NEAR CHOTEAU — “I feel like I’m living my dream life,” said Chloe Witneck, a volunteer and paleohistology assistant at the Museum of the Rockies (MOR) in Bozeman. “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, and 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.
WATCH - digging for dinos near Choteau:
“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 your 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.
Scharff said that being in a quarry looking for dinosaurs is something she says she has always dreamed 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!”
The Field Paleontologist on this particular dig is Dr. Haviv Avrahami, who recently joined the museum crew.
He explained, “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."
It 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, Avrahami made connections, worked in the field and eventually received his PhD.
Now, 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.”
