise funds for its dig.

As of 2:30 p.m. Friday, a crowdfunding page sponsored by the KU Endowment Association had generated contributions of $10,785 — which is 64 percent of the overall goal of $16,700.

The expedition will be led by David Burnham, a paleontologist with the Biodiversity Institute & Natural History Museum at KU.

Six paleontology graduate students from KU also are expected to take part in the four-week excavation, which will be located in the Hell Creek area near Jordan, Mont., located in the northeastern part of the Big Sky state.

The group is seeking to locate additional remains of a Tyrannosaurus rex at the site, which is under the jurisdiction of the federal Bureau of Land Management.

An earlier dig at the same site resulted in about 15 percent of a T.rex being found, including fossils from its nose to tail.

Another group previously dug at the same site, but no longer wanted to obtain additional fossils, said Jen Humphrey, director of external affairs at the Biodiversity Institute & Natural History Museum at KU.

That group “wanted to make sure they were being put to good use, so it turned over the fossils it had found to KU,” which has them on display at its Natural History Museum.

Last summer, a team from KU went to the Hell Creek area in Montana, where heavy equipment was used to excavate part of the hillside where the T.rex specimen was found.

This summer, the seven-person KU team is planning to visit the same area, hoping to find additional pieces of the gigantic dinosaur.

The crowdfunding effort will help raise money to provide for nearly every aspect of the trip, including transportation, lodging, food and supplies ranging from glue to hammers to work gloves, Humphrey said.

This isn’t the first crowdfunding project that has been launched through KU Endowment, Humphrey said.

“The background for that is that KU started doing crowdfunding in response to changes in patterns in fundraising globally,” Humphrey said. “KU Endowment offered to launch a crowdfunding platform to do small-scale fundraising in this way.”

Humphrey said “one of the great advantages” of KU Endowment sponsoring the crowdfunding platform is that all money that is donated will go toward the intended recipient — in this case the project titled “Bring the T.rex home to KU” — regardless of the $16,700 goal is reached by the cutoff date of July 15.

“All of those gifts will go to that purpose,” she said, “even if we fall short of our goal.”

Some crowdfunding platforms, Humphrey said, “require that you reach your goal or you don’t get the money.”

A large gift of $10,000 got the “Bring the T.rex home to KU” crowdfunding project off to a rousing start.

The crowdfunding page has a variety of levels of giving, including $5, $15, $25, $75 and $100. “Every little bit helps,” Humphrey said.

Should the crowdfunding effort generate funds in excess of the $16,700 goal, the additional proceeds will be used for exhibiting the materials at the Natural History Museum and for research.

Humphrey noted the first paleontologist to discover a T.rex fossil was Barnum Brown, a native of Carbondale and a KU alumnus, who discovered the giant dinosaur’s remains in 1902 in the Hell Creek Formation in Montana.

Humphrey said that in light of Brown’s discovery more than a century ago, this summer’s dig brings the hunt for T.rex fossils “full circle” for KU paleontology students.

Updates on the fundraising effort will be posted on Twitter with the hashtag #TeamTrexKU, as well as on the KU Natural History Museum’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/kunaturalhistory/?fref=nf.

To find out more about the crowdfunding page or to make donations, visit www.launchku.org/project/2312.

http://cjonline.com/news/2016-05-21/ku-paleontology-students-look-crowdfunding-trex-project