Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

This guide traces the fifteen-year Utah dig that gave a giant sauropod skeleton at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County its nickname, Gnatalie, and the discovery that her bones had turned an unusual color after roughly one hundred fifty million years underground. It follows the mineral behind that change and the paleontologists who kept returning to the gnat-plagued site season after season, choosing heat and dehydration over another round of bites. The crew settled on her name well before they understood what her color meant.