Spring Break
Fossil Fanatics
Andrew Walters
Issue date: 3/31/04 Section: News
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"It's hard to believe we started out in a dorm dining hall 26 years ago and now we are filling up the field house‚" said Todd Whitley‚ spokesman for MAPS.
Friday morning through Sunday afternoon the gym floor of Western Hall was lined with dozens of tables exhibiting thousands of fossils both on display and for sale. Some of the fossils dated as far back as 600 million years; the displays ranged from tiny ancient invertebrates to entire Ice Age mammoth leg bones.
"Fossil people are a little bit nuts; any type of collecting can get excessive‚" said private collector Richard Hagar about the 6-foot mammoth leg he discovered and assembled in Kansas, priced at $9,200.
For these collectors and amateur paleontologists‚ fossil collecting is more than just a hobby. Though it can be somewhat profitable to sell finds to collectors and museums‚ most do it because they are passionate about fossil finding.
"It's a seriously addicting hobby," said
collector Bill Garsta, of Oklahoma.
A highlight of the weekend was the Friday evening keynote speech and slide show by renowned paleontologist Neil Larson. Larson‚ who has written dozens of books on fossil digging and dinosaurs‚ lectured his fellow fossil addicts about some of his most exciting finds‚ which include Tyrannosaurus Rexes Sue and Stan.
Larson regaled the crowd with the work that went into digging up and assembling the two most complete Tyrannosaurus Rex skeletons in the world. He estimated that getting Stan out of the ground‚ assembled and ready to be displayed at the Black Hills Museum of History took no less than 35‚000 man-hours.
"It takes a lot of glue‚ a lot of creativity and a lot of patience‚" Larson said.
But‚ for Larson‚ all the work and painstaking effort is worth it for the sake of learning a little more about the past. He also stressed the importance of finding skeletons because children are interested in going to museums and learning. This effect could easily be seen over the weekend as many school groups came through to peruse the fossil collections.
"MAPS is important because it encourages people of all ages to come out and dig‚" Larson said. "I believe anybody who is totally impassioned with fossils should be allowed to collect."
