How was Jane discovered?
In the summer of 2001, Burpee Museum sent a 14-member team to Hell Creek for three weeks. Members included museum staff, volunteers and amateur paleontologists. They were “prospecting” for fossils. That meant they could scan the ground for fossils, but couldn’t do any excavating. On the last day, two team members, Bill Harrison and Carol Tuck, discovered Jane. Harrison found a toe bone, and Tuck found a leg bone. (Harrison is a Spanish and Portuguese language professor at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb; Tuck is a CPA and the spouse of a Burpee board member.) It was time to go home, plus, they didn’t have an excavation permit. They camouflaged the site with rocks and dirt, hoping it would remain hidden until a Burpee team could return in 2002 with the proper permits to excavate and remove bones.
