Ursula Vandergrift was fine upstanding woman, who'd grown up on a rather successful ranch in South Dakota. Her father never really earned much in the way of cash and was often at the mercy of the weather and the demand for beef, but he was land rich and had done well enough that she'd been able to grow up in a rather safe and at times isolated life. It let her learn and study about all sorts of things as a sort of a hobby, and one of these things was the Tyrannosaurus Rex specimen named "Sue" that had been found in the state. The find was in a different part of South Dakota, but Ursula loved the story that such a complete specimen from Earth's past could be found in the state, and it helped foster a private interest in dinosaurs and the Mesozoic Era. It was an interest she had, even as she grew up, majored in economics, and investment strategies before getting a job at an investment firm that was among the biggest in the state.
With dedicated work and attention to detail, she managed to work her way up the company's lander and buying stock in the company as she went. After about five years, she had managed to buy up enough of the stock that she was in a position to press for more good things to come her way, and after ten years she'd risen from an agent for the firm to the acting CEO on the basis of the stock in the company that she owned. It then gave her the time to then not only invest into other markets but to also indulge in her own private hobby. This had included building a good sized mansion near Pierre, South Dakota and investing in collecting any and all fossil discoveries in the state, which could then be sold at the highest bidder. For they were things that gave South Dakota's ranchers a way to make more money, given the drop in demand for cattle in many respects, but scientists would pay dearly for access to bones and other rich people might even pay for their own private collection. It then became an added investment that was worth every penny and gave Ursula the ability to even considering full retirement at a younger age than most ever did. But that all came before Animalia...
She had little real interest in Animalia when it started and saw the community as little more than some furry's fantasy land where they got extraordinarily lucky and thus never had to work and could spend all day having sex. However the news report that Dinotopians were possible after Heather Wilcox's rampage in Lyre and Animalia was something that caught her attention, and she began focusing more on the news from Horizon on the Dinotopians came about. She'd gotten a bit of a coalition of donors together to build up a Dinotopian Colony in South Dakota, not too far from where "Sue" was discovered and she could then get a position as "Mayor" of the new city, but Horizon ultimately chose Glen Rose, Texas on the basis that they would at least have some ability to help the new colony city get off its feet. Ursula accepted that, but made up her mind that she would still become a Dinotopian and take up residence there.
She arrived to find Dino City had not been built to accommodate people of her amassed wealth and she and a group of others had sought to petition Dino City's mayor to try and have sections of the town essentially be torn down to allow for mansions to be built. This would have been costly, but for Ursula, the plan was solid. She would get the land and room for a mansion and if the people who found themselves unable to live in Dino City got upset, they could only blame the city government and not her. The others she'd met agreed with the plan, as well. The five of them, however, found that William Tarr wasn't about to abide by that kind of plan. While he wasn't going to push for opposition to them buying the land and homes and then building mansions on their own, he wasn't going to force those homes to be dismantled for them. Which would mean that when people got angry at the loss of homes, the anger would be at them. Not to mention that it would also be more costly to accomplish. It didn't help when diamond miner who'd already become a Dinotopian, Patrick Diamond, didn't help and was content to stay in the smaller scale home that he'd bought.
Ursula and the others with her ultimately made the decision to go through with it. They had the money and the resources to do it, and for the moment, while more people were starting to come to Dino City, the population growth had not reached the point where the homes that ended up being torn down to make room for the mansions that Ursula and the four that come down to Dino City had not yet reached a point where those homes were needed. Thus it wasn't expected that there would any crowd of angry people, and by the time that people came in and found that the property values of the more modest homes had all gone up, it would have been too late for anyone to notice and Ursula contented herself to that. She had to wait a while for all the construction to be done, but it worked as part of a means to then sell her mansion in South Dakota and arrange for the transportation of things that she had to keep, not to mention getting everything documented before going through the conversion.
But by now that had been done and handled as Ursula, now a pure Tyrannosaurus Rex Dinotopian was moving into her own private piece of heaven. And with the mask mandates going away in most places she could demonstrate what "Sue" might have actually looked like. And since most of the Hippies had not converted yet, Ursula was confident that she could handle them. The thin sets of brown feathers on her head, neck, shoulders, back, and tail were something... but then given that Tyrannosaurus had evolved from the group of Theropods that would lead to birds and had a close relative that evidence of its having feathers had been found, it made sense that Tyrannosaurus would have feathers, even if only primitive ones. The one thing that puzzled Ursula the most was how dull and drab she and Rex, and to a degree Heather, Tyra, and Jeremy looked as well. A great many birds were known for bright colors, and even birds of prey weren't necessarily colored to blend into the sky, and given the size that Tyrannosaurus reached, she figured that "hiding" wasn't really possible. Though, Doctor Ramos commented that given that Tyrannosaurs weren't some lithe speedster, they might well need some advantage to try and get close to the Hadrosaurs and others that it hunted. As such, bright flashy colors might stand out for a predator, which wouldn't suit the lifestyle they lived.
"Well things are looking good now, aren't they?" came a feminine voice, making Ursula turn.
She turned and looked down a bit to see one of the other five super rich new members of Dinotopia, Margaret Lee-Smith, who'd become a Protoceratops Dinotopian and wasn't all that much bigger than where she was before her conversion. Her scales were largely a brownish gray with a rather bluish face with orange-brown splotches on her frill, and from what she's described as her body having some orange-brown pots that were ringed by bluish scales as well. Right now she wore a white sundress that showed off her curves a bit.
"Now that everything is in place, yes," Ursula gave a chuckle, "and now moving things in... You?"
Margaret looked over her shoulder and noted the large moving truck that was there and parked in front of the mansion that was built for her. The workmen had one of their scheduled breaks for the moment, and she'd taken time off from the point of supervising the move in to come in and check on Ursula, who'd seemed to be doing much the same. The other three, Jake Philoff who became a Spinosaurus Dinotopian, Tyson Michael who'd become an Iguanodon Dinotopian, and Max Viirs who became an Ankylosaurus Dinotopian were all either working within their own new mansions or getting their own businesses set up to deal with changing conditions weren't outside at the moment.
"Pretty much the same," Margaret responded, "the workmen don't think it'll be too much longer and then I think I can begin setting up my garden. This year may be more of a test to see what works here and what fertilizers I'll need... and if I'll need to construct anything to keep pests away, but I hope to be able to enter into local and perhaps even state flower garden competitions eventually. the best can win a very good prize. So it may take a year to figure things out and get it ready, but it'll be worth it."
There was a silence for a moment before Margaret then asked a question of her own.
"So... what will you do?" Margaret asked.
"Might start up my own little investment firm here, and even carry it around to the area," Ursula commented, "undercut some of the fees and so on to make the interest more attractive and play to my past success with it in South Dakota... might even use it as a means to help their ranching industry. Might earn some cheap steaks."
"I've heard that many of the meat eating Dinotopians have gotten the benefit of hunting Wild Boar here," Margaret commented, "the animal is registered as an invasive "nuisance" and thus can be hunted at any time, provided you buy a license. You could turn that into a business, I think."
"And break a tooth wrestling with a pig?" Ursula replied, "all that'd do is get me dirty and the pig would like it."