In the age of Jurassic Park and Jurassic World, many people are enthralled by paleontologists, but few can say they’re becoming one. Madelyn Sacco, of Osage Road, is one of the few.

“Ever since preschool, I’ve been hooked on dinosaurs,” said Sacco, a junior at Mt. Lebanon High School. Her mom credits Sacco’s enthusiasm to a preschool class trip to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

Sacco loves school, particularly biology and chemistry classes. She collaborated with high school chemistry teacher Lisa Hoover to start a fossil club, which meets once a month to “talk fossils and jam,”
said Sacco.

“I really got into it much more via the Sternberg camps, which are a series of summer camps by Fort Hays State University in Kansas,” she explained.

She completed five camps with the Sternberg Museum of Natural History, learning a wide variety of paleontology-related skills including fossil preparation, site exploration, specimen research and CT scanning. Recently, an even bigger opportunity presented itself.

“This year I got my dream. I got to do a big camp, so I spent two weeks in North Dakota, digging in the Hell Creek Formation,” said Sacco. Hell Creek is home to Upper Cretaceous and Lower Paleocene rock exposures and attracts many a dinosaur enthusiast.

During the dig, Sacco found a Hadrosaur tooth, which comes from a 35-foot-long duck-billed dinosaur that went extinct tens of millions of years ago. Sacco is living out her childhood dream with these experiences.

She shared her knowledge with second graders at Ave Maria Academy this summer. Sacco’s lesson plan included an overview of fossils, the types of foods that different animals ate and how long the Earth has been around. “It was really surprising because they taught me something too — they knew a lot.”

Carolyn Pasanek, owner of Mt. Lebanon Academy and friend of the Sacco family, recommended that Sacco teach the class. “With Mrs. Pasanek’s help, and the help of my parents, I was able to put the class together and it went really well,” said Sacco.

Sacco wants to use her field experience to become a paleontologist. “I may be more of a digger or preparator than a researcher,” she said, “but I’m leaving all doors open right now.”

Regardless of her ultimate path, Sacco is ready to make future discoveries. “Earth is complex and I’m excited about that.”