I've been filming this man for two years. He has been scouring the mountains of southern France almost every day since he was a child, looking for fossils. Do you mind if I stand here? Yeah, yeah, it's perfect for me. So go ahead, it's rolling. And just then, he made a startling discovery. Luc, where are we? We're in the area where I found the little dino, the little T-Rex. Is this where you found it? This is where it all begins, this is where it all... This is where I found the little theropod in these Valanginian layers. He found the fossil of a small carnivorous dinosaur. An exceptional find because it's virtually complete. And it may even be the first French tyrannosaurus. And I filmed the whole thing. So, let's start at the beginning. Luc, how do we introduce you? That's the big question, how I'm presented in the video. I don't know myself. I'd like to say, you can say paleontologist. I like the term fossil hunter, because that's what I like. My job and my passion is to look for, find and prepare fossils. Luc is a fossil hunter, it's his job. He's been making a living from it for almost twenty years. But in fact, he's been looking for fossils for much longer. It's a passion that has consumed him since he was a child. First Marie-France. Marie-France, no stress... No, but it's okay, so wait. Luc's passion for fossils is first and foremost a intense complicity between grandfather and grandson. And if Luc has become what he has in the fossil field, it's thanks to his grandfather, or perhaps it's because of his grandfather. The grandfather played a very big role, and the grandfather led the fossils for a long time. years. And he was the one who carried, who carried the backpack, who carried the tools, that's it, because he wasn't strong enough to do it. In fact, my grandfather took me to the age of twelve and it was already extreme. But it was already something essential. to which I wanted to devote absolutely all my time. I tried. To get him to do something else, I tried putting him on skis, but it wouldn't go down, so I tried giving him a tennis racket... he didn't know how to use it. Nothing, nothing interested him except fossils. As soon as I wasn't at school, I was at the fossils every day. So every weekend, every school vacation. So he really led me for a long time. And you have to understand that for him, at one point, it was really enormous. This love for fossils and this love for his grandfather took on extraordinary proportions. Especially as the grandfather, through fossils, passed on to him his love of nature and freedom. And that's what Luc built on. So that gives you a better idea of why he's suddenly gone fossil-crazy. It's a rounded ammonite, about 80 centimetres in diameter. At first, Luc was looking for ammonites, the coiled-shell molluscs that are abundant in this region. Then he found fish, reptiles and a whole series of huge sea monsters, such as this ichthyosaur, reassembled in almost complete 3D, eight meters long. A prehistoric marine reptile. We need to explain that over a hundred million years ago, Europe was like an archipelago of islands. There wasn't much land, and the Provençal Alps were underwater. That's why, today, we find fossils that come from marine environments. Before continuing with this crazy story, let's take a look at fossils. What are they and how are they made? It's the remains of an animal or plant preserved in rock. And to get there, something called fossilization has taken place. It's a very long process. Firstly, when the animal dies, it must be in a place with the perfect composition, i.e. a soil that will quickly drain the carcass. For example, mud or seabed where there is a lot of sediment. As the sediment accumulates, it hardens into sedimentary rock, where the rest of the body is mineralized. So our fossil is preserved without deteriorating. There are also trapped fossils. These can be in resin, like amber - we all know the example of the mosquito in Jurassic Park - or in ice. Entire mammoths have been found fossilized. And fossilized tracks, such as dinosaur footprints, can also be found. In all these cases, it takes several million years to obtain a fossil. This is an extremely rare phenomenon. Only a tiny fraction of living things have ever been found as fossils, because carcasses usually decompose and disappear rapidly. It is estimated that no more than zero point one percent of organisms fossilize. And it's these few traces of the past that have enabled us, and still enable us today, to learn about these past periods. We met through friends, and the friends were already telling the story of Luc's passion for fossils and so on. But I never imagined that it would be to this extent. I didn't really know what passion meant. This is really a mad love of fossils. When I went to his house, the kitchen table was covered with bits of ammonite bone. He'd been clearing out the ammonite burial ground in his bedroom for six years. It was already an incredible work. His passion is completely contagious. Even though I'm not at all passionate about fossils, I didn't know what an ammonite was until I met her. I had the impression that he wasn't from this world. He was living a daydream. Surrounded by animals that lived a hundred million years ago, he was shrouded in magic. And in recent years, Luc has taken things to the next level. In addition to all those sea monsters, Luc has started finding fossils of animals that have no business being in the water. Remember, much of Europe at the time was under an ocean. And he has found dinosaurs, animals that used to live on Earth, which, in the most random fashion, ended their lives at the bottom of the ocean, where they were fossilized. I've been following Luc for the past two years because he's decided to prepare the exhibition of a lifetime. He's going to showcase his wildest fossils in his private museum, the Paleo Galerie. He's going to exhibit dinosaurs, an ankylosaur, the skull of a titanosaur, and a piece of abelisaur, all found in his region. Explain to me, what's with the window? Ben the T-Rex window. And the star of the show is his latest find, the little carnivorous dinosaur. He's always had a bit of a hard time of it, telling me "I'll never find anything else, it's over, I've reached the end. And then, one day, he comes home and makes an incredible discovery. If you don't mind my saying so, that was in 2009. Summer 2009. It's 2024, so it's been five years. Not far from here, I'm quietly going to redo a small area I've already prospected many times. Always the same, doing my grids, seeing if I can see a little piece of bone sticking out. And, as luck would have it, I find two or three small vertebrae sticking out of the layer. I can make out a skeleton curling up on itself, which looks like a crocodile to me. He's gone home as usual. Well, as usual, once a year, because he doesn't make discoveries every day. And I go back three days later with all the right tools to extract those parts. That is, the plaster, the oakum, to make the little plaster casing around it. The escalpelle, the glue, etc. In short, everything you need to extract a little skeleton. You're crazy, you'll drop it... Then he disappears into his workshop to spend hours and hours preparing. That's the way it's always been. So I start preparing with the little pneumatic firing pins, things like that. After three or four hours, I came across a tooth. I'm not a theropod dinosaur specialist, but there's a bit of the basics. It's quite flat, oblong, and it has little crenulations on the side. Serrations, we call them. Ooh, I see that, I say, it's not possible. So, I don't dare believe it, but all the same, I'm starting to feel a bit queasy. So what do I do? I take a photo of my tooth and send it to all my friends. He calls me up and says, I've found a little crocodile skeleton, I'm so happy. Then he sends me back a photo and says, I've prepared a tooth. Luc knows very well that when there are serrations on a tooth, it's almost certain that it's a theropod carnivorous dinosaur. He had to find it, not even an hour's walk from home. It was a magical moment. Afterwards, though, he'd send me the photos, and that's just the way it is with him. He'd tell you over the phone, and you'd say, that's incredible, but you're really lucky. Then he'd show you the piece and you'd say, but how did you manage to see it? When you realize that it's that dino, then, every time, it takes on even more impressive proportions. impressive. And then, well, here we go again. These are isolated teeth. I made an absolute plan of all the bones I took out. Tell me, what do we have here? This is the entire photo file of the preparation of the little T-Rex, from one end to the other. So you can see, really, you can see the skeleton, i.e. the whole column that's rolled up here. But you see, it's really very, very faint. ? If you leave it like that, I find it hard to understand. At first, the bones are really fractured, shifted, crushed, dusty. So it's really not pretty. And the whole challenge of pre-preparation is to sublimate that. I saw that in the center of the block, there were many, many cranial elements, but they were completely disarticulated, not visible, crushed. In other words, the bones were glued one on top of the other, and these are paper bones, they're very thin. It's the most complicated preparation I've ever done in my life. It's also the most delicate preparation, because there were several moments when I had to make decisions. where decisions had to be made. You don't have the right to make mistakes. So you don't know whether the decision you make will work or not. Everyone has this image of the T-Rex, the skull. The bones are there, but you have to be able to restore them. That means getting all the bones out as one. You have to be able to separate them so you can reconstitute them. Except that they're all glued together. I often give the example of taking a dish of lasagne, you know, and drying it in the sun for three days, so that everything is well glued, welded, etc. And then you try to separate the bones. Then you try to separate the lasagne. That was the T-Rex skull. There's a lot to say about this little dino, well, about dinosaurs in general already. They lived on our Earth for about one hundred and sixty-five million years. I must admit, it's a bit of a brain-bender. And in the end, we know very little about this period. By comparison, humans are ridiculous. The oldest traces of bones date back only two point eight million years, to Homo habilis. Dinosaurs almost all disappeared sixty-six million years ago. All, that is, except the avian dinosaurs, the ones that can fly and are still with us today, known simply as birds. As for Luc's little dino, he found it in a layer of soil dating from the Lower Cretaceous. This is a little-known period for dinosaurs in Europe, because, as we saw earlier, the region was under water at the time. Indeed, we still don't know exactly what species Luc's dino belongs to. What we do know is that it's a carnivore, thanks to its teeth. And some of them are reminiscent of tyrannosaurus. This is the family from which the well-known T. rex descends, hence its nickname, little T. rex. So our dino is in this branch, the theropods. The branch that includes tyrannosaurs and all the other carnivores, and which accounts for just five percent of all dinosaurs. In short, we have a carnivorous dinosaur. That's rare, to say the least. What's more, it's a juvenile, so it's ultra-rare. It comes from a period in history when it's surprising to find them. And it was discovered in an area very poor in dinosaurs. So my question is, what was this dinosaur doing there? This is Luc's hypothesis. The little dino died next to a stream. It would have mummified and, by chance, no one would have eaten the carcass. It would then have been carried by the water, perhaps by a river or a wave, to the sea. It would have floated for a while, at which point fish or small predators would have eaten the outermost, heaviest, dangling parts - the end of the hind legs and the tip of the tail. The carcass would then have settled to the bottom of the sea and been covered by sediment, allowing the fossilization process to begin. Can we understand what had happened to him? Was he attacked by a bug? I mean, what did he die of? that's my interpretation as things stand. We're sure it's a sub-adult dino, which is to say a teenager, in fact. Not a baby, but a teenager. Adolescence is the most critical age for a carnivore. It's the time when you have to start supporting yourself. So, as far as I'm concerned, this animal starved to death. The miracle, however, is that the way the animal died, the spinal column had completely crimped, so to speak, the skull in the middle. The spine formed a sort of barrier around it, which meant that all the cranial bones were preserved in place. And you, as a result, have redone... all the legs and part of the tail? That's it for the aesthetic rendering. So I restored the missing parts, i.e. I sculpted based on the closest shapes, the bones that might be missing, to really give this animal an appearance that's as close as possible to the original appearance, so that it's always the same, but more and more telling. It gives a global image of what the animal could have been. There's always an element of interpretation when it comes to repairs and, in particular, reconstruction. From then on, Luc worked flat out for a year and a half. He quickly realized that there was a large part of the skeleton, seventy percent. And what's really crazy is that there's over ninety percent of the skull. That's huge for a fossil. So for a dinosaur, it's just crazy. At the same time, he contacted a number of scientists, inviting them to come and study the specimen. After a few months of discussion, a German specialist in theropod evolution arrived in Luc's workshop and discovered the little dino for the first time. So here's the specimen. Pretty, pretty. When you touch them you have to be very careful. Because just to show you. With this kind of preparation, the bones are paper-thin. I know. I My first impression is that the fossil is very impressive. And very good quality. First of all, the specimen is really great, it has excellent preservation, thanks to the preparation of Luc, who did an incredible job, not only in the excavation, but also in the preparation of the specimen. The spine was completely connected and turned like this. I cut it and turned it like this, and the skull was in the middle, but completely disarticulated. After these two days, I think I now have a first idea of which predator group it belongs to. It will probably be named a new species. Not a direct ancestor of tyrannosaurus, I think, but a close relative of tyrannosaurus. The column is almost complete here. That's great, you can't get any more. OK, it's not the tyrannosaurus we all know, but maybe a close relative of that species. Once the paleontologist has left, the next step will be to scan the little dino's bones to continue the study. This is a technique often used in paleontology to look inside the bones and obtain ever more information about the animal. What species is it? How did it die, perhaps? But this kind of analysis requires a certain budget. So Luc came up with another solution. Did you do the scan in a hospital? It was very expensive to go through public structures, so I was lucky enough to have a friend who was a radiologist in a hospital. So we went through all the bones of the little t-rex, which was funny, at the hospital, the same kind of scan you'd get for a hernia or whatever. Here are all the plans I've made over the last five years to prepare this bug, with the little numbers, and note down everything you can. ! There are notes everywhere ! Well, that's an ankylosaur skeleton. OK, so that's the ankylosaur, the other highlight of Luc's upcoming exhibition. Ankylosaurus means rigid lizard. It's a herbivorous dinosaur that belongs to the ornithischian family. It's best known for the armor that protects its entire back. These are scales made of bone. All this armour would have been used, not to protect itself from other tyrannosaur-like predators, but also during fights between males. Luc found it several years ago in the mountains behind his home in Salignac. How many of this species do you have? I have a herd. I have four, in fact. When he found it, the bones were completely scattered. Luc had to put it all together. He brought back various boulders in his backpack, prepared them, took the fossils out of the stones, and then started a sort of jigsaw puzzle with pieces. Well, lots of pieces. Also, very damaged by erosion. In the end, he unearthed a seventy percent complete ankylosaur. It took him five years. Luc has always worked alone, but in recent years he has surrounded himself with a team. Other freelancers like him, also with their own projects. But now, they're all working together for the famous exhibition. It's also the first time in my life that we've done an exhibition with a lot of people, the whole team. Until now, exhibitions have always been a family affair. I'd do the preparatory work, and then afterwards, we'd organize the exhibitions with Edith, my partner, my mother, to a certain extent. But now, finally, I realize that it's grown. We're FX, Ulysse, Yacine, Gabriel, Stéphane who's here, my mother, Edith too, who I haven't forgotten. So, yeah, I have the impression that it's taken on another dimension, another level. Just imagine, you take the femur, you put the tibia, the front leg, on the pelvis, that, well there you go... It's dino, you know, in a dino exhibit. It's not all about the little beast, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Will it make a pretty beast? yeah. It's not complete, but there's still a lot. It's not ridiculous to present a specimen like that. Most dinos, they're never complete anyway. How many percent is it now? I'd say, I don't know, with all the armor, if you take the armor into account, a good seventy, the skull is missing. There would have been some elements of the skull, it would have been great. And that's a real job too, the souclage, that's it, that's a thing. Then, it's quite complex. It's going to be fun. But it's you, Luc, who gives a little of your ideas like now? No, no, honestly, we're already basing ourselves on the literature. But in fact, to get the exact position of the bones, to choose which plate comes in front or behind, there's always an element of interpretation. But it's great that we have scientists on the team. After that, we think a bit together about aesthetic positions, because we like aesthetics. And then, the technical side, pure and simple, is Gabriel. That's something else again. We're looking forward to seeing it in 6 months, then? And yeah, well, everyone's looking forward to it. Clearly. You're working on the ankylosaur, right? Yes, it's an honor to be working On this ankylosaur, because these specimens are very rare and can provide very important information on the ankylosaur group, on its spread in Europe, on the groups that exist here, and so on. My name is Attila Ösi and I'm a professor here at the University of Budapest. In Europe, ankylosaurs from this period, from the ancient Cretaceous, are very rare. There are five or six species of ankylosaur that have been described over the last two hundred years, and four of them come from England. So, I can say that from this period of life in France, this is the best-preserved ankylosaur specimen of all time. And in Europe, it's also very important. ? What do you think of Luc's work? It's incredible what he's done. It's like he's not even from this planet. It's a treasure, I think, for France to have this guy. I think Luc Ebbo should be given every support to continue his work, which is not only good for this region, for Salignac, but also for France. As far as I know, I've never seen an articulated dinosaur so well prepared and so complete. Very few pieces of ankylosaur have been found in France. There has never been an articulated skeleton. In fact, the big difficulty in France is not so much finding dinosaurs. It can happen. It happens to me from time to time. But to come across an articulated creature, that never happens. Except for Luc, that's happened ten times. So, yeah, no, this guy, he's got something, I think. So, this, the line, this, line three. So it goes like this, it goes like this. Afterwards, I could be cleaner, but there, it goes so, we said. So that's, so wait, there, that's one there. There should only be one per line. So G, 1, H, 1, L, 1 and the same next to it. I've got 1 H 1 I 1. Okay, it works. You could do the animation with a bit of immune. Yeah, You're not going to get mixed up? Between the 11, the one point one, you know at least the letters it's clear. no. I don't know. You number them: one, two, three, four, five. Here, the same, one, two, How are you, Gab? not very well in real life, it's stressful all the same. Seriously? Well, there are all the plates to base, so you can't go wrong. And we still don't know how, technically, to base them. So there's still a lot of uncertainty. it's going to be fun. A little challenge. All the ankylosaur bones are ready. Now we can begin a new stage for Luc. Assembling the beast in 3D. In other words, to assemble the bones and give him back his basic appearance. This is the soclage. And it's Gabriel who's going to do it with Antoine. He specializes in metalwork. It's Star Wars! ! Wow. What are you doing now? Preparing for the big base? Yeah, basically, it's a big metal structure, so maybe steel, that we've custom-built to house the ankylosaur found and prepared by Luc. We've been working on it for several weeks now, and we've spent several months thinking about it beforehand, to make sure that the job goes smoothly. Had you done everything on this side? Well, there were two left. OK. In fact, a successful base is one that doesn't show. So, when you've finished your work, if you can't see it, you've done a good job. It's a bit thankless to do this kind of work. But it's the work that brings the animal back to life. So this is the last big step in the resurrection of the beast. Personally, I've been working on the project for two years now. We're thinking about how we're going to base it, because it's the first time we've based such an animal with such a large number of osteoderms. Three hundred and fifty original plates. When you base them one by one and see how original they all are, you realize that it's going to be a tough job. It's not a tall animal. No, for me, it's not the height that's the problem, it's the fact that it's there. It's got to touch. That's it, So it has to touch. Yeah, but then, afterwards, you manage to put your front paws in? To catch it, it's going to be hot. It's okay. It's okay, because you spread them and put zero five between each one. That's the gap. Yeah, and then we'll add the carp... Yeah, the carp there. ? Actually, the cool thing about this project is that you can place your critters however you like for the exhibition? We do have some constraints. For us, the constraints are the original bones, which we can't break, cut, etc. So we have to play with the restored bones to try and give them a shape as close as possible to the real one. So, we have to play with the restored bones to try and give them a shape as close as possible to the real one. This is going to be one of the stars of the show? Yeah, that's right, it's one of the two stars of the dino expo. In theory, there's the little t-rex and then there's the Ankylosaurus. It's a French dino, almost seventy percent complete. Reassembled in 3D, these are fantastic pieces. I have four skeletons from the surrounding area, but I wanted to prepare the one from the village, as the museum is in Salignac. I wanted to prepare the Salignac skeleton first. Because it's kind of the exhibition of my life. It's the museum's tenth anniversary, so it made sense. I tend to arrive at the end when the bugs are ready. So for me, that's only three percent of the total time needed for a bug. But this little three percent will actually allow the animal to exist. We'll give it its anatomical posture. We give it its volume. People, they don't realize that there's all this work of editing, headshots, rib placement, etc. It's pretty crazy, isn't it? It's pretty crazy, isn't it? When you see a fossil in a museum, there's absolutely explain the whole process from discovery to preparation. Even when the fossil is mounted on a plinth, there can be a lot of breakage. You have to be able to glue your bones back together, not lose them. And then, if you lose a piece of bone, you get killed. But you're professionals. Yeah, we are, normally, we'll tell you that at the end. That's it....that's it right there. It's good because, right up to the end of the end of the end, you're really spending five years preparing a bug. And it's in the last few weeks that you really see what it's all about. Are you happy now, Luc? There, it's madness, there, ahhh me, there, frankly, I didn't imagine it to be so beautiful. It's a bit more than I imagined. It's good to see. But that's just the beginning, because the armor will transform him completely. And you brought this back in your backpack anyway. Yeah, I did, Luc is smiling! Yeah, it's clear, it's clear. Now, that's a pleasure. That's it. And it's cool. In real life, now that there's the whole team, it helps bring that out too, because in two years, there's been the ammonite wall, the ichthyosaurus, the ankylosaurus. At some point, I just can't do it on my own. Me, I push, I can hold the preparations, but all the pedestal work and so on. That's not my part. We complement each other well Is it like your family? Yeah. Ankylosaurus! Not them. It's amazing what a person's work capacity and physical strength can be when they're doing something they're passionate about. It's amazing. And it's true that it's taken on proportions... We say to ourselves, it's no longer passion, it's a serious pathology. That's true. But when I see what he's done, what he's released, I say to myself that it took that to release that, and I'm very proud of it. Frankly, I can't believe what he's achieved. And this evolution... Because at the start, it's not easy to get a fossil out, you can't unmold a fossil. It gives new life to animals that lived a hundred million years ago, of which only pieces of stone remain. It's staggering. What he's done is dizzying. It's quite impressive to see the size of the bug and in fact, it ends up on a few crates. You see, it's always like that, in fact, the animal is gigantic. And then, once we've packed it away, it's a dozen crates or so. It fits in a car without any problem. The ankylosaur is now completely finished. The armor is on. The whole team takes the dinosaur to the Paleo Galerie. It's 8 p.m. and we have an hour's drive ahead of us. And several more hours of assembly. We'll probably be here all night. It's twenty-two o'clock and we're at the Paléo Galerie, in the museum, with Gab who's completely tired. It's okay, don't worry. They've already started mounting the Ankylosaurus, so this is a historic moment. Ah, it's a historic moment, clearly. Here we go, then, mounting the ankylosaur. It's out of the way, is that normal? No, it's normal, it's normal, yeah. Here. Sure ? Wait, he's pressing on it, there's something wrong there. The legs again. The legs. The legs and the head. I didn't expect it to turn out this well. It's true, frankly, I'm too happy. You can see it on the... Yeah, from three angles, you can see everything, really. And it's really well, really well placed. You can even see the whole... The whole plinth and everything, underneath, it's magnificent. It's like a cathedral. La bête de Salignac. Check it out. Yeah, the Beast of Salignac. Today is the twenty-sixth of March. Today, I'm going to discover the T-Rex. But where is the little T-Rex? ? He's in comfort. ? Go on, go on, take him out. it's still very, very fragile. They're still paper bones. So, here's the beast. Here's the profile. But wait, there's a reenactment here? Very little. Very little. I left them... Are the teeth original? Well, the teeth, you see, you see. These are the original teeth. You've got more than half of them. The restored teeth are white. How long did it take you to assemble it? I spent the last twelve days, every day, there. Really, I was in it from morning to night. Twelve-hour day, autistic day. I didn't look up. And now it's almost to the final face? Now the skull is finished. Now the last thing is almost in place. It's time to put it back on the block. So, now we'll have the skull in its place, but in its original position, with the bones really reassembled in 3D, whereas on the fossil, all the bones had been disarticulated, so you couldn't see anything. Now, I think people, even if they don't know it, recognize it as a carnivorous dinosaur, a little T-rex, or something very close to that family. We'll reposition him on his block. Each time, we have to be careful not to touch a tooth, etc. So, there you go. So there you have it. You're the first people to see it fully mounted, because I finished the skull four or five days ago. So, apart from my girlfriend, nobody's seen it yet. I'll put it here... In fact, when I find my bones dusty and rotten, that's what I end up seeing. More or less, afterwards, it evolves. But almost the moment I find it, I'm the only one who sees it. And in the end, my job as an artist is to make sure that, at the end of the preparation process, everyone sees a little of what I see at the start, what this image gives me. With fossils, it takes so long to find, prepare and so on, that you never actually see evolution in the moment. You see it when you think back to your childhood dreams. I remember what I dreamed of when I was in ninth grade. You know, I was already drawing the most beautiful unwound ammonites, what I really dreamed of finding. And now, forty years later, I've more than surpassed it. And that's a symbol. But did you think you were going to find a little theropod? No, but that, even just before I found it, I didn't think so. That's the thing...I'm telling you, it makes you almost mystical. That's the almost impossible thing. Since it's potentially a close relative of the tyrannosaurs, I wanted to show it to an expert in the field. Someone who knows the best-known member of this family, the T-Rex, very well. T-Rexes are found only in North America. It's a species that lived at the end of the Cretaceous period. When you think of these super-predators, there's one character you quickly think of. No, it's not John Hammond, nor Ian Malcolm. I'm thinking of a real person who has worked on a lot of T-Rex fossils. He's a fossil dealer and has an institute, a dedicated museum, the Black Hills Institute. I'm talking about Peter Larson. Meet Sue, the largest and most complete T-Rex ever found. Peter Larson and his team prepared this fossil. The same goes for Stan, a well-known specimen whose reproduction can be seen in several museums. At the moment, Peter Larson and his team are working on his twelfth T-Rex. I contacted him to ask his opinion on the little carnivore found by Luc. Oh wow, he finished the preparation. It's really wonderful. Do you think it's a tyrannosaurus? There's no c here that tells me it's a tyrannosaurus. I can't tell what it is exactly. It looks more primitive. What do you think of his work? Luc is one of those special people who can really see through rock In a way that not everyone can. He recognizes that and he recognizes the importance of that. And he's also, of course, an excellent coach. He's sort of winning the lottery here. People like Luc are Paleontology really depends on people like Luc. Because most scientists aren't in the field. Or if they are, it's only for a little while. People who do it commercially or as amateurs, just for the love of it, make most of the discoveries in paleontology. And without them, we wouldn't have fossils like the one Luc found. They really are the soldiers of paleontology, as I call it. They're out there doing the work. Fortunately, there are a few generals who are willing to work with them and describe the material they collect. In fact, in the eyes of scientific institutions, Luc is an amateur paleontologist. His museum and collection are private, and it can be complicated for paleontologists to study these pieces. I know Luc Ebbo. He's a superb palaeontologist. He's one of the best preparers I've ever met. David Martill is an English professor of paleontology. He is known for having written a large number of studies on dinosaurs and especially on its flying cousin, the pterosaur. The BBC even called on him as scientific advisor for a series on dinosaurs. Paleontologists face many problems. One of the big problems we have is that when we see a fossil we believe it to be a new species, we can't describe it if the specimen is in a private collection. We cannot publish a document that denounces this specimen if the specimen is not in a public collection. We want the original specimen to be available to any scientist to see the original specimen. Some of the specimens Luc has found are scientifically very important. The little dinosaur Luc found is just amazing. It's very rare to see them in three dimensions. The bones, though scattered, were perfect. The bones could be put back together and the skull reconstructed. You can hold it and move their jaws. It's absolutely magnificent. No one had ever done this for a theropod in Europe. So we have a bit of a problem with the status of his museum. To study a fossil, to make it publishable, it has to be donated to a public institution. Without that, the specimen doesn't exist. So, basically, it's as if the fossils we've found in the eyes of science don't exist. I find this rather problematic. It slows down the scientific process. Right now, dozens of species have been discovered. Nothing has been described. Luc has found a new world that has never been described. That was ten years ago. Basically, what we're trying to do here is make all our pieces accessible, so all our pieces are already accessible. In other words, any scientist can come and study our fossils. But the problem these scientists may encounter is that they can't necessarily publish the results of their research because these fossils are not in a public collection. I work a lot with amateur and private collectors. I see their collections. I see new things and things that show things I've never seen before. For me, it's a learning exercise. It's about knowing whether I want to pass on this information to the rest of the world. If I think something is really, really exciting and worth publishing, I go to great lengths to try to convince that person to give it to a museum. If I can't do that, I'll convince them to let me make scans, and then I'll try to convince a publisher that those scans are good enough. But that's the hard part. Get past the editors. And I can feel it slowing down. science at a certain level. A private collection is a collection based on the fossil link. So we can't, in fact, or when we die, but that's a bit of a shame, pass it on to a public body so that it becomes totally neutral, in fact. And I think these are important questions to ask ourselves in the French paleontological landscape. How can we reconcile the two? That's what Gabriel, FX, Ulysse and the whole team are trying to do. In other words, we all have essential pieces in our private collections. We don't want to sell them. They'll end up in public institutions one day, certainly, but we'd like them to end up in our own lifetime, and we'd like to participate in their development with the scientific community and museums. On the other hand, we want to keep them around us, because we have these strong ties. And if we hadn't had these strong ties, we wouldn't have found them, I think we have to try and find a system where we say... where we find a legal framework. in which these specimens can remain their own, perhaps until they die. And then there is a natural transfer of ownership of the public sector. For his part, Luke has commissioned a team specializing in preventive conservation to make a precise inventory of the prepared fossils that make up his collection. All these specimens are not for sale and are freely accessible, especially to scientists who would like to study them. At present, his collection already contains over five hundred fossils. We leave the artisan workshops of the South to go into a medium that is much talked about in the media and also criticized by paleontologists: fossil auctions. I went to see the assembly of a T-Rex built with three different tyrannosaurs, Trinity, just before its auction, organized in Zurich. Normally, this fossil would be sold for several thousand dollars. until now there were only two T-Rex sales in the world, there was Sue en deux-mille-huit which was sold to a museum in Chicago, then there was Stan in two-thousand-twenty for thirty-one-eight million dollars. So this is the third time in the world and the first time in Europe that there's been a T-Rex for sale. My name is Carl Green, I work at the Koller auction house as marketing manager. About ten-fifteen years ago, we started doing more and more natural history sales. It's become something that people are looking for more and more. Who buys this stuff? It could be a particular museum or some kind of foundation. Traditionally, it's been the museums, and now the prices are a bit higher, the museums sometimes have a hard time, so it's gone into private hands instead. What do you think of all these auctions, the fossil sale? Can you talk about it? I can try to talk about fossil sales, yes. Honestly, what I think of the sale of fossils is that I have nothing against it, since I make my living from it. So, of course, I'm not going to criticize the sale. There are many people who criticize me as a dealer, precisely because the question of selling fossils poses an ethical problem. Some people think that as soon as you sell.., you become an unpleasant person. Whatever you do, whatever you mount, whatever you use. But I don't think about that. I'm really proud of it, because it's been a way for me to make a living from my passion. And when I say my passion, I emphasize the fact that I'm looking for and preparing fossils, not studying them. And there's no profession in finding and preparing fossils. There's no salary for it. There's no way to make a living at it, except by selling fossils. And then again, just because you sell some pieces doesn't mean you're going to sell everything. I have lots of people who buy pieces from me. Museums also buy pieces from me. And that's all very well. how much does your little dino cost? How much is my little dino? It's not for sale. It will never be for sale. My little dino is the piece of my life. If I sell it, I'm selling myself. So this is... It's not for sale. At any price. I don't even hear the prices I could be offered. It's the meaning of my life. You can't sell that. I'd like to find a way to promote it, though. This is the craziest piece ever found in France. There has never been a carnivorous dinosaur so complete, so well prepared. He's doing a fantastic job. It's thanks to his tenacity and skills that he discovered this new dinosaur. It's almost a gift from nature, showing you that you're on the right path. Is it a tyrannosaurus? Is it an allosaurus? The study will tell us. It will shed light on the evolution of carnivorous dinosaurs. It will provide new information on this terrifying and fascinating family that we've never had before. Are you filming it, Julien? Is the plan all right? Yes, go ahead. Come on, pass. yes All clear? Is the path clear? It's not too heavy? I don't know if people realize it, but it's a struggle in itself to find them. It means spending your life, going there every day, squaring the hill, and so on. But on top of that, since you're on your own path, which isn't an official one, in quotation marks, it's not a scientific path. Everything's more complicated. As a result, you have a place in paleontology that isn't necessarily recognized, and sometimes not at all. What we do doesn't exist, in fact. Officially, it doesn't exist. And it's... After a while, it's shocking. And we're almost ashamed of it. We're almost afraid to explain what we do, what we find. Because often, it can even be equated with looting. It's quite incredible that some people come to the museum and say, "You're doing a fantastic job", but if they saw me in the mountains with a backpack, picking up a rock, they might call me a looter. You see, it's all these problems that are a bit crazy after a while. And today, I feel like... I've never really dared to say, because it's a delicate status. Selling too, at the end of the day, you know. And... I think there comes a point in life when it's good to say it. It's good for me, it's good for the people who like me, it's good for my family, for my mother. There are a lot of people, though, who've been behind me, who've seen things from the inside, and who've helped me carry it through. helped me carry it, you know. I've been waiting for this for a long time. I've been waiting for forty years to tell this story too, you know. I've been afraid to say it for forty years. So what can I say to you at the opening of this exhibition? For me, a lot of emotions, but also a lot of pride. Thank you to my family, thank you to my close friends, who came in great numbers, and thank you to all the anonymous people who have visited the museum since its creation, and whose comments in the visitors' book have encouraged me in my projects and supported me in my approach. My career path is atypical, off the beaten track, often misunderstood, sometimes even challenged. And yet, tonight, it seems to me that the result is there, as proof that there are many ways of learning about the world. It's this journey of fusion with nature that has enabled me to discover and release the specimens I present to you today, which would otherwise have disappeared into the valleys, irretrievably destroyed by erosion. I am convinced that I am serving paleontology. The specimens I discover have always been available to science for study and publication. After that, my role, my passion, is to sublimate them in their stone matrix, to reveal them in all their artistic beauty. For, as you will have gathered by now, I have placed the meaning of my life in the stones of my country. Thank you for this. He'll be called Ernest after all. It's my grandfather's name. Now we've come to the end of this long story. We thought about a lot of names. In the end, the one that seemed most obvious to me was my grandfather's first name. He was the person I wanted to dedicate it to. Gab, I couldn't finish this video without you telling us what you found, because you too have made an incredible discovery. Can you explain it to us? During the exhibition, I made the discovery a few months ago, there's a family of flying reptiles that will reach gigantic shapes. It's the Azhdarchidae. And I was lucky enough to find a complete bone. So the bone, it's over sixty centimetres long. It's a humerus. And in fact, when I contacted David Martil, the pterosaur specialist, I learned that I had found the bone of the world's largest animal. Which never existed. I got a huge kick out of it. This bone is huge. ... I was simply speechless. As soon as I held it in my hands, I knew what it was. I could make that connection between the bone and the animal. And I realized I was holding something that was the largest animal that had ever flown. And it's French. So the flying animal record, the biggest flying animal of all time, is French today. So that's something to be proud of. So yes, I've also been rewarded for my work in the field. And that's a pleasure. It's a real pleasure.