Two years ago, Mercedes-Benz reportedly paid $1 million to get its M-class sport-utility vehicle featured in "The Lost World," the sequel to "Jurassic Park." But Honda got the chance to have its SUV haul real dinosaur eggs on behalf of the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum -- for the price of shipping and handling.
Last March, Luis Chiappe, the museum's associate curator of vertebrate paleontology, found himself in Argentina's remote Patagonia region with more than 200 fossilized sauropod eggs and no way to get them home. The museum turned to one of its sponsors -- Honda Motor Co., which quickly coughed up a generator and two four-wheel-drive SUVs: a CR-V from a local Honda dealer and the larger Passport model, not sold in Argentina, which was driven from Washington, D.C., to Miami, and shipped to Patagonia. Extra tires, fan belts, windshield wipers and air filters were sent ahead of the car as a precaution against the inhospitable terrain at the field site, where shrubs bristle with three-inch spikes and finding a mechanic means crossing miles of badlands.
Dr. Chiappe, who unveiled his findings earlier this month at the Exposition Park museum, had seen those conditions wreak havoc before. In a 1997 dig, the paleontologist and his colleagues lost an entire week when a 15-year-old, locally bought Ford pickup broke down.
The paleontologist insists his crew, rather than his ride, deserves most of the credit. "Even if you're using a horse, you're going to make the same discoveries," he says. Nevertheless, the vehicles held up admirably, he says, carting dinosaur eggs and plaster-encased bones across steep ravines and around an extinct volcano.
Honda officials, meanwhile, have had their Passport returned to them, although spokeswoman Barbara Ponce says, "We would not loan it out ever again." She adds: "I have left specific instructions that it not be cleaned -- there may be some tarantulas in there."
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