Emily S. Rueb

And now, a plane crash could be added to that list, according to a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board filed this week.

A crop-dusting plane that dumped hundreds of gallons of pink water over a field in Turkey, Texas, about 300 miles northwest of Dallas, crashed to the ground in early September, according to safety board documents. No major injuries were reported.

The pilot, Raj Horan, had been “conducting a gender reveal flight for a friend” when, after releasing about 350 gallons of water, the single-seat plane “got too slow” and stalled, records show.

A passenger, identified as Jennifer Harrell, sustained minor injuries, according to the incident report. The aircraft, which struck the ground and flipped on its back, sustained substantial damage.

Attempts to reach Harrell and Horan on Friday were not successful.

The pilot told investigators there were “no preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane.”

Cultural researchers have traced the origins of the so-called gender reveal party to the late 2000s. But those early attempts feel almost quaint by today’s standards.

Despite the possibility of attracting backlash for reinforcing gender stereotypes and schadenfreude should things go wrong, some couples have felt that confetti or cake sprinkles are not flashy enough to deliver their messages.

Last month, an Iowa couple trying to create a device that could shoot colored powder into the air inadvertently built a pipe bomb that killed one of their guests. A day later, authorities in the state investigated another explosion of a store-bought “gender reveal kit,” according to The Associated Press.

On Australia’s Gold Coast, a black car was rigged to spew thick clouds of blue smoke. But after drifting slowly and spinning its wheels on the road, the car burst into flames. (The driver managed to escape.)

And in 2018, a man shot a rifle at a target containing a highly explosive chemical mixed with colorful powder packets that were intended to create a pink or blue cloud. The resulting explosion, however, sparked a massive fire that took firefighters a week to extinguish and burned more than 45,000 acres in Arizona.

The man who shot the rifle, a Customs and Border Protection agent, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor violation of U.S. Forest Service regulations and agreed to pay $220,000 in restitution.

This article originally appeared in

'Gender Reveal' Celebration in Texas Led to a Plane Crash

In recent years, expectant parents have gone to extreme lengths to create splashy, Instagrammable moments to announce the sex of their child. Some of the celebrations, however, have ended in calamity: a 45,000-acre forest fire, a flaming car, a deadly explosion.

The inmate, Tony Maycon Munoz-Mendez, who had been incarcerated at Rogers State Prison in Reidsville, Georgia, about 65 miles west of Savannah, walked free Friday around 11:30 a.m., according to the Georgia Department of Corrections.

The department, one of the country’s largest prison systems with nearly 52,000 inmates, announced his release in a statement three days after the incident. It did not explain how the error had occurred or why it had not been revealed sooner.

A spokeswoman for the department, Lori Benoit, said it was reviewing the circumstances surrounding his release and would carry out a “full internal investigation.”

“The priority of the Georgia Department of Corrections is apprehending the offender as quickly as possible, and at this time, we have all resources focused on the search,” Benoit said.

According to online corrections records, Munoz-Mendez, 31, was sentenced to life in prison for rapes that occurred in 2010 and 2012, as well as aggravated child molestation in 2010.

John Warr, the Gwinnett County prosecutor who handled the case, said that Munoz-Mendez had begun molesting the 7-year-old daughter of his girlfriend at the time, culminating in rape several years later.

Warr, who helped convict Munoz-Mendez in 2015, said by phone Tuesday that he had learned about the accidental release by reading an article online.

“He’d been out of prison, mistakenly, for about 60 hours by the time we heard about it,” he said.

Warr said that he “immediately” called the victim, who lives with a foster mother, and that they were both “shocked.”

Neither had been contacted by the corrections department, he said.

“Something needs to be done about the protocols, the procedures, about verifying who they’re releasing,” Warr said of the department.

Warr said the state had recently passed a constitutional amendment bolstering the rights of crime victims to be notified about updates in legal cases involving those who have harmed them.

“I don’t think those were adhered to,” he said, “definitely not in a timely manner.”

The corrections department asked for help in capturing the inmate, adding that he should not be approached.

“The public is reminded to call 911,” the department said, or call 478-992-5111.

Convicted Rapist in Georgia Is Released From Prison 'in Error'

A manhunt is underway in Georgia for a convicted rapist and child molester who is serving a life sentence and was released “in error,” the authorities said.

Jo Rowan is the associate strategy director of the firm, PriestmanGoode, which has spent more than two decades applying design thinking to the air travel experience, including airport lounges and cabin seating.

Now, she said, the firm is turning its attention to the less “glamorous” side of things.

“Onboard waste is a big issue,” she said. “Knowing that you have 4 billion passengers per year, it all adds up very quickly.”

The redesigned items are featured in an exhibit, “Get Onboard: Reduce.Reuse.Rethink,” that opened last month at the Design Museum in London.

By far the biggest environmental issue with air travel — and the reason 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg opted to sail to New York from Europe in August, rather than fly — is the associated carbon emissions, which are growing at a faster rate than predicted in previous, already dire projections.

But as air travel becomes increasingly accessible, and as more people take to the skies, airlines have been making public pledges to curb their environmental footprints, including the plastic forks and leftovers their passengers leave behind.

How much trash are we talking about?

Because there is no central authority tracking statistics about the amount of waste produced on flights, accurate and recent figures are hard to come by. But the International Air Transport Association, a trade group representing about 300 airlines, conducted a small study at Heathrow Airport in London and estimated that airlines generated about 6.7 million tons of cabin waste last year.

As low-cost airlines proliferate, and as the tourism industry continues to court middle-class customers, that number could double in the next decade.

“It’s a relatively limited sample at this stage,” Chris Goater, a spokesman for the trade association, said.

Pere Fullana i Palmer, director of the UNESCO Chair in Life Cycle and Climate Change, a research group based in Barcelona, Spain, has taken an even deeper dive into the issue of airline trash.

“You cannot improve a system if you don’t know it,” he said.

Fullana i Palmer’s research group teamed up with Iberia Airlines, Gate Gourmet, Ferrovial and Ecoembes to analyze approximately 8,400 pounds of garbage on 145 flights into Madrid. The group found that 33% was food waste, 28% was cardboard and paper waste, and about 12% was plastic.

How can this be fixed?

As consumers become increasingly conscious of the outsize environmental impact of air travel, airlines are under growing pressure to take action.

Alaska Airlines, Ryanair and British Airways have made public declarations to reduce waste, and Air France said it would eliminate 210 million single-use plastic items like cups and stirring sticks by the end of this year.

On one Qantas flight in May, which the company called “the first-ever commercial flight to produce no landfill waste,” the airline removed individually packaged servings of milk and Vegemite, and served meals in containers made from sugar cane, with utensils made of crop starch.

A month later, on a flight from Chicago to Los Angeles, United Airlines served meals using “fully recyclable or compostable serviceware.”

But replicating such innovations on a meaningful scale will be tricky. Regular flights are not equipped with the necessary facilities or systems for attendants to manage recycled goods, according to Megan Epler Wood, the author of “Sustainable Tourism on a Finite Planet” and the director of Harvard’s International Sustainable Tourism Initiative. (On a recent trip, Wood said, she saw a flight attendant separating recyclables with her bare hands.)

The solution, she said, would require collaboration among airlines, local authorities and airports, which are ultimately responsible for handling and hauling trash.

IATA, the airline trade association, said the rules governing international catering waste — which involve a complex set of international and country-specific regulations meant to prevent the spread of disease — should be reconsidered to increase recycling rates.

While all cabin waste is subject to the regulations of the country in which the plane lands, some European countries, as well as Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, have imposed additional measures to protect agriculture. This means that even untouched food and drink, which, according to IATA estimates, makes up about 20% of total airline waste, ends up in landfills or is incinerated.

The regulations governing single-use plastic, which will be banned in the European Union by 2021, also present challenges, according to the trade association.

“We’ve developed a lot of guidance to airlines to deal with the issue of cabin waste,” Michael Gill, IATA’s director of aviation environment, said. “But airlines cannot solve the issue on their own.”

“Its vital regulators understand the full impacts,” he continued, “including increased energy and water use, as well as CO₂ emissions that result from heavier materials carried on board.”

Fullana i Palmer agreed that legislation permitting more materials to be recycled or turned into biogas was needed but said that change was possible.

“I am optimistic because there is a big push for saving our planet,” he said. “The tsunami is so strong that all sectors will have to adapt.”

The airline meal, reimagined

In designing the onboard items, PriestmanGoode was conscious of heft because the more weight on an aircraft, the higher the fuel emissions. The tray is made of coffee grounds and husks (also a coffee byproduct). The dishes are made of pressed wheat bran, and a single spork made of coconut palm wood, a waste product that farmers would otherwise burn, replaces plastic cutlery.

“If you picked it up, you wouldn’t know it wasn’t plastic,” Rowan said. “Part of what we were trying to do was actually look at how we could make this a desirable product, as well as being sustainable.”

The team also played with lids of dishes, which are typically made of transparent plastic, to signify what’s inside: a pressed banana leaf for salads and side dishes, an edible waffle cone for dessert.

The goal, Rowan said, is “getting people to think about the way that they travel and also getting airlines and the service providers to think about what they offer.”

Rowan said airlines and suppliers had shown interest in the products, which, for now, are available only at the museum through February.

“We’re moving this on to the next level of development,” she said, to “get some of these things to fly.”

Airline Food Waste Is a Problem. Can Banana Leaves Be Part of the Solution?

From disposable headphones and plastic cutlery to food scraps and toilet waste, the average airline passenger leaves behind over 3 pounds of garbage, according to one estimate. To get travelers and airlines thinking — and talking — about that rather large pile of trash, a British design firm has refashioned the economy meal tray, replacing plastic with renewable materials such as coffee grounds, banana leaves and coconut wood.

“Who would have thought, 50 years ago, that a small town in central Iowa would be saying this: We see you, we hear you, we welcome you,” Reginald Stewart, vice president for diversity and inclusion at Iowa State University, said of the kaleidoscopic markings.

But in early September, about a week after The Ames Tribune covered the cheerful ribbon-cutting ceremony, a letter arrived from the federal government: The motley intersection was a safety concern, it said, and a liability for the city.

The Federal Highway Administration, which sets the rules for the nation’s roadway signage and signals, made a “request” that the crosswalks be removed.

The Ames City Council voted unanimously to ignore the letter.

“Honestly, I just do not think they have any jurisdiction over the roads in the city that we’re paying for with our own tax money,” Mark Lambert, the Ames city attorney, said.

Cities Crossing the Line

Last year, the number of pedestrian deaths in the United States was the highest in almost three decades, according to a Governors Highway Safety Association study that examined causes such as alcohol use, speeding, unsafe infrastructure and the prevalence of SUVs. It also suggested that the increased use of smartphones may be a factor as well.

As more pedestrians and cyclists share roads in urban areas, local officials have made attempts to involve communities in transportation infrastructure, like crosswalks, because they say it increases the health and well-being of the area.

But in doing so, many have hit roadblocks with the federal government.

In February 2016, St. Louis let its fleur-de-lis and rainbow crosswalks fade away after the federal government asked that they be removed. Washington’s bright dragons and zodiac designs climbing the ladder lines in Chinatown were subject to federal scrutiny. And a rainbow-themed crosswalk in Lexington, Kentucky, was said to create “potential confusion for motorists, pedestrians and other jurisdictions who may see these markings,” according to local news reports.

The government also said Ames’ installation could cause others “to install similar crosswalk treatments in their cities,” according to letters sent by the Federal Highway Administration, an agency of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

In its letter to Ames, which was shared with The New York Times, the highway administration said that crosswalk art “diminishes the contrast between the white lines and the pavement, potentially decreasing the effectiveness of the crosswalk markings and the safety of pedestrian traffic.”

“The purpose of aesthetic treatments and crosswalk art is to ‘draw the eye’ of pedestrians and drivers,” it continued, “in direct conflict with commanding the attention of drivers and motorists to minimize the risk of collision.”

But urban planning practitioners and advocates say the government’s claims that crosswalk art makes intersections less safe are not rooted in evidence.

Michael Lydon, a founder of the urban design firm Street Plans, has been working with cities and community groups to develop street art projects for almost a decade.

“The thing that gets under my skin, personally,” he said, “is that this response from FHWA is not really grounded in any data.”

“There are hundreds around the country, if not thousands around the world, and I don’t know of any study that has been able to show that they are actually causing any problems,” Lydon said.

“In some instances,” he continued, “communities can find that they’re actually improving safety.”

What Do the Rules Say?

The rules of the road are contained in the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Streets and Highways, a weighty tome that dictates everything from the red color, octagonal shape and white lettering of stop signs to the configuration of orange cones and barrels in a construction zone.

The intent is to create a uniform and consistent language, like a dictionary for users of public roads.

In the latest edition, which was published in 2009, Section 3B.18 offers guidance about constructing crosswalks. The manual recommends, among other things, using white stripes — usually painted longitudinally in single stripes or in pairs — because the contrast on asphalt, especially when mixed with retro-reflective beads that illuminate in headlights, are most visible to motorists.

“These standard crosswalk designs have been tested and researched to verify that road users understand them and their meaning,” a Department of Transportation spokeswoman said. “Crosswalks should provide for optimal contrast and be readily visible.”

In 2013, the highway administration issued a memorandum affirming an earlier ruling that “crosswalk art is actually contrary to the goal of increased safety and most likely could be a contributing factor to a false sense of security for both motorists and pedestrians.”

When asked for evidence that colorful pavement markings within a crosswalk have an impact on safety, the agency was unable to provide research specifically studying the effect of rainbow markings.

On Friday, a senior Federal Highway Administration official said the agency valued “the long history of partnerships that have led to new innovations.”

“We are always open to collaborating with state and local jurisdictions that have ideas with potential to improve roadway performance and safety,” the official added.

Where the Rub Meets the Road

“It’s particularly a sensitive issue right now because pedestrian and bicycle fatalities have been going up,” said Jeffrey F. Paniati, executive director of the Institute of Transportation Engineers, who spent more than three decades at the Federal Highway Administration.

As municipalities work to accommodate more pedestrians and cyclists, he said, city officials are forced to make tough decisions to respond to the needs of communities while complying with federal guidelines, which can potentially create additional liability or risk if they are ignored.

“The rub,” Paniati said, is “where do you draw the line?”

“Where does the need for this uniformity and consistency stop, and the allowance for local decision making and creativity start?” he asked. “It’s a bit of a slippery slope.”

How Cities Are Responding

Now cities are gathering data to show the benefits of more creative crosswalks.

The Seattle Department of Transportation has installed 40 artistic crosswalks, which include rainbow stripes and geometric designs created by local artists, and has started a formal program for communities to request one.

Dongho Chang, the city’s traffic engineer, said his department had been monitoring areas where nontraditional crosswalks were installed. “There were no reported collisions involving pedestrians at the colorful crosswalks during the first year,” he said, though there were pedestrian collisions at nearby traditional crosswalks.

“A lot of the concern is based on subjective nature,” he said of the artfully painted crosswalks. “There isn’t any definitive research or cases.”

In addition to the fewer “collisions and conflicts,” he said, people had responded positively to the vibrant colors and designs.

Chang, who is on the committee that updates the federal manual on roadway signage and markings, said he hoped that Seattle’s research would “spur a dialogue” with the highway administration to think about contexts where such installations were appropriate and could make conditions better.

Meanwhile, in Ames

On Friday, Lambert, the Ames city attorney, said the city had not heard from the Federal Highway Administration.

The Ames Tribune published an editorial last Saturday that said the government was “sticking its nose where it doesn’t belong” and was making “ridiculous claims” that the colors were a distraction and posed a risk.

“We also encourage Ames to continue to do everything it can to support, encourage and celebrate diversity in our community,” it said, “including painting more crosswalks.”

The Government Says Rainbow Crosswalks Could Be Unsafe. Are They Really?

Ahead of an annual LGBTQ festival in Ames, Iowa, members of the City Council decided to liven up a pedestrian crosswalk near the downtown shopping district by painting stripes in colors evoking the gay, nonbinary and transgender pride flags.

Visitors who want to smoke at its theme park properties, including Walt Disney World, the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex and two water parks in Orlando, Florida, as well as Disneyland and the Downtown Disney District in Anaheim, California, will have to do so at designated locations outside the security area, according to a post on the Disney Parks blog.

“As we expand our offerings, we continue to take steps to enhance the guest experience and make it more enjoyable for everyone who visits,” Liz Jaeger, a Disney spokeswoman, said.

It will be up to Disney employees to enforce the ban, she said.

“Employees will ask anyone caught smoking to leave the park and smoke in a designated area,” Jaeger said.

The new policy, which does not apply to Disney parks in France, China and Japan, was greeted with widespread praise.

Dennis Speigel, president of consulting company International Theme Park Service, said Disney chose “the right course.”

“You’re going to the most wholesome, family-oriented place on the planet,” he said. “Who wants to run into somebody smoking?”

The smoking ban will “ratchet up the bar for the industry,” he added. “Other park operators will follow suit.”

A spokeswoman for Cedar Fair Parks, which owns and operates about a dozen amusement parks across the country, said she was “not aware of any plans for an all-out smoking ban” by her organization. A representative from Six Flags Great Adventure did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On Thursday, a visitor in a soon-to-be extinct smoking area in Florida’s Magic Kingdom Park was not pleased.

“It’s not fair,” Denis Morissette told The Orlando Sentinel. “It’s legal. I think people who smoke should smoke if they want to smoke.”

Conscious of its image as a family-friendly company, Walt Disney has slowly curbed tobacco use in recent years.

In 2015, it became the first major Hollywood studio to cut portrayals of cigarette smoking from films geared toward younger audiences.

At a shareholder meeting that year, Disney’s chief executive, Robert A. Iger, announced that Walt Disney Studios would “prohibit smoking in movies across the board, Marvel, Lucas, Pixar and Disney films” because it “was the right thing for us to do.”

Smoking has already been restricted in most sections of the parks, and designated smoking areas inside the properties have been dwindling. Guests can be charged between $250 and $500 in cleaning costs if they smoke inside the company’s hotel rooms, on patios or on balconies.

The latest move comes before the public opening of Star Wars attractions that are expected to draw throngs of tourists. At Disneyland in California, the 14-acre Star Wars construction site swallowed up the last remaining smoking area, according to news site Theme Park Insider.

In preparation for long lines of Chewbacca and Darth Vader fans coming for the new Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge spaces, the park is also banning stroller wagons and large strollers starting May 1.

Dry ice, which some parkgoers use to keep drinks cool, is also prohibited beginning Thursday.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/business/disney-smoking-ban.html" id="4a8f9fdb-9d31-3101-a8ed-02acf5e120e3">The New York Times</a>.

On May 1, Disney parks in Florida and California will become smoke-free, the company announced Thursday.

Disney Bans Smoking and Larger Strollers at Florida and California Parks

Visitors wishing to smoke at its resorts and theme park properties, including Walt Disney World and the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando, Florida, and Disneyland and the Downtown Disney District in California, will have to do so at designated locations outside the security area, according to a post on the Disney Parks blog.

Representatives for The Walt Disney Co. did not immediately return a request for comment Thursday. But the decision was greeted with widespread praise.

Dennis Speigel, president of consulting company International Theme Park Service, said, “It’s about time.”

“It’s the happiest place on Earth,” he told The Orlando Sentinel. “Why should people be subjected to smoke at Disney?”

Disney’s chief executive, Robert A. Iger, announced at a shareholder meeting that Walt Disney Studios would “prohibit smoking in movies across the board: Marvel, Lucas, Pixar and Disney films,” because it “was the right thing for us to do.”

Smoking has already been restricted in most sections of the parks, and designated smoking areas inside the properties have been dwindling. Guests have been charged between $250 and $500 in cleaning costs if they smoke inside its hotel rooms, on patios or balconies.

The move comes before the public opening of Star Wars attractions, on a 14-acre construction site that has swallowed up the last remaining smoking area at Disneyland in California, according to news site Theme Park Insider, and is expected to draw throngs of tourists.

On May 1, Disney theme parks will become smoke-free, the company announced Thursday.

Disney Bans Smoking at Its Theme Parks

And according to a study published this week, about 1 in 10 older adults are considered binge drinkers.

“Binge drinking, even episodically or infrequently, may negatively affect other health conditions by exacerbating disease, interacting with prescribed medications and complicating disease management,” said Dr. Benjamin Han, the lead author of the study that was published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

Alcohol is also a risk factor for injury, Han said, but the consequences and recovery from a fall are much more serious for an 81-year-old than a 21-year-old.

The study defined binge drinking as consuming five or more drinks in a sitting for men, and four or more drinks in a sitting for women. And a drink equaled a can or bottle of beer, a glass of wine or a wine cooler, a shot of liquor, or a mixed drink with liquor in it.

Han’s group analyzed data from the annual U.S. National Survey on Drug Use and Health between 2015-17. In all, the findings included 10,927 adults aged 65 or older who reported their drinking habits in the previous 30 days.

The group did not include adults living in long-term-care facilities or nursing homes, Han added.

The prevalence of binge drinking among older adults is still relatively low compared with other age groups, Han said. More than 38 percent of college-aged adults, 18 to 25, had recently drunk excessively, the highest prevalence of any age group. Adults ages 26 to 34 had only slightly fewer binge drinkers, and the second-highest percentage, the study found.

While the drinking habits of teenagers and younger people has been a focus for clinicians and researchers, more attention should be paid to older adults, Han said.

Timothy S. Naimi, an alcohol epidemiologist and professor at Boston University’s Schools of Medicine and Public Health, said the 1 in 10 figure “is an impressive number and it’s concerning.”

The number is “undoubtedly an underestimate,” he added, because people tend to miscalculate how much they actually drink and heavy drinkers are less likely to be available or to be included in surveys for other reasons.

Han said he hoped the study would emphasize the importance for clinicians to screen older patients for alcohol use and to educate them about how their bodies become more sensitive to alcohol as they age.

The study did not examine the causes of excessive drinking or whether this number represents an increase or a decrease from previous years. However, Joseph J. Palamar, an associate professor at New York University School of Medicine and an author of the study, pointed to the cohort itself as a factor.

“I believe that this is driven in part by the baby boomers aging,” Palamar said, about a group that was more likely to experiment with drugs and alcohol than the generation before it.

Dr. George F. Koob, the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, one of the organizations that funded the study, said the findings confirmed trends they have been monitoring.

In 2017, epidemiologists at the institute published a study using data from 2001-02 and 2012-13 that showed that problem drinking was rising among older Americans.

And more women of all ages, who are more susceptible to alcohol-related problems than men, are drinking heavily, Koob added.

“In the old days, many, many more men drank than women,” he said. “And now the gap is closing.”

This week’s study crystallized a very real problem, Koob said, especially the pharmacological aspect.

“You can actually kill yourself much more easily with alcohol combined with one of these pills,” he said.

“This is the elephant in the room piece about alcohol that society doesn’t understand,” he said, that alcohol “is a drug and when it’s taken in excess, it can have some pretty harmful effects.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/02/health/binge-drinkers-adult-alcohol.html" id="add76e87-1ec2-34c3-a130-1fe6d2bc1f7a">The New York Times</a>.

One in 10 Older Adults Binge Drinks, Study Says

Excessive alcohol consumption is not safe for a person at any age, but it is particularly dangerous for older adults.

Duran, 23, accepted the offer. Just four days into the two-week trip, he was helping uncover parts of a skull belonging to a triceratops, most likely about 65 million years old.

In an interview Friday, Duran sounded a note of regret that he did not land the internship, at the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum in Los Angeles. Still, he said, he was happy with how things ultimately worked out.

“I think I found a more significant treasure in the Badlands,” he said.

On June 4, the pair spied what they first thought was petrified wood but later turned out to be a bone fragment — specifically, a roughly 3-foot horn that would have been attached to the dinosaur’s left brow. The discovery was made in the Hell Creek Formation, a series of rock formations that cover parts of Montana and the Dakotas dating to the end of the Cretaceous Period about 66 million years ago.

According to Michael Kjelland, the professor who invited Duran on the dig, the area has produced bones from three separate triceratops — an unusually high concentration.

Kjelland, who teaches biology at Mayville State University in North Dakota, said it was too early to glean the significance of the bones, which might not be part of a complete skeleton. He has seen several triceratops skulls in the course of his studies, he said, including one belonging to an almost fully intact fossil called Gundy that was discovered in the region in 1992.

Duran said he had a childhood passion for dinosaurs that simply never dwindled.

“I’ve always found it fascinating that there are lost worlds to be discovered,” he said, adding that learning about the period before humans arrived was “very important for understanding life on Earth.”

Duran met Kjelland a few years ago at a biotechnology conference, and the two have since teamed up on several projects, including starting a nonprofit called Fossil Excavators.

One of the organization’s objectives, Kjelland said, is to provide opportunities for students like Duran.

“It’s not just digging fossils,” he said. “It’s being out in nature” and learning what the past can teach us about how to prevent extinction and the worst effects of global warming.

Before the dig, Kjelland warned Duran that they might have to eat rattlesnakes and live off the land to survive in the Badlands, a region known for its extreme temperatures, scorpions and swarming insects.

“You have to have patience, too, because these are multipiece, 3D jigsaw puzzles, and it’s quite a process to get them excavated and out,” he said.

It took about 10 days to extract the fragile skull and “engineering that rivaled SpaceX,” he joked. They used pickaxes to dig out the ground around it and elongated screwdrivers to pry the dirt and the mud apart from the bones.

To stabilize the bones for transportation, they used a glue specifically formulated to seep into the crevices and an accelerating agent to harden it. Once the skull, which, excluding its fan-shape frill, is about 5 feet long, was out of the ground, they wrapped it in strips of foil and burlap dipped it in plaster to make a cast. They built a makeshift crate out of two-by-fours and taped memory foam to a protruding cheekbone to reduce vibrations in transit. They used an excavator to hoist the skull, which they estimated weighed 750 to 1,000 pounds, onto a local cattle rancher’s truck.

Duran and the fossil excavators made a video of the expedition.

They named the skull Alice, after the landowner who had allowed them to dig on her property.

Alice’s skull is currently resting in a plaster jacket in Kjelland’s lab on the outskirts of Valley City, North Dakota.

“I’m not totally sure yet where she’s going,” Kjelland said Friday. “I want it to be somewhere where a lot of folks can visit her and see her and maybe do some research on her.”

For his part, Duran said he hoped to take some of the molds back to the Merced campus.

This summer, he is taking a course in organic chemistry in order to graduate in the fall. He is not sure yet what career he wants to pursue, but it will most likely be in biotechnology or paleontology, he said.

And he plans to keep digging in North Dakota.

“There are plenty of secrets that remain in the Badlands,” he said.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/science/triceratops-skull-65-million-years-old.html" id="c48146d8-6618-34e2-aff5-de9df9adf096">The New York Times</a>.

Triceratops Skull, 65 Million Years Old, Unearthed by College Student, 23

Harrison Duran, a biology student at the University of California, Merced, had just been rejected from a summer internship when he received an invitation from a professor to go fossil hunting in a remote area of North Dakota.

But a few months later, Elisabeth Milich said she received what seemed to be an unbelievable offer from a stranger in New York City: He would pay for the snacks and supplies she and her husband had been buying for her students with their own money.

“I thought it was a one-time thing,” Milich said Thursday.

Instead, the man, Ben Adam, has since supplied her classroom at Whispering Wind Academy with colored pencils, paper clips, books, crackers and big bags of Hershey’s Kisses for two semesters. He has also bought a butterfly farm for another teacher in Phoenix, and supplies for four other classrooms in the Phoenix area.

He started a website last month called Classroom Giving, which allows other people the chance to give necessities to teachers.

Adam, a freelance audio producer who owns a real estate company, learned about Milich on the HBO show “Real Time With Bill Maher.” He said he was shocked that she was paying for cleaning supplies and paintbrushes on a salary of about $35,000.

“I was just really disappointed to see how little she makes,” Adam said.

For people like Milich, who are “doing the right thing,” he asked, “why do we nickel and dime them?”

Classroom Giving is best described as a gift registry for educators.

After an elementary schoolteacher in Phoenix posted her salary on Facebook in March last year amid a statewide protest for more education funding, she got a lot of calls from the media, and a lot of hate mail, too.

Emily S. Rueb

Articles written by the author

'Gender Reveal' Celebration in Texas Led to a Plane Crash

Convicted Rapist in Georgia Is Released From Prison 'in Error'

Airline Food Waste Is a Problem. Can Banana Leaves Be Part of the Solution?

The Government Says Rainbow Crosswalks Could Be Unsafe. Are They Really?

Disney Bans Smoking and Larger Strollers at Florida and California Parks

Disney Bans Smoking at Its Theme Parks

Disney Bans Smoking at Its Theme Parks

One in 10 Older Adults Binge Drinks, Study Says

Triceratops Skull, 65 Million Years Old, Unearthed by College Student, 23

A Teacher Shared Her Salary, and a Stranger Started a School Supplies Wish List

A Teacher Shared Her Salary, and a Stranger Started a School Supplies Wish List

Netflix Project to Spotlight Thai Cave Rescue

Former Florida Police Officer Is Sentenced to 25 Years in Fatal Shooting of Black Man

WHO Says Limited or No Screen Time for Children Under 5

WHO Says Limited or No Screen Time for Children Under 5

Officer Who Used Gun Instead of Taser Won't Face Charges for Shooting Unarmed Man

Officer Who Used Gun Instead of Taser Won't Face Charges for Shooting Unarmed Man

It Swirled Out of Style, and Now It Loops Back

Mother of Raniya Wright Says School Failed to Protect Her Daughter

Massachusetts Eyes Tackle Ban for Youths