Hollywood should be thanking soldiers from the southwestern U.S. for dinosaur buzz ahead of its release of the new thriller “The End of Oak Street.”
Earlier this summer, Army National Guard units from Utah and Nevada joined forces to help “airlift multiple rock-encased dinosaur fossils out of the ground for the Natural History Museum of Utah and North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences,” according to a previous release published on DVIDS. The mission included a UH-60 Black Hawk and UH-72 Lakota assigned to the 2-211th Aviation Regiment, Utah Army National Guard, and a CH-47 Chinook assisted from the 1-189th Aviation Regiment, Nevada National Guard.
The topic of dinosaurs has always captured the public’s interest, as well as that of paleontologists worldwide. As writer and historian David Attenborough quipped, “Even after millions of years, dinosaurs still have the power to capture the human imagination.”
Back in the 1870s, Utah experienced what was called the ‘Dinosaur Rush’. Similar to California’s gold rush 20 years prior, the Dinosaur Rush saw the scientific community, specifically paleontologists, feverishly scouring Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming for dinosaur bones to send to museums and private collectors.
Not surprising, the recent National Guard-assisted dinosaur fossil extraction took place in southern Utah, specifically at Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The mission resulted in the extraction of a 76-million-year-old baby duck-billed dinosaur that was only “2 or 3 ft. long,” according to Dr. Randall Irmis Ph.D., chief curator of paleontology at the Natural History Museum of Utah. But despite its small size, “the fossilized remains weigh over 1,100 pounds encased in rock.”
The collected bones, however, will not be on display anytime soon.
“Currently, there are no plans to display the fossils. As with most fossil discoveries, there is a lot of preparation and study that needs to be done first, sometimes taking years,” said Mark Johnston, marketing manager at the Natural History Museum of Utah.
One of the interesting side notes of this project, which took place in Utah’s Garfield County, was the initial public notice issued by Kaden Figgins, director of Planning and Economic Development. It reads, in part: “The County intends to solicit assistance from the Department of Defense’s Innovative Readiness Training (IRT) program. The assistance will include the extraction of a fully intact articulated dinosaur specimen via helicopter in the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument in southern Utah.” After 30 days, there were no objections filed to this notice, and the rest is history.
While dinosaurs got all the publicity, Figgins’ notice shed light on the government’s IRT program, which has been in the shadows since its inception in 1992.
The IRT website outlines parameters and specifics of the program, which includes serving as a Department of War (DoW) military training opportunity throughout the U.S. and its territories, while delivering joint training opportunities to increase deployment readiness. On the flip side, IRT also provides key services like healthcare, construction, cybersecurity, and transportation (like shuttling dinosaur bones).
However, IRT management emphasizes the importance of community applications, which serve as the cornerstone of the program. It is the starting point of the IRT program’s civil-military partnerships. To that end, the overarching goal of Innovative Readiness Training is summarized in a few words on their website: Missions produce mission-ready forces, civil-military partnerships, and stronger communities.
Given those parameters, it seems only appropriate that the mission of the entire country – both military and civilian alike – should now be to gather at “The End of Oak Street.” The movie debuted this past weekend at the number three spot, with no sightings of a baby duck-billed dinosaur revealed.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The author submitted a request to the DOW’s public affairs to get more information on this IRT activity and the overall program. We have since been redirected to the Army National Guard and will update this story if we get more details.