Episode Details

Jessica Lippincott

Wendy Corr:

Well, hey there folks. Welcome to The Roundup. We're a Cowboy State Daily Podcast, and we focus on interesting people in the Cowboy State. I'm telling you, there is not a story that I've come across recently that is more interesting than Jessica Lippincott's story.

This story is one that is made for TV, movie, and I just think it's fascinating that Jessica, who is a Wyoming native, that she's lived here most of her life, and she has been a paleontologist. Well, I'm going to let her tell you a little bit about her background, but you're going to want to stick around for this story, because it's a great story.

So Jessica, hello, welcome, welcome, welcome.

Jessica Lippincott:

Hi. Thanks for having me on.

Wendy Corr:

I think this is going to be a lot of fun. So I started to tell people a little bit about what you do, and I want to introduce you as that, because you're very experienced, you're a scientist, you're a paleontologist. Tell us about the work that you do.

Jessica Lippincott:

So I, my background is in paleontology, and I worked in that for, oh, my goodness, almost 30 years. I started. I started working at the Tate Museum in Casper when I was still in high school, and so that's kind of how I got started into that and I currently, I don't work at the museum anymore, but I still do paleontology on the side.

And I'm very active with a paleo documentary called "Why Dinosaurs?", so I'm one of the executive producers for that. So we've kind of gone all over the country screening this movie, and we're getting ready to go to Australia, actually, in the summer to do that, to do an Australian tour. So, so yeah, I still do lots of paleo stuff on the side.

Wendy Corr:

We may have to come back to that, because I think that's fascinating in itself, that whole topic. So we may, we may touch on that before we're done with the podcast today.

But Jessica, you are a scientist, and you're curious about things, and even from a young age, you were curious about your own background. Tell us about growing up. You were an only child, but your childhood was a little different than most people's. So tell us about the very dramatic turns that your childhood took.

Jessica Lippincott:

Yeah, so when, when I was two, who I thought was my biological father, he kidnapped me, and that happened in Casper, actually in Mills, and I was gone for about three months. I don't have a lot of memory of it. I just have two, two distinct memories that I remember.

And it was kind of a very traumatic thing that happened, you know, as a kid, and it kind of paved the way of my life, I guess you could say, in a subconscious way. And so after I was recovered, I didn't talk for a while, and then I really remember questioning myself and a lot of things as a kid.

And I used to ask my mom all the time if I was adopted, because I felt like I was, I was a lot different than my cousins or anyone else in my family. And I used to say, I think I have brothers and sisters. And she's like, she said, No, you don't. You don't have any, you know. And I'm like, Are you sure? I really feel like I do? And I remember asking her that at probably five or six years old, like all the time.

Wendy Corr:

Something inside you at that time, because you had no proof, yeah, nothing. There was nothing. But you just kept asking your mom if you had brothers and sisters.

Jessica Lippincott:

Yeah, I just, I just felt like something was different. Something was totally off and growing up, I had a very distinctive interest in s