Another South Dakota dinosaur, another profiteering dispute?

Citing discovery on Indian trust ground a politically motivated acting US Attorney for the District of South Dakota upended local control and seized a thunder lizard named Sue in 1992 from Pete Larson and the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research in Hill City. 

A team led by Larson excavated and restored another Tyrannosaurus named Stan and creates replicas of what some call the world's second-finest T. rex fossil. In 2019 a 12 by 40-foot likeness of Stan whose fossilized bones were found by amateur paleontologist Stan Sacrison in the Hell Creek Formation near Buffalo, South Dakota in 1987, was moved from the lobby of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science to Farmington to make room for Albuquerque's new Bisti Beast exhibit.

After a public feud and lawsuit the first Stan was awarded to Pete's brother, Neal who then teamed up with geologist Walter W. Stein Bill. They unearthed a Triceratops fossil from the Hell Creek Formation in 2015 then restored it in Italy. It's expected to bring nearly $2 million at an October auction in Paris. Stan sold for $32 million to an anonymous buyer in 2020.

However, such sales have raised concerns from paleontologists in the past. In September last year, the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP), which represents more than 2,000 professionals and students, wrote to Christie's auction house about Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton Stan going under the hammer. The SVP said: "Fossil specimens that are sold into private hands are potentially lost to science." The organization added: "Even if made accessible to scientists, information contained within privately owned specimens and future access cannot be guaranteed, and therefore verification of scientific claims (the essence of scientific progress) cannot be performed." [The skeleton of the world's biggest Triceratops goes on sale]

Pete Larson co-authored and published findings from a study of the effects the Chicxulub impact had on Laramidia after the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction and on the Hell Creek Formation near Tanis, North Dakota: A seismically induced onshore surge deposit at the KPg boundary, North Dakota. Humans are driving Earth's six mass extinction and are only on historian Christopher Lloyd's list of important species that evolved because of anthropogenic climate change.

So, if these fossils are being excavated from unceded lands that are part of Indian Country why aren't the proceeds from their sales  being shared with Native Nations?

Photo attributed to Pete Larson and the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research.