Why was Kenneth Oppel digging up dinosaur bones in Alberta?
Kenneth Oppel is the author of many young adult novels. His latest, Every Hidden Thing, tells the story of two teenaged fossil hunters falling in love while searching for the first Tyrannosaurus rex.
The real-life inspiration
The book was inspired by two real-life paleontologists from the mid-19th century called Edward Drinkwater Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh. They were rivals and they engaged in something called the Bone Wars, in which they tried to name as many dinosaur species as possible in their careers, undermine each other, steal each other's fossils and discredit each other at every chance they got. They were larger than life figures. And when I read about these two guys I thought, "This is irresistible."
I had wondered for a long time, "Who was that person who dug up the first dinosaur bone?" This huge piece of bone that obviously didn't belong to any other species on Earth. How would they have explained it? Was it from a giant or some kind of monstrous creature?
I really wanted to cast my mind back and just imagine how exciting that early discovery would have been because I think we've all seen so many dinosaurs now they sort of lost their magnificence. I wanted to go back and see if I could rediscover that for the reader.
Field research
I was lucky enough to be invited along on a small dig in Dinosaur Provincial Park with the Royal Tyrrell Museum guys. They put up with me for three or four days as I bumbled my way through the site and confused rock with bone and petrified wood. They let me dig a little around some specimens they were quarrying out but they never let me get too close, because they knew I'd put a shovel through something important like a head.
That stuff was gold, as a writer, because you get the sensations — how hot it is, how boring it can be, how exciting it can be, the mosquito eating you... all those tactile details you can really use to great effect in the writing.
Kenneth Oppel's comments have been edited and condensed.