Raising the Truth

Hear; for I will speak of excellent things; and the opening of my lips shall be right things. For my mouth shall speak truth; and wickedness is an abomination to my lips. All the words of my mouth are in righteousness; there is nothing froward or perverse in them. They are all plain to him that understandeth, and right to them that find knowledge. (Proverbs 8:6-9)

(Editors note: Unless specified otherwise, the use of the terms “Derosas” or “Derosa family” are in reference to Pete Derosa and his family. Tom Derosa is of no relation to Pete Derosa.)

Prior to the first allosaur dig, Answers in Genesis held a creation seminar in West Harrison, Kentucky on August 30-September 2, 2001. This seminar was accompanied by a board meeting, where Tom DeRosa presented his Dragons Den Dino Dig business plan.

Before this event, Angela Hudson and her boys were visiting the Pete DeRosa family in Florida and decided to fly home to Jeffersonville, Indiana, leaving her Hummer in Florida to be detailed with the understanding the DeRosas would bring it to her en route to the AiG creation conference. Hudson wrote Pete DeRosa a check for $1,000 to reimburse him for any and all expenses. Pete DeRosa paid $200 for the detailing.¹ CSI also paid Pete DeRosa’s expenses for the trip. In just a few weeks Hudson and her two sons would be with the DeRosas again in Colorado at the Forbes’ allosaur dig at Pete DeRosa’s invitation.

Pete DeRosa called Joe Taylor from St. Louis to tell him they were headed for Colorado on September 14th. The AiG creation conference was finished on September 2nd.² On September 16th Joe and Don Ensign again travel to Colorado. By Monday, the 17th, Joe Taylor, Don Ensign and the DeRosas arrived at the Baugh dig site, where they met up with the rest of the dig team to finish excavating the bones they’d worked on that May. Pete DeRosa and his family also arrived at the Baugh site at the same time. They pulled out some large jackets, one easily weighing 500 lbs., but the focus of their discussions centered on the Forbes’ site down the road. Brenda Forbes claims the DeRosa family arrived at the Forbes dig site several weeks before Joe and his team. Joe was not aware of this until over a year later
((Terry Beh’s Allosaurus Article))

The DeRosa boys got anxious after a few days and asked Taylor if they could go over to the Forbes’ site early. Taylor said they could, but just to clear a path to the sites for AiG and CSI personnel. Based on testimony from Don Ensign, Joe Taylor and the Forbes, the DeRosas were not supposed to do any excavating. Terry Beh states, ‘To my knowledge, the DeRosas, particularly father, Pete, and sons, Peter and Mark, had never worked a dinosaur dig prior to that spring, where Taylor had coached them in the difficult art of excavating fossils from rock-hard Morrison sediments. Formerly, the DeRosas’ fossil excavation expertise consisted of picking up Pleistocene bones of creatures like mammoths found in soft river sands and dirt. In spite of this, though it seemed odd to me, they preceded us to the allosaur site, where we would be joining them when our work was done.”³

When the DeRosas arrived at the Forbes’ site to prep things, they began working on the sauropod site. The sauropod site was across a gulley from the allosaur site and the site the DeRosas referred to as a stegosaur site, which sat directly above the allosaur. Taylor believes this “stegosaur” is merely another sauropod. The DeRosas then moved to the Allosaur site, the site they had asked Taylor if they could leave the Baugh dig to work on. This was the Allosaur that Dana Forbes found in October 2000 and had already been excavated on before either Joe Taylor or the DeRosas entered the scene. Taylor told the DeRosas to only clean the rubble in front of the site so CSI and AiG folks could walk around it easier. Taylor specifically instructed the boys not to do any digging on the bones. The intention was to show just enough to AiG and CSI so they could see the possibilities, not to excavate.

The DeRosa boys disregarded Taylor’s instructions and dug on the allosaur bones anyway, undercutting the vertebral column. After the boys uncovered some of the bone material, Linda DeRosa got her video camera and began to ask questions of Brenda and Dana Forbes. Brenda Forbes later said she felt Linda DeRosa was trying to lead Brenda Forebes to say things in a particular way by the questions she asked. Brenda Forbes thought it peculiar, but she didn’t want to appear contentious. The same thing happened to Dana Forbes when Linda DeRosa interviewed him until he finally said something like, “well I guess I found the site and Mark found the allosaur.” Brenda Forbes had no idea until June 2003 that Mark DeRosa was claiming discovery of the allosaur that Dana Forbes had found.⁴

Terry Beh continues, “After a few days, we [Joe and his team from the Baugh dig] arrived at the Forbes’ with great anticipation. Dana and Brenda, welcomed us warmly to their property and Don Ensign and I set up our tent as fast as we could and quickly headed up to the bone site, which lay atop a rather steep, gray hill. When we arrived most of the others were already there, and Taylor was examining the tail vertebrae of the ‘Forbes Allosaurus’ that had been partially excavated by the DeRosas. As I approached, it was clear that, while pleased to see the articulated bones, Taylor was not happy about the sloppy work Pete and his sons had done. The vertebral column had been badly undercut, and, fearing damage, he was furiously repacking dirt beneath the fragile bones. To all within earshot, particularly the DeRosas, Taylor explained that paleontologists never remove dirt from directly under dinosaur bones until they are encased in plaster, stressing that without the support they could easily break. Hearing this, Peter DeRosa apologized repeatedly for their mistake. Fortunately, Taylor had caught it in time and no real harm was done.”^{3 ,} (( Video of the aftermath of the DeRosa boys undercutting the Brown Dirt Allosaurus))

After identifying the bones as a vertebral section of an Allosaurus, Taylor organized the team and decided to excavate the bones at that time, because they wouldn’t make it through the winter after being exposed by the DeRosas. Taylor wrote: “As it turned out, I decided that if we really worked at it, we could excavate a lot of it, and AiG and CSI could really see what was involved. So we hit it hard.”⁵

Dave Babbitt began working on a grid system at the allosaur site on September 20, 2001 and made ties to the first series of vertebrae on September 21.⁶

“A host of people representing a variety of creationist groups eventually participated in this dig, including all the members of the Baugh/Taylor team from the other site, the Forbes family, Tom DeRosa, head of CSI in Florida (no relation to the other DeRosas) and the Pete DeRosa family.”³ When Tom DeRosa arrived, Pete told him that Mark had discovered an allosaur.⁷

Joe Guthrie and Bill White were also at the site collecting materials for C-14 tests and to videotape the dig.⁸ Angela Hudson and her sons, Cy and Levi, arrived later than the others, this time in a motor home. Hudson set up camp by the DeRosa family. Brenda Forbes thought Hudson had come as a friend of the DeRosas. She had no idea that Hudson had given Pete $6,000 to provide funds for the dig.⁹

“With all these folks working together, the excavation went quickly as we uncovered the allosaur’s entire tail section- at least 12 feet long-as well as a shoulder girdle. In the next day or two, representatives from Answers in Genesis, Buddy Davis and Mike Zovath, also joined us. While most of the digging was done at this point, Davis and Zovath eagerly rolled up their sleeves and got their hands dirty helping to apply plaster jackets to the bones. They and others also took video and photos of the work including the arduous job of removing the field jackets from the steep hill.”
³

“This was accomplished with the timely aid of Brenda Forbes’ brother George Bostick, who showed up on the scene with his yellow, four-wheeled drive ‘monster truck,’ which, with its oversized tires, high ground clearance and V-8 engine could seemingly go anywhere. Bostick arrived just in time, the last day of the dig, and provided enormous logistical help -not to mention a lot of plain old elbow grease- in getting the three jackets down the hill and into his truck, including one easily weighing 400 to 500 pounds. Unfortunately, the ribs, limbs and, most importantly, the skull were not found at this time. But, as we gathered up our equipment, tired, dirty and exhausted from the exertion of the proceeding days, great hope was expressed that we’d find the rest of the Allosaurus, including the skull”³

It was on this trip that Tom DeRosa began to realize he had a serious health issue. As he was hiking up the hill to the allosaur site, he became unusually winded. Over the next few months he would visit the doctor and find that he had a rare kidney disease and that his kidneys were shutting down.

On Saturday, September 22, Mike Zovath, Tom DeRosa and Dana and Brenda Forbes were to meet to discuss and sign a lease option agreement.

“The following morning, Sunday, a rather stunning, impromptu worship service was held on the open dirt of the Forbes’ property near their home - stunning for the number of different Creationist groups represented and for the warm bond of unity expressed by one and all over the groundbreaking work and cooperation they had just engaged in. Included were people from Dr. Baugh’s Creation Evidence Museum, Joe Taylor’s Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum, Pete and Tom DeRosa with Creation Studies Institute and Davis and Zovath of Answers in Genesis, not to mention the Forbes. Songs of praise were sung, prayers of thanksgiving were uttered, a brief message was given and numerous testimonies were offered about all that God had orchestrated, along with great hope for future unity in finding ways to use this incredible find for God’s glory.”³

Angela Hudson was supposed to stop at Taylor’s museum on the way home to discuss funding some of his other projects. Before Hudson left for Crosbyton, Linda DeRosa took her aside and told Hudson that Taylor was romantically interested in her, which caused her to retreat. This cause a rift for many years until finally Taylor and Hudson spoke about the situation and Taylor was able to tell Hudson that he had never been romantically interested in her.¹⁰

On their way back to Crosbyton, TX, Joe Taylor, Don Ensign and the DeRosas stopped at a museum in Boise City, Oklahoma that had a big allosaurus on display. The allosaur they saw there was the largest ever found, and Ensign took photos of Taylor and the DeRosa boys posing beneath it.¹¹

The group continued to Crosbyton with the field jackets, unloading them at Taylor’s Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum on Sept. 26. The DeRosas left the same day for Florida.

1. Affidavit filed on 3/12/03 by Pete DeRosa[↩]
2. Don Ensign’s Mt. Blanco journal dated 09/14/01[↩]
3. Terry Beh’s Allosaurus Article[↩]
4. Brenda Forbes e-mail testimony[↩]
5. E-mail from Joe Taylor to ICR Radio dated 10/13/02[↩]
6. Dave Babbitt’s allosaur grid dated September 2001[↩]
7. January 2005 video interview with Tom DeRosa[↩]
8. Letter written on 09/02/2003 by Robert Garbe, President of Creation Research Science Education Foundation to Joe Taylor regarding Joe Guthrie and Bill White[↩]
9. E-mail from Brenda Forbes dated 4/10/07[↩]
10. Email from Don Ensign 5/21/07[↩]
11. Picture of Joe Taylor and the DeRosa boys posing with the allosaurus on display at Boise City, OK[↩]