GCU Quelle Suprise posted:

Howdy, socially anxious paleontologist here! Also, Atrocious, are you Darren? Cuz you know me through the grapevine!

I'm prob not gonna post much cuz posting gives me the agita, but I'm psyched about this thread!!!

Sharkie posted:

quote:

Speaker Gingrich Mixes Politics and Paleontology
By Jerry Gray
Aug. 29, 1997

Somewhere short of a heat stroke, with a world-class paleontologist coaching him, a Hollywood star squatting nearby mumbling encouragement, anxious aides checking their watches and even more antsy security men on the lookout for rattlesnakes in the scrub brush, Newt Gingrich accomplished his goal: he found a dinosaur bone.

Looking like a pudgy Indiana Jones in jeans, plaid shirt and wide-brimmed hat, lugging a backpack bulging with pickax, chisels and a wisk broom, the Speaker of the House chipped away a crust of brittle stones and dried mud to expose his Jurassic treasure. He grinned broadly and proclaimed, ''I feel like a 9-year-old.''

Mr. Gingrich's bent for animals has long rivaled his passion for politics. Frequent photo sessions in his Capitol Hill office portray him holding assorted critters brought in by zoo keepers from all over the country; he reveled in a moose-watching expedition to New Hampshire two years ago and acted as ringmaster at a circus performance on the Capitol grounds in his earliest days in power. And, Mr. Gingrich said that as an adolescent, he dreamed of becoming a zoo keeper or a paleontologist.

But the Speaker took one of his oddest detours ever from politics on Wednesday, interrupting a two-week-long national tour to fulfill a lifelong fantasy, which he pursued with such dogged determination that he refused to leave the jealously guarded private site just east of Bozeman until he came up with the booty.

That took many long, hot hours, even with the assistance of Dr. John Horner, a renowned paleontologist who served as a consultant on the movie ''Jurassic Park'' and its sequel ''Lost World.'' After three hours of digging, which produced only buckets full of rubble, a slight stir was caused when the actor Peter Fonda and his wife unexpectedly appeared over the crest of a hill while hiking from their nearby ranch. Recognizing Dr. Horner and Mr. Gingrich, the Fondas marched over to greet them and watch the Speaker's uneventful progress.

''It's hot, it's windy, there's a lot of dirt, a lot of rock,'' a disappointed Mr. Gingrich told reporters as he took a long-delayed lunch break.

...
The night before, he abandoned the polemics of Capitol Hill to debate the feeding habits of Tyrannosaurus rex with Dr. Horner, a professor of paleontology at Montana State University in Bozeman. The Speaker, an ardent fan of T. rex, keeps a massive head of the beast on a shelf in his Capitol Hill offices, a cast on loan from the Smithsonian that is made from the very dinosaur that is the centerpiece exhibit at the Museum of the Rockies.

A crowd of about 200 people paid $100 apiece at a museum fund-raiser on Tuesday night to sip wine, pose for individual pictures with Mr. Gingrich and Dr. Horner and listen to them clash, sometimes tongue-in-cheek but often in serious academic discourse (between swigs of beer), over whether T. rex was a scavenger or a predator.

quote:

Newt reins himself in for final push
By JAMES HOHMANN and GINGER GIBSON 12/31/2011 04:08 PM EST
...
Of course, he’s not a completely changed man. At a town hall meeting here Saturday afternoon, Gingrich delivered his neatly segmented remarks on taxes, regulations and an overarching economy, but when asked to explain his position on global warming, he delivered a new line.

“I’m an amateur paleontologist,” Gingrich said. “I spend a lot of time looking at the Earth’s temperature for a very long time. I’m a lot harder to convince than just looking at a computer model.”

quote:

Take the last stop on Tuesday at Mabe’s Pizza in Decorah, where a woman asked if America is prepared for a pandemic.

“I honestly don’t know, and it would depend on what kind of pandemic it was,” Gingrich said.