Alie Ward

I mean, you could overlook that so easily.

And here you have a rock and you've circled some things and there are absolutely pinprick

little white lightish structures and you've got to go in there.

Do you use ironically a dental tool?

Yes.

I hope you have a good dentist.

I can't believe how teeny it is.

Yeah, they're like wavy almost.

Yeah.

So these grains of rice, these little pebbles, they are the proto-teeth that covered marine animals 475 million years ago in what is now North America.

And the ones we're looking at, the vial of wavy rice grains that Dr. Haridi painstakingly picked out of a rock.

So we sat down at the table with this array of ancient specimens around us like tapas.

And how big was this animal?

Are you guys on a WhatsApp thread?

Is it unnerving to know that that missing link is somewhere in a rock that y'all haven't found yet?

Are you out in the field wearing khaki garments and like a hat in most of the summer?

What does your field work look like?

I remember talking to Michael Habib and asking about how much it cost for a dino dig.

And he's like, guess.

And I was like, 2 million, 3 million.