Scientist Hopes to Uncover New Digs for Dinosaur Bones

With a careful stroke of his pick hammer, Larry League uncovers dinosaur bones and prehistoric fossils, secrets kept for millions of years. Now he’s looking for a place to put them.

“It’s like digging for gold once you get started on it,” said Bill Kostelecky of Richardton, N.D., one of six college students who accompanied League on a recent fossil-hunting expedition. “You’re the first person to touch these bones in 65 million years.”

To at least four North Dakota communities, dinosaur bones could be gold of a different sort--a source of new money and jobs.

Bismarck, Dickinson, Marmarth and Bowman would like to have a museum to display the dinosaur bones and other fossils. A small portion of southwestern North Dakota is rich in such buried treasure, but the state has no museum to display it.

The state Geological Society believes the Heritage Center in Bismarck would be ideal because of its central location and technical expertise. League is from Dickinson State University, and Marmarth and Bowman are located in the area where the fossils are buried.

“As far as a full-scale museum, North Dakota has to be very selective when it puts that type of facility in,” said John Hoganson, a paleontologist with the state Geological Survey.

The struggle goes beyond a display area. A dinosaur museum also is considered a cornerstone for economic development and grants for further excavation.

“These small towns, especially down in this corner of the state, there’s just nothing here,” said Larry Lecoe, Marmarth city commission president. “Anything that could be brought in would help.”

League, 45, an associate professor of Earth science, has excavated more than 7,000 bones and other specimens in a rugged area of southeast Montana, southwest North Dakota and northwest South Dakota. He wears a baseball cap imprinted with dinosaurs and exploding volcanoes, and the license plates on his four-wheel-drive vehicle read “T REX.”

“This is our fifth season and we haven’t been over the same ground twice,” he said, taking time out from the dig while sitting at a table surrounded by bags of bones.”

In the day of the dinosaur, the area was rich in vegetation supported by a subtropical climate. Rivers and streams emptied into an ocean that covered parts of North Dakota and the other Great Plains states. The Rocky Mountains were just forming.

Most of the dinosaur bones are found in the prehistoric river and stream beds. One of League’s recent digs turned up bones from two dinosaurs, a rare find.

His group also found a 3-inch section of a tooth from the feared meat-eating dinosaur, tyrannosaurus rex. Unwrapping it carefully, League revealed a pointed end with saw-like notches running down the edge.

League has a complete rhinoceros that dates back 30 million years, bones from an extinct bison and other specimens ranging from turtles to plants.

He figures that he has spent $27,000 of his own money to finance his expeditions. Next summer, Dickinson State is paying the $3,500 cost.

When he’s not excavating a dinosaur site, League is raising money for a $6-million museum on the Dickinson State campus. He believes it could house his collection and open up grant money for his expeditions. An attempt to get $2 million for it failed in the 1991 Legislature.

Merle Clark, a Marmarth rancher who calls himself an amateur paleontologist, said he would support a dinosaur museum anywhere in the state as long as taxpayer money isn’t used for it.

And, he asks, “What’s wrong with a small town?”

Marmarth, with 144 people, already has a building for the museum, Clark said. The building is in disrepair but it can be renovated for a fraction of the cost of a new building, he said.

“If we could get $50,000 . . . we’re going to be up and running in a matter of a couple of years,” Clark added.

Bowman, about 30 miles down U.S. 12 from Marmarth, also is working for a museum. But the two are not competing against one another; instead, they cooperate on research.

“We’re using both museums as a means of economic development,” said Dean Pearson, president of the Bowman Historical Society.

Some people consider League a private collector because he could take his artifacts with him should he move to another state, Clark said. “We don’t allow anything for private collections,” he added.

“We do have a resource right in our back yard, and we’re looking to keep it.”