Knee-deep in Alaska’s Liscomb Bonebed, the single richest bed for dinosaur bones in either polar region, Pat Druckenmiller, Ph.D., can safely declare that he loves his job. Museum curator of earth science and associate professor of geology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Druckenmiller has spent months every year during his eight-year tenure wading, sifting, and sorting through the bonebed’s three-foot layer of dinosaur fossils.

His relentless work has advanced our collective understanding of the prehistoric creatures that once roamed the Earth, and has even resulted in the identification of a new species of dinosaur that was just announced by the University: Ugrunaaluk (pronounced oo-GREW-na-luck) kuukpikensis (pronounced KOOK-pik-en-sis). (As published in Acta Paleontologica Polonica.)

The complexity involved in sorting and categorizing specimens from the site, however, presents an enormous stumbling block for researchers, according to Druckenmiller.

 …