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If you’ve somehow missed the brief, simple, but truly hilarious TikTok of an angel and God having a talk about a misunderstanding that involves the dinosaurs and wordplay, well, you need to stop and watch it right now.
Okay, now we can go on!
The woman behind the video, Eliza Peterson, is a 23-year-old from Salt Lake City, Utah. Unsurprisingly, she does have some acting experience, which explains her very touching and emotional performance.
The tears, though, were actually for the dinosaurs, though – Peterson has volunteered for over five years with the Natural History Museum of Utah’s paleontology department. Her work there has inspired most of her TikTok content, as she gets to travel to paleontology sites in Utah, Nevada, and Wyoming looking for dinosaur bones and other remains.
@lizemopetey This is the REAL paleo diet 🦖 #fyp #foryou #HealthyLiving #paleontology
♬ Tomorrows Gonna Be A Brighter Day Jim Croce – Eliza Petersen
She and her fellow volunteers transport the bones back to the museum and help clean and put them together. Peterson is a certified paralegal, but thinks about going back to school to study paleontology all of the time – the work inspires her.
She said thinking about how sad the obliteration of the dinosaurs was caused her to tear up, not her years performing in community theater.
Peterson said she never expected the video to get anywhere near the 10 million views and counting, and that her dad – the person who originally told the “meatier, meteor” joke, was the one to call and tell her it was blowing up.
Her father has been telling the joke since the 80s, she said, but he didn’t invent it, either.
The story begins to get special when Peterson opened up to all of her new followers about her struggle with breast cancer, and the bills that are still piling up after years of (thankfully successful) treatment. She found a lump when she was just 19, and was diagnosed with a type of breast cancer that’s pretty rare in women her age.
On a whim, she shared a link to her cash app, and the internet piled on to make good things happen.
This probably won’t blow up but in case it does, if you wanna help me pay off my breast cancer medical bills, my cash app is $ElizaMorey 🥺❤️🦖🦕 much love!!!!
— lize mo petey (@eliza_morey) September 10, 2020
She says she’s been able to pay off a big chunk of her hospital bills, but notes that she’s still fighting, with new tumors needing to be removed on a yearly basis.
We all hope that Eliza gets her answers soon, and perhaps that her case will help other girls and women in her shoes.
But for now, we’ll keep enjoying her TikTok and be happy that, for today, we’ve repaid her with a little bit of peace of mind, anyway.
