FF writers have crazy hobbies and our search engine history paints an interesting picture. I did research on American Buffalo and their numbers, what their endangered status was in the 1930s, how they were hunted and eventually conserved.
I looked up various fossil sites in the American west -- I think I settled on Wyoming before I found the site I wanted to mimic, but I am glad I could make it work rather than deciding I needed to move the site to a different state. I looked into fossil sizes and how they protect them in shipping. (and then mostly ignored that because if that plot hole was convenient enough for the original screenwriters, it was good enough for me.)
I didn't look into 90-year old train tables or how long it would take to travel to/from Africa, but I did look into some of the modern trains at the time when I thought Catherine might come out to Wyoming to deliver the news in person.
I did find out what zoos were closest to rural Connecticut and whether they were there in the 1930s, along with what colleges had active paleontology departments back then. And what the Smithsonian's paleontology museum was called. Oh, and differences between leopards and jaguars.
