"We've been here 30 times already this summer," says his mom, Heather. "Usually, I bring a book."

Chances are, 20 years from now Wyatt will be working for a far-off university, returning to Utah to dig and haul off fossils - just like the dozens of paleontologists, students and volunteers sweltering over mud and sandstone this summer.

But Wyatt will be homegrown. Most who are digging in the state now are not.

"It's a gold rush," says state paleontologist Jim Kirkland, who directed many of the visiting scientists to their sites. "You like mummies; you go to Egypt. You like dinosaurs; you come to Utah. We have one of the finest and most complete records of dinosaurs anywhere in the world, except possibly China."

Which explains why museums in New Haven and Chicago and Grand Junction and Los Angeles and Denver all have crews poking in the Utah dirt this summer, prospecting for dinosaur bones. This is like the fossil wars of the 1800s, when competing scientists and steel magnate Andrew Carnegie picked through eastern Utah in a treasure hunt for bigger and better skeletons.

But the current class of diggers are much more benign, willing to share their knowledge and casts of their bones.

"These lands are America's," says Sarah George, director of the University of Utah's Museum of Natural History. "What better way to tell Utah's story?"

I'm glad that trained scientists and not amateur fossil hunters intent on an eBay buck are working in Hanksville. And the "jackpot find" of the Burpee Museum in Rockford, Ill., is cause to boast. Still, I'm uneasy that Utah paleontologists didn't hit that jackpot. Eventually, the bones will leave Utah with the people who dig them up.

The state isn't about to run out of dinosaur bones anytime soon. And the U. has more dinosaurs than space to display them - new finds are tucked into the aging exhibits, which look the way I remember them from my elementary-school field trips.

But I wonder if Utah's dinosaurlands will someday end up like Mesa Verde - a glorious national park of Anasazi ruins whose pots have long since been mounted in the national museum of Finland.

Fossils found on federal and state land in Utah cannot be sold overseas. And U. paleontologists sign off on every specimen from state land shipped out.

"It happens that we have more dinosaurs in the ground," says George. "It's important for these fossils to come out of the ground. There are plenty of dinosaurs to go around. It's a reciprocal exchange."

But if the balance of discoveries over time are made by scientists from somewhere else, when will Utah's galleries and repositories become obsolete?

This all comes down to money:

The Utah Geological Survey's discretionary field budget is $2,000 a year; Discovery Channel funds Kirkland's dig in the Cedar Mountains.

The state museum sets aside $25,000 annually for field work. At the end of a capital funding campaign for a new natural history museum at Research Park, George still is trying to raise the last $20 million - including nearly $1 million for display cabinets.

Grand County economic development officials have tried for more than a decade to build an $11 million museum to exhibit fossils found outside Moab. The College of Eastern Utah also needs more space for recent finds. The John Wesley Powell River History Museum in Green River needs $12,000 for a dinosaur skeleton.

And rather than waiting for state funds, the city of St. George has taken on the Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm, a series of dinosaur footprints.

State paleontologists and geologists spend most of their time trying to protect bones and archaeological sites. Actual digging comes second.

"We have horizon after horizon in Utah that have barely been studied," says Kirkland. "I spend half the year writing proposals begging for money."

Dinosaurs can't compete with schools, roads and oil shale for state dollars. And Utah's private foundations prefer to give to the ballet, business schools and cancer research.

But considering the cache of discoveries yet to be made, the state's newly excavated allosaurus, diplodocus and Utahraptors could bolster a Utah dinosaur road tour or start a collection for the nation's quintessential dinosaur museum. At the very least, lawmakers could set up a science foundation to provide grants for digs.

Thanksgiving Point's private Museum of Ancient Life costs $10 for adults and $8 for children. With a little state vision, the dinosaurs could pay for themselves.

walsh@sltrib.com