Raising the Truth

Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Defraud not, Honor thy father and mother…

Mark 10:19

(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.
Also please note that in this chapter we did not address problems with Vision Forum’s film Raising the Allosaur. These will be addressed in later articles.)

As May 2002 arrived, Joe Taylor and his Mt Blanco Fossil Dig Team made preparations to finish the Forbes Ranch excavation they had begun in September of 2001. Taylor had a percentage partnership with Pete DeRosa in the Forbes’ project and, at Pete’s plea, had taken his boys on as apprentices. Taylor contacted Pete DeRosa regarding the itinerary for the May dig. They would continue to look for the skull where the shoulders were found in September 2001. The team would meet on Friday, May 10, 2002 at the Forbes’ and excavate for 10 days.

The Mt Blanco Fossil Dig team had a full plate for the beginning of the 2002 season and at the Forbes dig site, the team would finish excavating the tail section which was plastered and insitu, then they would continue the search for the skull. After ten days they would move on to the Dr. Carl Baugh’s Creation Evidence Museum (CEM) dig site a few miles to the east. After that they would be on to Montana to dig with and for Otis Kline. One of the Mt Blanco Fossil Dig Team members, Dave Babbitt contacted Taylor to let him know he wouldn’t be able to arrive until May 15, 2002 instead of May 10, 2002.¹ Dave was responding to an email he received from Joe April 23rd where he stated; “Dave, Plan to be at Forbes on May 10th till 20th from Carl’s will go to Glendive Montana for a few weeks.”^2, ((1/10/02 and 1/11/02 emails about dates to meet.))

Taylor had emailed Pete DeRosa on January 11th, 2002 and discussed not only the itinerary but the growing concern that he had for his team and for the Forbes regarding the Allosaur project. Taylor asked where the money was going to come from to excavate, prep, and finish the Allosaur. Pete DeRosa assured Taylor by return email on the January 11, 2002 that the Vision Forum tour with CSI at the Forbes would fund all the spring work as well as the restoration of the bones. He told Taylor in that email that “CSI had just signed with the Forbes and were still honoring Joe’s 20% interest in the materials excavated.” Pete DeRosa also said that “if you will dig with us at the Forbes, I will have Tom send you a letter of commitment.”³

Pete DeRosa was neither an excavator nor restorator of dinosaurs when he entered into the May 2001 agreement with Taylor and the Forbes. He and his boys had been volunteers for CSI. Pete DeRosa had been at the Forbes in May 2001 as Taylor’s guest. Pete had told the Forbes and Taylor that he had ties to CSI. Pete DeRosa volunteered to get funding for the Forbe’s project through CSI. The only dinosaur digs Pete and his boys had ever attended was the May 2001 dig at the CEM dig site, again as Taylor’s guests. As the Forbes, Joe Taylor, and Pete DeRosa discussed the possibilities of the Allosaur which Dana Forbes had found and which Joe had correctly identified, Pete had a unique position in the partnership. He had nothing at all to offer to the partnership except promises of funding. All of Pete DeRosa’s credentials for involvement and even his having met Taylor, let alone meeting the Forbes, were a direct result of his ties with CSI. The CSI Board had entrusted Pete as Director of Outreach in August 2001 to work as their agent in the Forbes negotiations.

After CSI withdrew from the Forbes project, Tom DeRosa, still believing that Pete DeRosa was his loyal field agent, counted on Pete DeRosa to fulfill CSI’s obligation to Doug Phillips and then return to work with CSI on Fossil floats and other CSI projects. Tom DeRosa expected that the expenses for Pete DeRosa would come from the Vision Forum (VF) tour. Tom DeRosa had no idea Pete DeRosa had signed a contract with the Forbes or that Pete DeRosa would claim the Vision Forum tour as a Creation Expeditions trip. Tom DeRosa had given Pete DeRosa the use of a CSI secretary and other office support to complete the details of the Forbes’ dig.

The CSI 2002 dig plans and Vision Forum’s itinerary are strikingly similar. One came from CSI’s computer files and is titled, “Dragon’s Den Dig, CSI Dig 2002”⁴; the other is the Vision Forum schedule given to the May 2002 dig participants.⁵ The title fonts are identical and the itinerary is the same on both documents and reflect CSI’s authorship.⁶

On April 3, 2002 Pete DeRosa emailed Dana Forbes about a letter he had written for the April CSI Board Meeting. It reads: “Hello Dana, Here is a copy of the letter to CSI. I pray that it is okay, let me know if I need to change anything. Tom called and would like to have it for the board meeting this Monday night. Also, have you and Brenda agreed on the contract I sent you, let me know. I will have monies to send you next week. Please do not discuss the bones with anybody from CSI, I told Tom this is off limits. CSI does not need to know anything of what we are doing, I told Tom you want all the money this is the end. Pete.”⁷ Dana responded the same day with what he felt comfortable offering but had concerns about agreeing to pay back CSI without it being linked to the sale of bone material. He also stated that he would be sending back the agreement between their two families.⁸

On May 15, 2002 Tom DeRosa responded to Forbes after the board meeting. Dana Forbes made a note on the letter linked below that this was the last correspondence he received from CSI. Tom DeRosa did not know that Pete DeRosa had a contract with the Forbes. Doug Phillips’ plans to make a film showcasing the DeRosas as professionals were unknown to both Tom DeRosa and Taylor. Tom DeRosa thought Pete DeRosa was fulfilling CSI’s obligation to Phillips and collecting his expenses from the tour. Tom DeRosa and the CSI Board assumed that the Forbes Dig was solely Vision Forum’s and that Pete DeRosa was acting as an agent of CSI. They thought he would provide the agreed upon support and be paid something by Vision Forum for it to cover his expenses.⁹

May 15, 2002 leter from Tom DeRosa to Dana Forbes

After the Build your own Fossil Museum Seminar at Taylor’s museum, Taylor emailed the Forbes. “Glad your home. I may take you up on a bed at your old place. That will place me close to Don Yeager still, and yes, I would like to check E-mail every day or so. one of these projects has to have answers that day for an event several weeks away. So it is important to me.” Taylor went on to comfort the Forbes for making mistakes on one of the Allosaur field jackets they had worked on at the seminar. He explained he had a phone call that went on until he told them he had people from Colorado to help. Taylor encouraged the Forbes telling them with more practice they would get it (referring to the restoration of bones).¹⁰

March 8th, three days after CSI withdrew from the project, the Forbes wrote a letter to an attorney in Grand Junction, Colorado. Pete had told the Forbes that CSI was going to sue them. The letter makes reference to other tours, “The land was not to be exclusive to CSI. They needed to let other tours come out by paying a fee to CSI so that we could have enough tour income through the summer to help carry us through the winter. We learned this week that they were making it very hard for any group to do that. Pete had decided that he would be taking his groups to Montana because CSI was being hard to work with.” Pete DeRosa didn’t have any contacts in Montana to take any group as he was only going to Montana at the invitation of Taylor. This letter also makes reference to the Vision Forum Tour of May 6-10, 2002. Brenda Forbes wrote: “There is a tour that Pete scheduled to come out here May 6-10. They [CSI] say that they have rights to the money from this tour even though the now invalidated lease option stated that all of these tours were subject to a LEASE agreement…We need to make sure that this tour that is scheduled for May is secure. All the agreements with this tour group were made through and to Pete” This letter was written based on misinformation that Pete DeRosa had given to the Forbes.¹¹ Pete must have failed to inform the Forbes that Tom DeRosa presented the Dragons Den Dino Dig business proposal to Doug Phillips, October 6th, 2001 and that he had accepted. Phillips had even cited CSI in their first ad.

The Vision Forum tour members arrived on May 6, 2002 in the town of Dinosaur, Colorado. The morning of the first day, the group gathered at the First Baptist Church of Rangely for orientation, and then traveled to Dinosaur National Monument and the Vernal Dinosaur Museum. The afternoon was spent collecting fossilized raindrops, plants and other fossils in Cowboy Canyon. On day two the group was scheduled to participate in white water rafting with Hatch River Expeditions, however weather did not permit the rafting trip. The group gathered again at the First Baptist Church in the evening for instructions, job assignments, and to pick up digging tools.

For the next three days participants divided into three groups that rotated among the three sites at the Forbes Ranch—the Allosaur, the Sauropod and the “Stegosaur.” During the digging on at the Allosaur site where Taylor’s Dig team had left off the previous fall, it was announced that someone had uncovered a bone. This occured on the second day of digging. Reportedly, Dr. Bruce Bellamy had found a small, round object. They didn’t know what it was, but were hoping it was a neck vertebra. This hope was no doubt based on the fact that the tail section remained in the ground several feet away from the dig the previous September. The twelve feet of the spine in between was sitting in Taylor’s Museum back in Crosbyton, Texas. Operations on the Allosaur site then ceased until Taylor’s experienced dig team could come out for further excavation. The Vision Forum tour group had moved a lot of dirt, but did not raise any of the Allosaur, as claimed in the Vision Forum video, “Raising the Allosaur”.¹²

Don Yeager was the first of Taylor’s team to arrive at the Forbes’ on May 10, 2002. When he arrived, the place was alive with people. However, Yaeger was met by Pete DeRosa at the entrance to the property and firmly told that he would have to leave and stay somewhere else for several days. Pete DeRosa claimed that he was making a film for Ken Ham and that Answers in Genesis (AiG) didn’t want Taylor’s team to appear in it. Yeager was upset at this news not only because it was contrary to agreed-upon plans, but he had lost much of his retirement investment following the 9/11 calamities and had only consented to help at the Forbes’ because Pete DeRosa had promised to pay his expenses. In fact Pete DeRosa had promised to pay all of Taylor’s dig team’s expenses. Facing the prospect of being stranded for several days, Don Yeager went down the road and paid to camp at the Massadona camp site.¹³

Taylor left Crosbyton, Texas, on Friday, May 10, 2002 at 4:30 a.m., and planned to drive straight through to the Forbes property in Colorado. Accompanying Taylor were Phillip and Jordan Hall, who had been digging with him for about 10 years with their father Dave Hall. However, Taylor received an unexpected call from Pete DeRosa at around 1:30 in the afternoon and was told not to come to the Forbes’, but instead to show up on Saturday. Pete DeRosa claimed that he was making a film with Phillips for Ham, who didn’t want Taylor’s dig team in the film because of issues between them—and that Phillips wanted to help Taylor iron out his differences with AiG and Institute for Creation Research (ICR). The Hall brothers and Taylor were crestfallen. This news from Pete DeRosa turned a happy excited crew into a somber and deflated party. Months later, in October 2002, Joe Taylor discussed this all with Ham. Ham assured him that the film was not being made for him, Ham knew nothing about the film and was not having problems with Taylor. Taylor and the Hall brothers found a place to camp and waited until Saturday to head over to the Forbes.

When they came over on Saturday, May 11, 2002, Doug Phillips and Bob Renaud, Doug’s personal assistant, were still there. Joe Taylor was introduced to Doug at this time. Following their meeting the group met in the Forbes’ kitchen and Taylor expressed his faith in Phillips ability to help make the Forbes’ project a success. Phillips and Renaud then departed.

As Taylor’s team checked out the site, they could see that the homeschoolers had removed a lot of dirt beneath the area where the Allosaur tail vertebrae had been found the previous year. Pete DeRosa pointed out the small fragment Dr. Bellamy had uncovered, and stated it had been found on the last day of the Vision Forum tour. Taylor assigned Yeager to lead some of the diggers to excavate the remainder of the tail, as Taylor led others to begin tracing the bone fragments from where the new bone was found. It took two days of hard digging before it became clear to Taylor that they’d found the articulated neck section of the Allosaur. They continued to dig and soon uncovered a lower jaw with teeth.

They located the dinosaur’s skull the following day. Jordan Hall was digging with a pick axe when he hit bone and a piece flew up toward Taylor’s ear. Taylor caught the flying bone fragment, examined it and recognized sinus cavities in it. A celebration was held that evening in Jordan Hall’s honor. As stated in Taylor’s 10/13/02 e-mail, “It took me a while to figure out that we were uncovering its neck, which I had previously suspected was recurved in death back onto its shoulders. We never count on finding the skull, and it was very gratifying when we did. The skull was in very hard sandstone. It took a lot of jackhammering to get around it. The wet field jacket must have weighed up to 800 lbs.”¹⁴

Jordan Hall is the one who first struck the skull. In his video taped interview Jordan Hall expresses his unwillingness to take credit for discovering the skull. He states that Talyor told them where to dig and they were digging there. He said that Taylor was the professional and he just dug where Joe told him to. Jordan Hall further stated that he wouldn’t have thought of taking credit for discovering the skull as he was working under Taylor’s instruction along with the rest of the team. He remembered that Dana Forbes had offered a Massadona Burger to the one that found the skull.¹⁵

According to Terry Beh’s account: “The excavation of the neck and skull took up the rest of the week, finishing on Sunday evening May 18. I arrived the afternoon of the 17th, and was greeted by Brenda with the joyous news of the skull. By the time I got up to the site, the neck vertebrae had already been removed but the head was still there, partly plastered with the lower jaw and some of the teeth clearly in view. It was lying nose-down in hard sandstone and looked to be about a yard long. Everyone appeared pretty exhausted by that point, and I jumped in eagerly. Carefully digging around the wonderful thing, Taylor and I found pieces of wood that were partly petrified, partly coalified—and partly still wood! (We had also found woody, organic material beneath the tail vertebrae the year before.)…George Bostick, Brenda Forbes brother, also joined us that afternoon and with the two of us (mostly George) doing a lot of the pick and shovel ‘grunt work’ that remained, to get the skull out.”¹⁶

“Work continued the next day, centering on jacketing the skull, turning it, removing excess rock, final plastering and getting the huge, 800-lb. package off the hillside. And, once again, without George and his monster yellow truck, we wouldn’t have been able to pull it off when we did—and even at that it took us all day and into the early evening to get the job done. This time as camp broke up, the farewells were hurried as folks headed off in their separate ways, the DeRosas to Taylor’s museum in Texas where the Allosaur skull and other bones were to be stored and prepared, and the Taylor crew over to Baugh’s site. On May 24, 2002 Peter and Mark Derosa, along with their assistant, Dan Burns, delivered the bones to Taylor’s Mt. Blanco Museum, where Don Ensign helped unload it. At this point it was understood that Taylor, the only real expert among the parties, would have primary responsibility for cleaning and prepping the Allosaurus, while training the DeRosa boys, [as well as Phillip Hall and Chantell Lines, who’d both be taking a semester off from college for this purpose], with funding assured by the DeRosas.”¹⁶

On May 16, 2002 after Taylor and Phillip Hall estimated the size of the Allosaur skull, Taylor wrote an email to Phillips updating him on the discovery and the scientific information it had revealed– we provide the document in full below¹⁷:

RAISING THE ALLOSAURUS:

May 16, 2002

Dear Doug:

I wanted to give you the update on the incredible ALLOSAURUS skeleton your team excavated on last week. Today, Thursday the 16th of May, we found the right lower jaw of our Allosaurus. It lay just beyond where Mark DeRosa of Creation Expeditions, had told Dr. Bruce to dig for the skull. At that exact spot, we uncovered another eight or nine vertebrae. They were articulated! Just inches away a young Mr. Blanco Fossil Museum team member, Jordan Hall uncovered a bit of dark brown bone. As I began to trace the bone, it fanned out. As is often the case, it was familiar, but confusing. Several bones seemed to be a possibility. Finally, etching downward through the rock-hard sandstone, a long slit in the bone began to appear. Peter DeRosa, also of the Florida based Creation Expeditions, was looking down into the recess. At the same time, we realized what it might be. “Don’t say it!” I smiled as he muffled his remark. Sure enough it was a lower jaw! The excitement was infectious. But was it? Another veteran Mt. Blanco team member, Phillip Hall and I, quickly calculated how far it would be from the back of the jaw to the last tooth in the giant lizards jaw. We were exactly right. But getting there took Peter and I a torturous hour to finally expose the tooth. Just as we hoped a perfect tooth one inch long was finally exposed to human view after so many thousands of years!

I must confess, I am not one to get emotional over a fossil bone. I have seen thousands. But, I was not alone. Several of us had tears welling up into our eyes. No, it was not only the excitement of finding something as rare as an Allosaurus, but the fact that so many hardships had been overcome in the process was an emotional experience. These magnificent beasts of God’s creation are rare. This one is over 60% complete, a rarity in itself. It measures 22 feet in length, 10 feet tall and had a head over a yard long!

Let me tell you some of the exciting facts of this animal. The first bones excavated after Dana Forbes, of the Forbes Fossil Ranch, found them were over twelve feet of vertebrae. But the significance of that was that they were all still articulated, just as the animal lived, and had not been moved since it was buried! All of the small “Y” shaped chevron bones under the tailbones were still exactly where they had been placed by the hand of God when He created it! One has to realize that in this part of Colorado, vast sections of the earth have been stood on their sides. At this location, our site is under layers of rock, two hundred feet thick. There is a giant long-necked dinosaur fifty feet above it, and another one hundred and fifty feet below it and others even deeper. The bones are enormous. All of them are buried in flowing mud and water! This is not all. There is wood from trees mixed with it. The amazing thing is that some of them are both petrified and un-petrified in the same piece of wood! The animal is lying on a bed of leaves and plant debris. On another dinosaur excavation of the same Morrison group of animals, a huge log was excavated. The log was totally petrified, but the bark was not. It was carbon dated at 5,000 years.

What about the skull? The seasoned bone digger, never expects to find the skull. When one finds it, the feeling is wonderful. As we began to excavate between the lower jaw and the eight now articulated vertebrae, a strange set of bones began to emerge. They do not look like anything familiar. Tonight, we projected a drawing of the skeleton of our Allosaurus up to scale, and we all agreed that the several bones of the back of the skull strongly resemble the strange bones. Tomorrow, we will chisel through some very unrelenting rock and find out. The significance of this find cannot be underestimated.

God bless you

Joe Taylor
Curator, paleontologist
Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum
Crosbyton, Texas

Phillips later stated he never received this email as he claims it was sent to the wrong email address. However, on May 20, 2002 he placed a special report on Vision Forum’s website entitled, “Home School Expedition Uncovers Rare Allosaur and Giant Sauropod.” The article states that “Vision Forum and Creation Expeditions has excavated a rare, large, intact Allosaurus measuring more than 22 feet in length, 10 feet in height, with a complete skull more than a yard long…As often happens with fossil expeditions, the skull came at the last moment of the last day of the trip. With just minutes to go before calling quits on the expedition, Dr. Bruce Bellamy, a home school father from Clinton Missouri, broke dirt on what would prove to be the neck vertebrae leading up to the skull.” It also identified young Peter DeRosa as “a veteran archaeologist and paleontologist with Creation Expeditions.”¹⁸ This article contains most of the information that is included in Joe’s email. Phillips and his tour group had left almost a week before the skull excavation actually took place.

Following the skull’s discovery, Pete and Linda DeRosa signed the DeRosa/Forbes contract with the Forbes on May 17,2002—a full week after the Vision Forum tour had left. Daniel Burns and Phillip Hall signed as witnesses. As for Phillip Hall, he did not know what he was being asked to witness.

After completing the excavation of the skull on Sunday, May 18, 2002 and posing for photos, the Mt. Blanco team along with Pete and Linda DeRosa went over to the planned excavation at the CEM dig site, while Peter and Mark DeRosa along with Burns traveled to Taylor’s museum in Texas to deliver the skull and other bones. They arrived on May 24, 2002 and Don Ensign helped them unload the jackets. The boys then headed back to Colorado to rejoin the group at the CEM dig site.¹⁹

Following the Baugh dig some members of Taylor’s team, along with the DeRosa family, traveled to Montana to dig with Otis Kline of the Foundation Advancing Creation Truth (FACT), with Chantell Lines and Dan Burns riding in the DeRosas’ camper.

Tom DeRosa was at home on a dialysis machine awaiting a kidney transplant when he saw Phillips’ May 20, 2002 press release referring to Vision Forum and Creation Expedition. Tom DeRosa remembered Pete DeRosas’ Creation Expedtion business card he had accidentally seen during the summer of 2001. Pete DeRosa had told Tom DeRosa that it would be a better way for him to keep track of his expenses. It was a huge revelation when Tom DeRosa found out that Pete DeRosa was promoting himself as Creation Expeditions. As realization set in, Tom DeRosa was shocked to discover that Pete DeRosa had betrayed him. He called Pete DeRosa who was enroute to Montana to confront him about his actions.²⁰

While the Montana dig proved highly fruitful, finding some T-rex teeth and bones, as well as significant evidence for a rapid, relatively recent burial (including water turtles, fish teeth, closed clams and all kinds of different preservation of wood), the DeRosas decided to leave after only a couple days. Phillip Hall had fallen ill and left with the DeRosas who took him to back to his home in Texas. Before leaving, Pete DeRosa mentioned that he would soon be traveling back east to meet up with a connection that might be willing to purchase the Forbes’ property.the DeRosas were heading for Vision Forum Headquarters in San Antonio, to help with the production of the Raising the Allosaur video.^21, ((Chantell Lines was invited to visit Vision Forum with the DeRosas after Montana dig 2002-Chantell interview))

Of the approximately $30,000 collected for the Vision Forum tour for its $995 per person dig, the Forbes received the agreed upon $1,500, Pete DeRosa received $13,000 and Vision Forum received the rest.²² Don Yeager was paid nothing, having been told by Pete DeRosa that he hadn’t gotten any money and therefore wasn’t able to pay him the promised funds for his expenses. Taylor was paid $3,000 of the promised $6,000 for his time and expenses. Pete DeRosa told Taylor he was paying him out of his own pocket. The money promised for the Allosaur restoration from this tour in Pete DeRosa’s email to Taylor January 10, 2002 had also vanished. The email had promised, “just with Doug’s tour CSI will have the funding for all the spring work and have money for restoration.”¹³

1. 5/6/02 email from Babbitt to Taylor[↩]
2. 4/23/02 email from Taylor to Babbitt[↩]
3. 1/11/02 Email from Pete DeRosa to Taylor[↩]
4. CSI Dig 2002 Dragons Den Dig registration form with itinerary[↩]
5. Vision Forum May 6-10, 2002 Dragons Den Dig Schedule[↩]
6. January 2005 interview with Tom DeRosa[↩]
7. 4/3/02 email from Pete DeRosa to Dana Forbes[↩]
8. 4/3/02 email from Dana Forbes to Pete DeRosa[↩]
9. June 2007 conversation between Tom DeRosa and Randy Gavin[↩]
10. 4/21/02 email from Taylor to Forbes[↩]
11. 3/8/02 Forbes letter to Grand Junction attorney[↩]
12. Email from a Vision Forum tour participant and also testimony from Dana Forbes[↩]
13. February 2005 interview with Don Yeager[↩]
14. 10/13/02 email from Taylor to ICR radio[↩]
15. 2005 Interview with Jordan Hall[↩]
16. Terry Beh Allosaurus article[↩]
17. Taylor’s 5/15/02 Raising the Allosaurus email detailing the discovery of the Allosaur skull[↩]
18. 5/20/02 Vision Forum press release[↩]
19. 5/24/02 Don Ensign journal page[↩]
20. January 2005 video interview with Chantell Lines[↩]
21. Vision Forum Attorney Don Hart told the Gavins in 2004 that Pete DeRosa and sons had helped produce the movie in summer of 2002[↩]
22. As told to the Forbes by Pete DeRosa[↩]