Mike Getty, the chief fossil preparator at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, was a renowned field worker with unparalleled skill and an incredible work ethic. And he had what friends described as a “Getty sphere” around him, drawing others in and making them laugh.
The tight-knit paleontology field was reeling after learning that Getty died Monday after becoming ill while working on the excavation of the newly discovered triceratops in Thornton.
As a field worker — someone who identified and excavated fossils, and prepared them for study — Getty’s name may not be left on research papers. But those who knew him said his legacy is the many fossils that are on display in museums across North America because of his work and the many people who learned from him.
And there is the Utahceratops gettyi, a dinosaur species he discovered in Utah that colleagues named for him.
The Denver Museum of Nature & Science did not say what caused Getty’s death, only that it was not related to an accident at the excavation site. Denver museum workers declined to comment, saying it was too difficult to talk about their colleague at the moment. Getty joined the museum staff four years ago.
Getty, 50, never lost his Canadian accent and brought his dog with him everywhere — even out on field sites, friends and former colleagues said.
“He was a character in every sense of the word,” said Andrew Farke, who works at the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology in Claremont, Calif., and had known Getty since 2003. “He was quirky, he had a personality and he was one of those people… it’s really hard to imagine that he’s gone now.”
Getty loved exploring every nook and cranny of the planet, Farke said. So if you spent time with him, that meant you’d be caving one day, snorkeling the next and digging up dinosaurs the day after.
He had a talent for knowing how to get a skeleton out of the ground and had a great work ethic that others aspired to match, Farke said. He had high expectations and if he complimented you, it meant something.
Getty worked in Argentina, Kenya, Madagascar, Canada and across the western United States, to name a few locations, Farke said. And he made friends and built a great reputation in the field along the way.
Sarah George, executive director of the Natural History Museum of Utah in Salt Lake City, where Getty worked before heading to Denver, said he had a rare knack for finding bones that others would walk right past.
But it was more than that.
“He could tell you if it’s something that has already been found before and how this is adding to our understanding of that animal or if it was new,” George said. “And he would know that from looking at little bits and pieces.”
He also did a lot to recruit and inspire volunteers, establishing large volunteer programs in both Utah and Denver, she said. People loved being in the field with Getty.
Getty made quite an impact on the paleontology field, said ReBecca Hunt-Foster, a Bureau of Land Management paleontologist in Utah who had known Getty since 2001. Everyone wanted a Mike Getty on their team, she said, and the world will be dimmer without his constant laughs and smiles.
“There are people from all walks of our profession that are mourning this loss,” she said. “He made a huge, lasting impact on our field — more so than he even realized himself.”
