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[Coop and Dino singing]

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There's tons of different types of hunters out there: [Girl running away from a vampire]

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Maybe you've heard of the ultra cool vampire hunters....

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or maybe you yourself are a bargain hunter....

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But there's one super exciting type of hunter that you rarely hear about...

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The fossil hunter!! [Boy staring at a fossil]

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Okay…maybe it's not the most exciting of all the hunters, but it has its moments!

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A fossil hunter's goal is to, well …find…fossils.

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Okay so it's not so much hunting as it is locating, but that's the word they're going with. [Person staring at fossil and fossil explodes]

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Fossil locater just doesn't have the same air of mystery…

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And realistically, whether it's dinosaur bones, an entire skeleton, or any other sort of evidence

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of life from long, long ago, they're interested in finding it.

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Fossil hunters come from all walks of life, and don't even need to be professionally-trained. [Fossil hunters together in a room]

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Pick up a shovel, smear on the sunscreen, head out into the wilderness, and boom!

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Instant fossil hunter!

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Of course, it would help to have a general understanding of where you might want to look. [Girl reading a fossil hunting book]

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Your parents' backyard probably isn't the best place to start…and they'll probably

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be mad if you dig up the lawn. [Girl digs up lawn and parents appear]

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Instead you should probably do a little research into dig sites and places you might be allowed

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to dig.

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Then you can get a-shovelin'.

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No guarantees you'll actually find anything, but hey, at least it's good exercise! [Girl digs into the ground]

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Once a fossil hunter actually does find a fossil, the first thing that must be done

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is to determine whether or not the fossil really is, in fact, a fossil. [Person uses magnifying glass to inspect a fossil]

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And that means calling in a true expert––a paleontologist – that's a scientist that

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studies fossils.

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The reason it's important to do this first is because a lot of the time, what looks to

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be a fossil might just be a rock, or a really old baseball, or some weird paper-machie project

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that got covered in a bunch of dirt and twigs. [Papermache project with dirt and twigs in a lab]

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But if it is a real fossil, a paleontologist will know how to proceed next.

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They'll probably call in special diggers called excavators, complete with special digging

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tools, to carefully remove the fossils without harming them. [Coop discussing excavators]

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And depending on the size of the fossil – y'know, if it's a complete T-Rex skeleton or something

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– this could take a pretty long time. [Sloths digging up fossils and man waits]

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Once a fossil is completely dug up, it must be carefully moved to a museum to be studied.

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Naturally, bones that are millions of years old tend be pretty fragile, so things can [Man carrying a box of dinosaur bones]

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get pretty tense while they're being moved around.

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Once the bones are safely at the museum, they're handed over to experts who assemble them as

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best they can in order to make them look like they were originally arranged. [Man assembles bones together]

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In the case of a complete dinosaur skeleton, it can look pretty impressive.

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And in the case of a just a single stray bone, well, it looks a little bit less impressive,

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but we're sure your dog will appreciate it! [Dog snatches a bone from museum]

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