You were trained in public policy. What got you interested in dinosaurs?
In 2006 I was driving in the Mongolian countryside with my family. I stopped to take a photograph of camels in the sunshine, and talked with tourists who were also taking pictures. One was from the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York and he invited us to come for a back-room tour.
A few months later I began a programme at Yale University, near New York, and got to take that tour. On it, I asked about the Mongolian dinosaurs I saw. The guide said they were Mongolian property and would be returned if we had a dinosaur museum. I knew little about palaeontology, but I wondered why we never had a museum if we had so many dinosaurs.
Did you end up looking into it?
Not for some time. On a trip to Chicago ...
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