"It’s something that you feel somehow, it’s déjà vu,” he tells my colleague Michael Greshko. “Of course, it’s not normal to see that on a bone from a dinosaur, but the feeling… it’s a warm feeling, it’s comfort.”



“I’m trying to describe the feelings I have when I do these lights,” Paolo adds. “It’s kind of magical sparkles that can bring anything to life.” (Above left, team members examine a Spinosaurus tail vertebrae; at right, long spines of bone protrude from the Spinosaurus tail vertebrae.)



But for Paolo, the story of dinosaurs isn’t about bones locked away in stone; it’s about the dreamers and thinkers who study fossils and dig them up in even the harshest conditions. “It’s