Hill Men Love Digging for Dinosaurs

Father’s fossil hunting hobby preserves memories with sons

University Park attorney David Hill’s childhood interest in dinosaurs has led to a surviving family tradition of paleontology, archeology, and plenty of together time digging in dirt. 

Digging around the creek behind his childhood home, at Lake Lewisville, and on Boys Scouts campouts, David was a born fossil collector. 

“For me, what’s always been fascinating is this evidence of past life, past versions of the earth, where we fit in that story,” David recalled. 

Learning of the Dallas Paleontological society during a trip to the zoo with his then-toddler son, Wyatt, he joined.

“We started going on field trips and on weekend expeditions on our own,” he said, recounting their jaunts to riverbeds and rock quarries. “A lot of the fossils we’ve found over the years are, to me, like memory stones.

“Everyone has a story,” David said. “If we find something really important, we’ll donate it. We’ve donated pieces to SMU, the Perot Museum, and the Heard Museum.” 

Donations include a large display of prehistoric turtles to the Perot which were excavated in 2007, when the museum was in its infancy as was Hill’s youngest son, Brady, who observed the dig in a diaper. 

But the museum didn’t have a line item in their budget for the fossils, explaining to Hill that if he could raise the funds, they would be happy to display them. 

A Bradfield Boy Scouts leader at the time, he contacted a Scouts mother for fundraising advice. Her grandfather happened to be Bill Clements, and she had just been made president of his foundation which hadn’t yet donated to any cause. 

“My grandfather was really into Scouts and really into fossils,” Hill recalls her saying as she swooped in to save the day. “I know he would really like this. Who do I write the check to?’”

Brady followed in his brother’s and father’s footsteps, helping David excavate a Perot-donated Triassic crocodile-like phytosaur in Arizona, among countless other digs. 

“One thing I’ve learned as a parent is you can’t impose your passion on your kids,” Hill acknowledged, noting that, while his boys loved the adventure of the digs, Wyatt went on to study political science (now working on his doctoral degree at The University of Dallas), while Brady steered into archeology. 

Entranced by petroglyphs David had shown him as a boy, Brady graduated from Highland Park High School, earned a degree in archeology at Durham University in England, and is working on his master’s at Cambridge. 

“He’s dug in Iraq, Egypt, Israel, Nepal,” added David, who has been creating paleontology-inspired artwork since the boys left home. Colorful, whimsical images combine themes of time, extinction, and biology as well as of love and loss. 

“It’s a way of holding on to their childhood, the experiences we’ve had together,” he said of his fossils, though he still digs on weekends. “It’s like having a scrapbook made of rock.”