What creature sees like an artist, understands bones like a doctor, uses blow torches and plastics like an engineer, and spends summers in the Gobi Desert? A preparator. One like Amy Davidson. She is a preparator in the American Museum of Natural History's Department of Vertebrate Paleontology in New York City.

Amy Davidson in her workshop with a rare fossil — a dinosaur sitting on a nest of eggs.

In the Paleontology Lab

"Today I'm working on a troodontid braincase." Davidson explains. "This troodontid is a small dinosaur about the size of a cat." She points to a small red rock with some bone showing. The bone is a skull fragment. Fiber-optic lights shine a ring on the small broken skull. "I'm using a hard carbide needle to remove the rock from inside the skull. That will expose the imprint of the brain." Opening a small drawer, she shows off a variety of needle points.

For larger fossils in harder rock, Davidson uses an air scribe— a minijackhammer that pecks away at the rock. Using a floor pedal, she applies a gentle stream of air to the tiny fossil, clearing away the fine dust and tiny pieces of rock.

An Aspiring Artist

As a youngster, Davidson did not dream of one day working with dinosaurs. She did, however, love the outdoors, and she loved to make sculptures. In college she studied art. Her first job was with the exhibition department of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. There she built dioramas for the new Hall of Plant Evolution.

Amy Davidson left the Smithsonian to pursue sculpting. She worked at several jobs. She was an apprentice at a bronze foundry, where she learned to cast bronze sculptures. Later she worked for Harvard University's Department of Mammalogy, dissecting and preserving animals that had died. She also took classes in vertebrate paleontology and human anatomy.

A Fascination for Fossils

Davidson's love of both art and science led her to a career turning point. A fossil preparator at Harvard invited her to work in his lab. Her first complete preparation revealed under the microscope a perfect little creature curled up as if in sleep— a sleep of 200 million years. She was hooked.

Dinosaur Hunting in the Gobi

Davidson's most exciting adventure began later, when she came to work at the American Museum of Natural History. Ten days after starting as a preparator, she was on a plane with paleontologists Michael Novacek and Mark Norrell heading halfway around the world to Ulan Bator, Mongolia, on an expedition to the Gobi Desert.

The highlight of this 1993 expedition was the discovery of Oviraptor fossils. One Oviraptor was found protecting a nest of 22 eggs, possibly from a smothering dust storm that swept the Gobi about 80 million years ago. An expedition in 1995 turned up two more Oviraptor skeletons found quite close together.

A Natural Sculpture Takes Form

When the 1995 fossils arrived back in New York, Davidson went to work carefully cleaning and restoring one of the specimens. When she finished, the specimen was the most nearly perfect Oviraptor skeleton ever found.

"Working on a new fossil is like a window into the past," she says. "It's hard to go home at night. I want to stay and continue working, chipping away at the rock that encases the fossil. As I work, a natural sculpture, a skeleton, begins to emerge from the rock. So beautiful." So speaks an artist and a scientist.

Excerpted from an article by Karen Kane, which appeared in the Spring 1997 issue of The Fossil Times, a publication of the American Museum of Natural History, Department of Education.

Amy Davidson's workshop tools include drill bits, brushes, an eyedropper to apply adhesive resin, and a small rubber bulb to blow away dust and rock particles.

Visiting the Museum

The American Museum of Natural History has one on the world's leading collections of dinosaur fossils. The Museum is located in New York City at Central Park West at West 79th Street. You can also visit the Museum 24-hours-a-day on its Web site, www.amnh.org.