Alumni Albnum
A Dino Under Her Bed
When India. Wood '88 was 13 she discovered a dinosaur bone at a friend's ranch in Moffat County, Colorado. The allosaurus she proceeded to unearth on her own during the next three years is now the centerpiece of a new $7.7 million Prehistoric Journey exhibit at the Denver Museumof Natural History. "It's certainly our best carnivore," says Kirk Johnson, curator of paleontology at the museum.
"Alice" is Wood's nickname for the fossil, an ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex. She stored the bones in boxes under her bed and, in 1982, dropped some samples by the Denver museum. The museum immediately organized a full excavation of the site, hiring Wood to help finish the job.
After her freshman year at Dartmouth Wood returned to the Moffat County on site on a Mellon grant to study Jurassic era mammal fossils. Then a Tucker fellowship to Botswana the following fall turned her interest to more modern concerns: international business and politics.
After graduation Wood worked in international marketing and sales for Houghton Mifflin Co. and earned an M.B.A. from MIT. She is currently raising a two month old son arid a two year old daughter with the help of lawyerhusband Paul Mandel '88 and plans to get backinto publishing this fall.
