He said the drill diameter would be reduced from 28 inches to 26 inches until the hammer had cleared the hard rock but added that the slightly smaller diameter would not cause problems for the rescue.
Sponsors participate at every stage of the paleontological process, side-by-side with a site scientist: from the use of hammer and chisel to free fossils from hard rock, to the moulding of bone replicas for display at the on-site laboratory.
That includes editors whose job is to "enthusiastically" scorch cars around cones on a test track, brake as hard as possible again and again, and hammer the throttle repeatedly in an attempt to produce top performance figures.