BBC Provides International Exposure

for the Royal Gorge Dinosaur Experience Museum

Fremont County Stones ‘n Bones, was delighted to be part of a British Broadcasting Company (BBC) filming experience on August 7, 2016 at Royal Gorge Dinosaur Experience, the new dinosaur museum eight miles west of Cañon City on US-50.

Host Michael Portillo and the BBC crew were in the Cañon City area to film a segment for the series “Great American Railway Journeys”, a travel documentary based on the BBC travel documentary series “Great British Railway Journeys”. As the crew were driving along US-50 near the Royal Gorge turnoff, they couldn’t miss seeing the long neck of a Brachiosaurus grazing in a juniper patch, and because their filming of the Royal Gorge Railroad journey touched on paleontologist O.C. Marsh’s visit to Cañon City and Garden Park over 130 years ago, it made sense to add a segment on dinosaurs to the episode.

Michael Portillo’s connection with railway journeys began when he read George Bradshaw’s 1913 “Continental Railway Guide”; Bradshaw had also written a tourist handbook relating the influence railways have had on Great Britain in 1863. Prior to a career in media, Michael was a Member of Parliament (comparable to a US senator) and held the Cabinet post of Defence Secretary (comparable to our Secretary of Defense) under Prime Minister John Major in the mid-1990’s.

The show will be aired in the UK in February 2017, and will hopefully find it’s way to the BBC America channel soon thereafter.

Zach invited Stones ‘n Bones to set up a temporary paleo lab for filming purposes. Each of the Stones ‘n Bones volunteers worked on fossils as they were interviewed by Mr. Portillo, who asked them to describe what they were working on, its origin and age, and their preparatory technique.

Volunteers were working on fossil turtles, oreodonts (an extinct camel/pig-like animal), microscopic insects, fish slabs and conodonts (microscopic teeth from an extinct eel-like fish).

Stones ’n Bones volunteers from left to right: Harold Taylor, Mary Chamberlain, Loretta Bailey, Host Michael Portillo, Kyleigh Martin, Cindy Smith, John Fusion.