For almost two weeks, University of Utah paleontologist Randall Irmis has been pulling all-nighters to watch a drill. The job isn’t as laid back as you might think. Among the purple and red hills of Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park, a diamond-studded drill is gradually cutting through millions of years of ancient rock, aiming for a depth of 1,700 feet below the surface. Irmis is part of the multi-institution science team collecting the cores as they are hoisted up. The Colorado Plateau Coring Project drill doesn’t stop. “Drilling occurs twenty four hours a day, seven days a week,” Irmis says, with drillers and the science teams split into two shifts.

“I’m on the night shift, so it can get pretty chilly,”