Dinos and climate change: Father-daughter road trip leads to new book

Writer B.J. Hollars has covered a myriad of themes within his books, having covered familial loss and a president from the 1960s.

The theme now? Dinosaurs, and the joy of finding fossils and going on adventures. However, that is just the jumping-off point for Hollars.

“I always try to tell people I try to write about things that scare me and keep me up at night,” he said with a laugh. “And I was really kind of nervous about the climate crisis — what can dinosaurs and their extinction teach us about our own perils in the 21st century?”

Hollars explained how this all started. He was invited in 2023 to a dinosaur fossil dig by a former student of his. That student, Tom Hebert, had started the Earth Sciences Foundation, an organization aiming at making the world of earth sciences available to all.

“I learned about something called the Montana Dinosaur Trail, which is 14 stops through Montana, and it’s all dinosaur-related dig sites and museums,” Hollars said. “And my middle daughter, she really wanted to go on a big trip together.”

And the duo did just that, hitting each of the 14 stops and even took part in a fossil dig. From that experience came Hollars’ upcoming book, “Dinosaur Dreams: A Father and Daughter in Search of America’s Prehistoric Past.”

“It’s not just a book about dinosaurs — dinosaurs are the vehicle that got us to the book. I think everyone loves dinosaurs and it’s so cool to say that my daughter and I literally dug up dinosaur fossils that hadn’t seen the sunlight in 65 million years,” he said. “But I think at its heart, it’s about how we care for the planet and the people we love at the same time, thinking about every action and what that means for our children and for our children’s children, and how we can make the most of every day while also making sure there are plenty of days ahead of us to make the most of.”

Hollars posits basic data is being ignored, leading to a sizable number of people not taking the clear signs of climate change seriously.

“If we want a future, we’ve got to fight for it,” he said. “I always tell people that dinosaurs were dumber than humans, but they held onto this planet for over 100 million years, whereas we’ve been around for 300,000 and we’re arguably already on the way out.”

While signs of climate change are more obvious in coastal regions, people even here in Wisconsin have stated their concern. This includes local author Tamara Dean, who recently detailed repeated record floods during her time living in the Driftless region in her most recent book.

“I don’t think that means we have to give up hope,” said Hollars. “One thing that I learned about from this book — which is kind of obvious, but it never occurred to me — is that extinction is a natural event. It’s going to happen at some point for humans, but we don’t have to exacerbate it.

Rather, we should try to do a little better to make sure we can make the most of our time on this merry-go-round of the Earth.”

REGIONAL EMMY FOR “WHEN RUBBER HIT THE ROAD”Last year, Hollars collaborated with local filmmaker Steve Dayton to make a documentary about the closure of the Uniroyal Tire Plant in 1991 and how the community responded after losing the area’s largest employer. That documentary, “When Rubber Hit the Road,” won an Upper Midwest Regional Emmy Award in the Documentary-Historical category on Oct. 18.

“They just sent us the Emmy award in the mail a couple of days ago,” said Hollars. “It’s an Emmy. It looks just like an Emmy. It was crazy.”

Hollars admitted not even going to the award ceremony, because he was so sure there was no chance of a win.

“All the documentaries in our division … they’re huge teams of people with very big budgets, I imagine. And here we are, just two guys from Eau Claire, doing our best. We were shocked to find that we won.”

The documentary is available on PBS Wisconsin and Amazon Prime Video.