Monrovia woman's dinosaur bone mystery solved on reality TV show

Courtesy photo of Janie Duncan's father, Karl George, with the dinosaur bone he discovered in 1943. 

From Pasadena Star-News:  Monrovia woman's dinosaur bone mystery solved on reality TV show 

MONROVIA - Rockhound Janie Duncan may not have won the top prize for her roughly 150 million-year-old dinosaur bone featured recently on the National Geographic Channel's "America's Lost Treasures." But the jewelry maker, whose late father dug up the 3-foot-long bone in northern Wyoming 74 years ago, discovered something far more precious during the taping of the new reality TV show.
"I didn't get the big prize - the $10,000 - but I don't really care," said Duncan, who is president of the Monrovia Rockhounds. "I got to find out what kind of bone I had. That's priceless to me because my family has never known."

Duncan, 59, learned that the dinosaur bone was a femur, hailed from the late Jurassic period and was about 100 million years older than she previously thought. 


She considered that a strange coincidence since she named her jewelry business, which she started five years ago, Jurassic Jewelry by Janie.

But the bigger surprise came when a a paleontologist from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles took the bone to the "Dino Lab" and determined it belonged to a stegosaurus, her favorite dinosaur for as long as she could remember.

"When I was a little kid ... I had this book called `The Shy Stegosaurus of Cricket Creek,"' she said.
"I read that book in the little town I lived in, in Laurel, Mont., in the public library so many times that ... they had to buy a new book because I wore it out."

She said she loved the book partly because the dinosaur's name was George, which is her maiden name.
Duncan's bone was one of the top picks of "America's Lost Treasures" host Curt Doussett, who along with co-host Kinga Phillips scours the country for museum-worthy artifacts that have been forgotten.
In the episode that first aired July 18, the dinosaur bone competed with a range of artifacts including a 34-star Civil War-era flag, a C-melody saxophone, an ancient fish fossil and a light bulb that was believed to be tied to inventor Thomas Edison.

The winner of each episode, in addition to winning $10,000, has his or her artifact placed in the Natural Geographic Museum in Washington, D.C., for one year.

The stegosaurus bone is one of thousands of fossils, minerals, stones and other natural and man-made items that Duncan keeps in her musty basement labeled "The Good Old Days Museum."

The wife, mother of two sons and cat enthusiast calls herself a "third-generation rockhound." Her impressive collection includes items not only garnered by her and her father, Karl George, but by her grandfather as well.
Her collection also boasts a beautiful fossil sea snail, also discovered in northern Wyoming, that is probably about 50million years old, she said. Her father found half of the fossil in 1938 and spoke to another rockhound who had found the second half on the same hillside. 

When the two finally got together five years later, George had to trade a quarter of his entire collection to acquire the other half, she said. He then glued the two pieces together in his gas station office, which also served as a rock museum, in Montana.

Duncan, who has spoken to about 5,000 local Scouts over the years, said her father took the fossil to the Smithsonian Institution in his pick-up truck in 1943. There, he was informed that it was the sixth largest of that species found at the time, she said.

She has no idea about the worth of these items as they are family heirlooms that will never be sold, she said.
As for the dinosaur bone, Duncan was told during the show that it was "not a museum-quality specimen." It broke into three pieces when she was transporting it from Montana to California in a semi-truck some 25 years ago.

But falling short of first place is just fine with her.

"I don't want them to take the bone," Duncan said. "I enjoy showing it to people."