“I feel like I’m living my dream life,” Chloe Witneck, a volunteer and paleohistology assistant at MOR said, “I am full of excitement, when I find a new bone or someone else does, and we’re like oh my gosh what is that?”
That spirit of team work and comradery is felt throughout the camp, Sarah Scharff, a field crew chief in Paleontology for MOR, notes that it’s the work that the crew does that leads to incredible discoveries.
“You got a dinosaur out of the ground, you have one of the rarest things in the earth out of the ground, and it’s all because of you and you crew and the people you work with!” Scharff said.
Scharff and Witneck have been out in the field previously, and note the amazing opportunity that the museum offers students.
“Every night when I go to bed, I’m like ok tomorrow I get to wake up and dig the dinosaur again – and it’s really exciting!” Witneck said.
For Scharff, being in a quarry looking for dinosaurs is something she says she has always dreamt of doing!
“My parents would tell you that I came out of the womb with a chisel in hand and I was determined to get to the ground and start digging up dinosaurs!” Sharff said.
The Field Paleontologist on this particular dig is Dr. Haviv Avrahami, who recently joined the museum crew and shares his story to the profession.
“When I got to high school, you know, there were some things going on in my family and my home life and school was really difficult for me … and I was kind of a troublemaker in high school…and so I was never able to graduate with my peers, and I dropped out of high school,” Avrahami said.
WATCH: Digging for giants: how Willow Creek and Choteau shaped Montana's dino legacy
Avrahami notes that is was his passion for science that kept him hooked.
“I stayed really passionate about science, and I went back to community college and had a lot of friends from my local church and a lot of family members supporting me, to stay in school and pursue my passion for science….and it was when took my first geology class when I was like wow! This is what I want to do with my life, something with the geo-sciences, something with earth and nature.” Avrahami said.
From there, Dr. Haviv Avrahami made connections, worked in the field and eventually received his PhD. Today, he’s out with Museum of the Rockies near Choteau, eager to see what lies beneath the surface.
“It’s incredible, I mean this is a dream come true…this is the dream job – in so many different ways. We get to be stewards of the earth, explorers of the deep and ancient past and uncovering the mysteries of what life was like millions and millions of years ago.” Avrahami said, “It’s an incredible job to have and every day is a new mystery and every day there’s something new, there’s something exciting…it’s just the best job in the world.”
