Sinking his teeth into it

Nate Carroll, like many children, was passionate about dinosaurs. The difference is that Carroll never grew out of his love for mammoth creatures.

“It’s just that as I got older my toys got bigger and better,” said the member of St. Elizabeth Lutheran Church, Ekalaka, Mont.

A recent graduate of Carter County High School in Ekalaka, Carroll, 18, is a budding paleontologist. A two-year experiment, which he took in May to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Albuquerque, N.M., earned him fourth place honors out of 1,500 participants.

Carroll’s experiment studies the effects of T-Rex bites on other animals. To find results, he re-created a T-Rex jaw cast in bronze. Using hydraulics, the jaw can crush objects at 2,500 pounds per square inch.