5/1/19

Black Hills Institute T-rex in New Mexico News

A 12 by 40-foot model of Stan, the Tyrannosaurus Rex 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.

A team led by Pete Larson excavated and restored Stan then created models of what some call the world's second-finest T. rex fossil even after a politically motivated acting US Attorney for the District of South Dakota named Kevin Schieffer upended local control in 1992 and seized a T-Rex fossil named Sue from Pete Larson and the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research in Hill City.
Unlike Fred Nuss, Larson had felt that Sotheby's estimate was overly optimistic, and he'd somehow talked an elderly South Dakota businessman named Stanford Adelstein into traveling to New York to bid on Sue and hopefully to bring the bones back to Hill City in triumph. Larson and Stan [Sacrison] had met in 1992 in Rapid City. A mutual friend and fellow fossil hunter had introduced them, and soon Stan was taking Larson out and showing him some bones that Larson immediately recognized as a T. rex. Larson named it after Stan. In 1993, Stan led Larson to another T. rex, which they named Duffy, after Larson's lawyer, Patrick Duffy, who was handling the criminal aspects of the Sue imbroglio. [excerpt, John Tayman, Boneheads: A tale of big money, prison, Disney World, and the world's foremost dinosaur-hunting twins]
Patrick Duffy v. Kevin Schieffer:
If you haven't had a chance to watch the amazing documentary Dinosaur 13 on CNN or elsewhere, you're missing out on an in-depth look at one of the most compelling but also agonizing incidents in Black Hills history. Despite the fact we benefit from a major federal military base, and are a recipient state when it comes to taking in federal money, and we benefit from several national parks, forests and monuments, many South Dakotans would rather that "the feds" keep their hands out of our business. [editorial, Rapid City Journal]
No shit, right? In 1990, Bush 41 was wimping out by not marching on Baghdad and Mike Verchio still owned the Continental Cafe in Hill City before it burned to the ground. In 2013 then-Governor Denny Daugaard appointed the disgraced Schieffer to the South Dakota Board of Regents.

Larson has just co-authored and published findings from a study of the effects that the Chicxulub impact had on 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.







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