Gingrich A Roar At Dinosaur Dig House Speaker Livens Up Museum Of The Rockies Fete

House Speaker Newt Gingrich and paleontologist Jack Horner headed for a dinosaur dig Wednesday after Horner conceded in a preliminary debate that Tyrannosaurus rex chased kids and ate lawyers.

The politician and the paleontologist faced off Tuesday night in a $125-a-head fund-raiser for the Museum of the Rockies and gave the audience of 200 their money’s worth in laughs.

“Have you ever thought about being a stand-up comedian?” Horner asked at one point.

“Jay Leno asked me if I ever thought about being a paleontologist,” Gingrich replied between sips on two bottles of beer he brought on stage.

On Wednesday, Horner led Gingrich and two vans full of other people on a daylong tour of a dinosaur dig south of Livingston.

The speaker and other congressional leaders are touring parts of several Western states, including Yellowstone National Park.

Gingrich is an amateur dinosaur buff, and Horner was a consultant on the movies “Jurassic Park” and “Lost World” and wrote a book outlining his theory that ol’ T. rex was a scavenger, not a predator.

But in their half-serious argument Tuesday, Horner yielded to Gingrich in Hollywood terms: Rex did, on occasion, kill its own meat.

“I concede that Tyrannosaurus rex was a nasty predator who chased kids and ate lawyers,” Horner said.

Horner had contended that T. Rex was a scavenger, that his legs were too long and his arms too short to be an effective predator.

Imagine tying your hands behind your back and chasing a chicken down the street, he told the crowd.

Gingrich, using a Hollywood argument of his own, maintained tat T. Rex scavenged meals when they were available but was also an opportunistic predator.

“I believe he was a predator because I saw ‘Jurassic Park,’ and he ate a lawyer - and it wasn’t a dead lawyer,” Gingrich said.

“There’s no way to debate a politician,” Horner lamented early in the discussion, maintaining that, as a scientist, he had nothing to rely on but data.

“That means passion, ideology and pure power don’t count?” replied Gingrich.

The two men agreed on one critical point: Science is taught badly in schools today “because it’s taught as fact instead of as process,” Gingrich said.

“We should teach our kids how to think instead of how to memorize,” Horner added.