This page is about us..... The Magoverns

I'm Florence, Charlie's business partner and spouse since 1982. We met by chance on a chair lift in Vail, Colorado. Our main business through the 80's was cutting and polishing agate, jasper and other rare and unusual stones, hence the name: The Stone Company.

In the early 90's Charlie's focus changed to fossil preparation. In 1993, while painstakingly preparing a block of fossilized dinosaur eggs from China under a microscope, he discovered a fully articulated dinosaur embryo lying on top. Other eggs in the group contained embryonic remains which proved the hatched skeleton Charlie uncovered was from an egg in the nest. He nicknamed it "Baby Louie" after photographer, Louie Psihoyos. The siblings in the block unofficially became "Huey" and "Dewey".

"Baby Louie" is still the most complete dinosaur embryo ever found. This incredible discovery was featured as the cover story of National Geographic in May of 1996. On May 9, 2017, it finally got its official name, Beibeilong sinensis, meaning "Baby Dragon from China" when it was published in Nature Communications.

As the excitement of Charlie's discovery grew, we felt it important to do something special to share it with others. In the early 2000's, with help from Natural History Museums at Harvard, Yale, Univ. of Tennessee and others, we organized the traveling exhibit "Hatching the Past". In 2008, we teamed up with Australian based Gondwana Studios and HTP began touring internationally. We're honored the exhibition has visited over 75 (and still counting) prestigious museums and institutions throughout the U.S. and around the world.

In 2014, Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History and Silver Plume Exhibitions gave it a new life when it began touring as "Tiny Titans: Dinosaur Eggs and Babies". More at www.tiny-titans.com. We also manage the US tour of Gondwana Studio's production of "Permian Monsters: Life Before Dinosaurs" www.permianmonsters.com

Silver Plume Exhibitions continues to design and produce exhibits that appeal to all ages, blending art and science with real and cast fossils and "hands on" activities. Please visit www.spexhibitions.com to learn more.

Charlie continues to offer fossil preparation services and has become the North American supplier of precision engineered prep tools; hand-made in Germany. More under the "tools" tab above.

Many thanks for visiting our site!! Cheers, Charlie and Flo