Dyslexia and Talent - Dinosaur Hunter Jack Horner

[Jack] Is there anybody who cannot identify this?

[Laughter] ...[from audience]"I thought it

was a nice purse, but I know it's not now..."

[Jack Horner] You know, usually I to

children, and of course, they know a lot

more than everybody else in here, right?

You know that, right? About what I talk

about...okay...Brocke asked me to talk

about something that I don't talk about.

He asked me to talk about me. I'm not...

so just bear with me, okay? The whole

point, I guess, is how I got here. Why I am

standing up here. I come from Montana,

and ... (ahem)...I come from a town called

Shelby, Montana. Here is a picture of it .

You can see this large thing that is in the

picture here. Shelby, in 1923, obviously

before I was born....I think the whole town

was Dyslexic...[laughter]. This is a boxing

stadium. This was were they held the World

Heavyweight Boxing Championship in 1923,

in a town of 500 in the middle of Montana.

No kidding, that's it! Well, as you can

imagine, it didn't work very well, but ...

I have circled there the high school

building in the town, where 5 years after

this picture was taken, my father graduated

as a valedictorian. You can imagine just

saying that, that he and I didn't get

along well. I was born, and there is my

first house on the left there, a tent.

I've pretty much lived in tents ever since.

There are sort of 2 stories here. One is

the way my father saw it, as far as he was

concerned, life was great for me until I

was 5 years old. Like everyone else, at

the age of 5, I went to kindergarten and

flunked out, because I couldn't figure out

the blocks, with letters on them. Then,

according to my father, at the age of 8 he

tried to teach me Algebra. I still,

obviously, couldn't read, so I didn't do

well there. Then I went through....like

everyone else in this room...I'm a little

suspicious of the non-dyslexics in here...

[big laughter]....but I'll get to that

later. I'm just really curious as to why

you are here....seriously...unless you are

trying to get our secrets from us. [laughter]

Anyway, I went on and did poorly, and had

lots of report cards that said lots of

things about me, like the other report card

we were looking at. I finally graduated

from high school with a D-minus-minus-minus.

The teacher said to me, this means that you

have failed, but I never want to see you

again! [Laughter] I was happy, that was

good! Then I went to college. I went to

the University of Montana. At that time,

you could get in if you had a high school

diploma. I entered in 1964 and flunked

out in 1965. Upon flunking out, I was

drafted and I went to the United States

Marine Corp, which only drafted for one

month, in all of it's time. So, I was not

only dyslexic, but unlucky. [laughter].

That was 1966, I came back and went back

to college, and according to my father, in

1973 I had flunked out of college 7 times

in 5 years. I was 27 years old, I was

married, I was a truck driver. And as far

as my father was concerned, that was the

end of my life. He wasn't even going to

hire me to work in his gravel plant. Which

was okay...but...that's not really how I

looked at it. I sort of had a different

view of my life. When I was 8 years old,

when he was trying to teach me Algebra,

I actually found my first dinosaur bone

that year. It was a pretty big occasion

for me. I went out...my mother would take

me on drives, take me out to the sites.

I would go out and collect dinosaur bones

even though I was failing all of my

classes in school. When I was 12 years

old, I built an exhibit in our library.

It's still there. I would go to the

library and read all the books, not read

them, but look at all the pictures to

determine what I thought I had, and label

all the fossils. Then I continued to do

that through high school, and when I

graduated from high school, I won the

science fair, and that was actually how I

got to college...I was invited, so I went

in 1964, and I studied Geology, Zoology,

Anthropology, and Botany. I actually took

all the courses that were offered in all 4

departments. But when you flunk out every

quarter....So here's the key, and this is

worth telling your students. The key is,

that if you change your major after you've

been kicked out, then those people in that

department don't really know. [laughter]

So I would change majors pretty constantly.

But while I was there, I also learned how

to...don't look at my trousers..it was the

60's. So anyway, I learned how to put

skeletons together, and it was pretty cool.

I actually learned quite a bit. I also

excavated my first dinosaur skeleton, and

so from my perspective, in 1973, I had

learned an awful lot about Geology and

Zoology, I'd completed a scientific

research project, I was married, and my

outlook was pretty optimistic. I was

applying for work in museums. Two years

later, I was hired to work as a technician

at Princeton University. Now, a technician-

I didn't have a degree as you probably

could tell, I had a high school diploma.

I was hired by Princeton to clean fossils.

While I was there, there were signs around

on the campus, and one of them said,

would you rather go to a movie than read a

book? ...Some other weird questions --I

went and asked about it, and they told me

I was dys--lex--ic. I assume everybody

knows here, that it doesn't matter if

somebody tells you that. Right? I mean...

You can't read any better. [laughter]

Anyway...so...I thanked them and I went

back to work. [big laughter] I started

Princeton in 1975, and then in 1978, a

friend of mine, Bob Macula, who's there in

the picture, he and I found a nest of baby

dinosaurs back in Montana, when I was back

there on vacation, looking for 'stuff'.

The baby dinosaurs...it was the first time

people had actually seen evidence that

dinosaurs cared for their young. A year

later I published my first scientific

paper in the journal, Nature.

We found a lot of stuff. We found the

largest concentration of dinosaur bones in

the world, estimated at 115,000 skeletons.

Obviously, we haven't dug them all up yet.

But I was at Princeton at that time, and

the museum in Montana, the Museum of the

Rockies, where I work now, stopped by and

said, you know, you are finding so many

dinosaurs...leave some here for us. I said,

"'llI tell you what, I'll leave them all

here if you just hire me. Princeton is very

nice, but when you are born and raised

in Montana, New Jersey just doesn't cut

it. So, they did. They hired me and in

1982 I went back to Montana as the Curator

of Paleontology. Now, I didn't have a

degree, so I couldn't do anything, and I

was the curator, I could actually curate

fossils, --basically put things away. I

was at a University where I really couldn't

do much of anything else. But a funny thing

happened. While we were working, we found

the first dinosaur eggs in the Western

Hemisphere. We went on to find quite a

few eggs. I don't know...there is something

about dinosaur eggs, maybe you can explain,

we'll have a non-dyslexic/dyslexic

conversation after this, alright? Dinosaur

eggs actually had been found in the 1800's.

They had been found in France, and then in

the 1920's, they were found in Mongolia,

and some were found in China. I started

finding these eggs in the 1980's and I

was the first person to find a dinosaur

embryo, a little skeleton of a dinosaur

inside the egg. Now, here's our dyslexic

question. "Dinosaur eggs were found in the

1800's. The first dinosaur embryo was

found in 1983. What advantage did I have

over everyone else in the world for all

those years?" ...I had a hammer! [laughter]

That's all there was! I had a hammer. For

all of those years, people had ...See,

this is the problem with reading. Reading

is really over-rated if you think about it.

People had convinced one another that

they shouldn't break eggs open because

eggs are precious. And so no one ever

broke an egg open. I even went to museums

and said, "Can I just break one of your

eggs open?" and they said, "NO, you can't

break our eggs because they are precious. "

And I said, "It's just like having a

present that you never open because it is

so pretty." Seriously, no one had ever

found a dinosaur embryo. So I have

gone back now that people saw that I

could break them open and glue is cheap,

you can glue them back together. [laughter]

There is nothing that you can see...you can

see in my picture there the thing is

actually held together with a rubber band.

After you break it, you just rubber-band it

back together again. Anyway...then I

published my first book that year and

of course sent it to my English teacher.

[laughter] We've gone on and discovered

an awful lot of dinosaurs in Montana,

a lot of new species of dinosaurs. But

it was the dinosaur embryo's that caught

people's imagination and caught, I don't

know, caught something, because the

University of Montana, the very people

that had thrown me out of college, 7 times,

gave me an honorary doctorate! [clapping]

...On my 40th birthday. And then two

weeks later, I got a MacArthur

Fellowship.[clapping] So then they made me

a professor! [laughter] I'm serious, they

made me a professor! Just because I had a

hammer! [laughter] I'm serious, I became a

professor! Then I could have graduate

students, and I could write NSF grants,

and I sent out expeditions all over

Montana. And then I sent out expeditions

all over the world, and it was 1993 and

that's when Steven Spielberg called me up

and asked me if I wanted to work on a

movie. All because I had a hammer. So,

that's what I do. We have the largest

dinosaur research program in the world.

As you can see, up in the upper right

hand corner, we still break eggs. What we

are breaking now, is into developmental

evolutionary biology, and we are

attempting in our lab to retro-engineer a

live dinosaur, from a bird. Yes, we are

trying to make the Dino-Chicken. It's the

Dino-Chicken project, which basically

takes a hammer as well. I encouage you,

if you can get to Montana, come visit

our museum, where we break open a lot

of things. Thank you.