Interim Executive Director: Dustin Warford
Dustin Warford is the Montana Dinosaur Center’s Interim Director, a role he appeared to step into with the same calm energy he brings to everything else. One moment he was quietly doing his work, and the next he was the guy everyone asked for decisions. No one questioned it. It simply felt correct, like gravity or coffee being important.
He has a reputation for navigating field seasons, museum projects, and the occasional fossil-related surprise with steady practicality. Staff say he can spot a mislabeled specimen faster than most people can find their car keys, and he rarely looks rattled even when the universe throws him the kind of curveballs only a rural museum can produce.
Visitors tend to assume he’s someone reliable to ask for directions, and they’re usually right. Whether he’s coordinating dig logistics or explaining why dinosaurs continue to capture people’s imagination, he tends to give answers that make everything seem more manageable.
If you catch sight of him during a busy summer day, you’ll notice he moves with the quiet purpose of someone who knows what needs doing and just gets on with it. Hand him a cup of coffee, though, and you might even get a story out of him.
Bryce Cassiano
Fossil Prep Specialist. Lab Dweller. Person Most Likely to Be Found Mid-Project.
Bryce Cassiano is the Montana Dinosaur Center’s resident prep specialist, known for working with the kind of quiet focus usually reserved for watchmakers and people defusing imaginary bombs. He can spend hours in the prep lab removing stubborn matrix from bone without losing patience, which has led some staff to suspect he runs on a different internal clock than the rest of the human population. Ask him what he’s working on and you’ll usually get a clear, practical explanation accompanied by a gesture toward a specimen that still looks like a pile of rock to everyone else. Catch him outside the lab, though, and you might witness a rare phenomenon: Bryce blinking at sunlight like he’s just stepped out of a time machine.
Andy Rich
Field Instructor. Fossil Hunter. Social Media Jester.
Andy Rich is The Montana Dinosaur Center’s dependable field instructor, known for having an almost uncanny ability to teach complex topics while keeping it fun the whole time. He can remain engaging with groups while contorted into a pretzel, working on hard to reach fossils. Visitors are never shocked to learn about his theatrical training. When he isn’t in the field, he can be found managing posts for social media, docenting for guests, working in the fossil prep lab, and/or researching fossils.
Published Works
- Rich, Andrew J. and James J. Zambito (2022). Insights from fossil fish taphonomy into the depositional environment of the Lower Milwaukee Formation (Berthelet Member, latest Middle Devonian).PALAIOS, 37(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.2110/palo.2021.040
- Rich, Andrew and Sarah W. Keenan (2026). Mosasaur taphonomy from the Sharon Springs Member of the Pierre Shale Formation, South Dakota. PALAIOS, 41(1), 24–35.
https://doi.org/10.2110/palo.2024.002
Bret Potter
Collections Wrangler. Exhibit Whisperer. Keeper of the Mysterious Back Rooms.
Bret Potter is the Montana Dinosaur Center’s go-to person for anything that lives behind a “Staff Only” sign. He knows where every specimen, catalog number, and oddball artifact ended up, even if it was last seen during a dig season three years ago. Ask him a question about the collections and he’ll pause, think for a moment, and then lead you straight to the exact drawer like he’s navigating by some internal museum compass. When he’s setting up an exhibit, he works with the calm of someone who has accepted that fossils and display mounts will never fully cooperate, yet somehow he still makes everything look intentional. Catch Bret in motion and you’ll usually find him carrying something fragile, important, or both, moving with the steady confidence of a man who absolutely knows what he’s doing, even if the rest of us are just trying to keep up.
2026 Field Staff
Jacquelyn Kelly
Jacquelyne “Jacks” Kelly is a fourth-year genetics major at Texas A&M University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, with minors in bioinformatics and Spanish language. She is very passionate about furthering evolutionary sciences and has the goal of pursuing a career in paleontology. She is an undergraduate researcher studying the evolution of the mediator complex in the Park Lab under the university’s Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics. She is a longtime member of the TAMU Biomedical Sciences Association, having achieved distinguished status in this organization in Spring 2026. In her spare time, she loves reading, practicing mixed martial arts, and volunteering with local hospice organizations.
Janet Cañamar
Janet is an undergraduate geoscience student at the University of Texas at Austin, focusing on vertebrate paleontology and scientific illustration. Her research interests include archosaur morphology and systematics, theropod evolution, and geoscience education. Janet is the president and founder of the Texas Dinosaur Club— UT’s premier paleontology student organization. Her most recent work includes contributing to Doolysaurus huhmini, the first baby dinosaur described from Korea, as well as the debut of her latest game, Paleotería: La Lotería Paleontológica! She works in multiple laboratories and serves as a research assistant in UT’s Vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory collections. Janet hopes to discover many new dinosaur species during her career while inspiring other Hispanic women to pursue geobiology.
Tim Speedy
Tim is a recent graduate of William & Mary looking to pursue a career in vertebrate paleontology! My interests within the field are somewhat broad, but I am most drawn to studies in biomechanics and ecomorphology, especially those that are applied to understudied groups of extinct reptiles, including birds! As of my last semester at William & Mary, I’ve become completely enamored of birds, so I hope to apply what I’ve learned during my undergraduate studies and what I will learn as part of this internship to study topics like the origin of flight and avian conservation paleobiology during graduate school and beyond. Naturally, my biggest hobby is birdwatching, but when I’m not obsessing over my local avifauna, I most enjoy playing video games with, and hanging out in person with, my friends.