There is a saying, "Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life."

Monica Bugbee graduated from Northampton Area High School in 2006. As a young girl, she, like many other children, loved dinosaurs. The youngest of three children, she remembers a special pop-up dinosaur book she shared with her sister, Olivia, and her brother, Alex.

"I liked reading about history," she said during a recent telephone interview. "We were fortunate to have plenty of books in the house ranging from Ancient Egypt and Greece to dinosaurs. I enjoyed my history classes, but I was not sure what I wanted to do after I graduated from high school.".

Bugbee left her home in Kreidersville in 2006 to pursue a degree at Pennsylvania State University in State College. Like most students that head off to college, she was still not sure what she wanted to focus on.

"I didn't know what I wanted to study until after my sophomore year when I decided on archaeological science as my major," she said.

"I was always interested in history and curious about antiques and the stories behind them."

She can't remember a specific trigger for her interest in archaeology and paleontology, but then she participated in her first excavation.

"I was hooked and I knew I made the right choice," she said. "We were digging a 19th-century farmstead, a site called Scare Pond Farm, as part of my archaeological field school with Penn State. We dug for six weeks, learning proper excavation and mapping methods."

Bugbee earned a bachelor of science degree in archaeological science with distinction, graduating in May 2011.

Courses she had taken relating to her major included osteology, museum studies, vertebrate paleontology, geographic information systems, population biology, geology, soil science, geomorphology and cultural ecology.

By chance, a friend told her about an internship at the Mammoth Site of Hot Springs, South Dakota, Inc.

Bugbee applied for an internship at the location and was accepted. The internship was just for the summer months, but Bugbee was able to stay on into December.

Her major responsibilities as an intern included site interpretation, children's programs, fossil preparation, excavation, mapping and fossil conservation assessments.

Near the end of her internship, the site was looking for a full-time fossil preparator.

"I was lucky enough to get the job and I'm still working here." she said.

She began working full-time in January 2012 as a preparator, a person who prepares and cleans fossil specimens for scientific examination or exhibition. Her current responsibilities include laboratory preparations of an extensive collection of Pleistocene mammoth fossils, with a focus on skulls. She also assists with oversight of volunteer excavation crews.

"The Mammoth Site is a truly unique location; we currently have the remains of 61 mammoths, with the potential to find dozens more," she said.

The Mammoth Site is a nonprofit organization. Preservation, education and research programs are primarily funded through admission fees, gift shop revenues, donations and membership contributions.

The site won the 2009 Distinctive Destination award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation and just received accreditation from the American Alliance of Museums.

The site's 36,000 square feet visitor center is recognized worldwide for its interpretation and exhibits.

Scientists have come from around the world to conduct research with Dr. Larry Agenbroad, site director and chief scientist. The site has co-hosted International symposia and conferences, and is involved with mammoth research around the world.

The indoor excavation site features fossils of 58 Columbian and three woolly mammoths in the fossil bone bed. The adjoining Ice Age exhibit hall displays full-sized mammoth replicas, a walk-in mammoth bone shelter and a timeline of environmental exhibits from the Ice Age to today.

A children's activity area and various education programs provide young scientists with hands-on learning experiences. A laboratory surrounded by windows provides visitors with an opportunity to view behind-the-scenes scientific work being conducted at the site.

"It was an easy transition from archaeology to paleontology because the methods are very similar," Bugbee said. "Now I get to work with Columbian mammoths, which were even bigger and more impressive than woolly mammoths.

"This is a paleontological dig site, meaning there is no human association at our site. The mammoth bones are about 26,000 years old. They died here well before the currently accepted date of human immigration into North America (about 14,000 years ago)," she said. "The entire excavation site is covered by a permanent building so we could potentially dig year round. However, we only dig for about six weeks because we need the rest of the year to clean, catalog, preserve and curate the fossil collection."

Fossil preparation is a very slow, very delicate process.

"We use small tools, work under magnifying lamps," she said. "It requires a huge amount of patience. My work includes removing sediment from the bones, repairing any damage which might occur and treating the bones with preservatives to ensure they will have a long life.

"They have survived 26,000 years in the ground. It is my job to make sure they are able to stick around for thousands more."

Mammoths are extinct, and fossils are our only direct link to these animals, she said.

"We are able to learn a lot about the animal from the bones they left behind, and by studying those bones, we not only learn about past life, but also processes still at work today, like evolution and climate change. But if we do not take care of these bones, we lose our chance of understanding the past, and where things will move in the future."

If you happen to visit the Mammoth Site, ask for Bugbee. She will be the one wearing a big smile.

!t appears Bugbee spends her work days loving what she does for a living. If the adage is true, perhaps that means she will not have to work a day in her life.