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Hi! While I've also been fossil collecting, I am also volunteering for a local theatre company right now. This month, we will hopefully be leading a free acting program for youth in our community. Among my roles is writer/co-writer for the script that the youth will be performing. Ideas for what the script will be about have been scarce, but I do have one idea. I am thinking of making a vignette play (essentially an anthology of related scenes) about the lives of fossil hunters and palaeontologists. The scenes would be transcribed from various historical accounts and stories published in literature, but I would like to have some modern day scenes as well! If you are comfortable with it, I would really love to hear some of your craziest or most interesting stories from your lives of fossil hunting and collecting! Maybe it was a thrilling brush with danger while in the field, maybe it was an interaction between you and a cooky character, maybe it was a moment that cemented your love for fossils early in your life. I'll take anything! Regale me with your tales in the replies section or by sending them directly to me! Details, names, etc. may be changed or omitted, but I'd like to keep them as accurate as possible. Please also indicate if you would potentially be alright if your story made it into the production somehow. Thank you!

Halloween is coming up soon so lets share our fossil related horror stories! They can range from Preparation accidents, missed opportunities, breaking specimens, close encounters with a dangerous animal hunting, near death experiences, or even receiving a fossil from an old haunted collection, pretty much anything a hunter and collector would find horrifying. One of my personal fossil horror stories involves a a terrifying bump in the night! I had recent found and started a to use a new plastic shelf I found to store my finds from a recent new spot. I started to notice a few days in the shelf was already nearly filled to capacity, so I decided I would add no more after today's load. Sometime after mid-night I heard a sudden loud bang and woke up to the plastic shelf tipping over forward, one of the support wheels had poped out! Luckily the shock awakened my superhuman reflexes of seeing my fossils in danger so I leapt up and was able to save the shelf from crashing down. I was shaken but since then stabilized the shelf, it was truly horrifying to see that moment when my fossils could've been severely damaged or destroyed

I've been known to be sentimental at times. I drift in and out of The fossil Forum as my life ebbs and flows, leading me in different directions. Yet sitting here reading all of your wonderful posts, it made me wonder "What inspired all of these people to fall in love with fossils?". We all have our own unique journey, and I'd love to hear yours. My journey began as a very young child. My father is and was an extremely scientific and nature loving man. I grew up surrounded with dinosaur books, digging in the dirt, and nature in all shapes and forms. Growing up and being homeschooled, I spent many days on digs and field trips with the University of Kansas Paleontology team. My family owned a large swath of forest in eastern Kansas, so my free time was spent digging through shale for ferns or cracking into limestone in search of crinoids and ammonites. (My parents still have a 22 inch Permian ammonite that I found in the river bottoms when I was 10.) Fossils were all I thought about, I remember on long road trips, looking out the window and imagining what the world must have looked like so many millions of years ago. Suddenly, in the chalk flats of western Kansas, mosasaurs and megaladons were battling it out for supremacy. I completely fell in love with these great ancient creatures. Today, my life is far more complex. I'm an entrepreneur who runs a number of companies, my wife and I are expecting our first child, the sands of time have moved on... Yet I still haven't lost that wonder, the bubbly sensation in my gut whenever I discover a trilobite, or visit a museum and see the grandeur of a T-Rex. With fossils my inner child is awakened, my soul comes alive... I believe that our society is missing something, in our mass amnesia and our obsession with the ephemeral... We're missing a sense of wonder, my friends. And holding a fossil so ancient, so lasting and steadfast, seems to give us continuity and peace in our ever changing world. Please share your stories my friends! I would love to hear! Dylan (PS, wasn't sure which category this should be in. Mods, please feel free to assign accordingly.)

---Prologue--- Milky Way Galaxy 25,000 years ago A spiral galaxy, one of the billions of islands of stars moving across the dark matter that is known as the universe, it rotates like a huge galactic wheel, pulling countless stars within its titanic gravitational pull. This particular galaxy is known as the Milky Way, 100,000 light-years across and 1,000 light-years thick. Like a grain of sand pulled by an ocean current, an asteroid races through the galaxy. The asteroid measures nearly seven miles in diameter, and has been moving through the galaxy since the dawn of time, passing planets and other asteroids. It is now on a collision course with a medium sized planet. The planet is still millions of miles away, but the asteroid is approaching quickly. The planet is warm and tropical, and also has an abundant source of water, oxygen, and life. The asteroid hurdles towards Earth, nothing can stop it. When it impacts, it will cause world-wide destruction and chaos. The countdown to extinction has begun.