6/29/2006:
On this day, June 29, 2003, residents of San Diego, California were introduced to the huge swamps, extensive forests, exotic plants and animals of subtropical North Dakota. This of course, is the North Dakota of the Paleocene Epoch 60 million years ago. The grand opening of a traveling exhibition, "After the Dinosaurs: When Crocodiles Ruled," gave visitors of the San Diego Natural Museum of History a glimpse of the environmental, biological and geological changes that occurred after the dinosaurs’ extinction and before the arrival of humans.
The history of this exhibition began in 1970 on the North Dakota ranch of Cecil and Jean Adams. His sister, visiting from Minnesota, noticed some interesting rocks while walking along the Wannagan Creek of Billings County. She recognized that they were fossils of some type, so she boxed them up and brought them back to the University of Minnesota. They were then passed on to Bruce Erickson, a paleontologist and museum curator at the Science Museum of Minnesota. Among the fossils were six occipital condyles; the bone that connects the head of a crocodile to its backbone. Since each crocodile has only one occipital condyle, Erickson knew that there were at least six crocodiles at Wannagan Creek.
Between 1970 and 1999, thousands of bone fragments were painstakingly removed from Wannagan Creek, catalogued and shipped back to the Science Museum for research and reconstruction. The fossils included about one hundred species including champsosaurs, turtles, fish, amphibians, birds, insects, alligators and crocodiles. The traveling exhibition, based on these findings, was developed and built by the Science Museum of Minnesota in 2001.
The exhibition had three main sections. The first contained life-size dioramas of the animals, plants and environment of North Dakota 60 million years ago. The alligators and crocodiles were of course the stars of the show including Leidyosuchus formidabilis , a large prehistoric crocodile that grew up to fifteen feet long. Skeletons of this formable creature were more common than any other vertebrate animal found at the quarry. At least 70 Leidyosuchus were excavated along with eggs and hatchlings. Visitors also witnessed a life-sized model of a new species of alligator discovered at Wannagan Creek named Wannaganosuchus by Bruce Erickson.
The second section of the exhibit used a video theater presentation of the Paleocene Epoch. The final section recreated a replica of the Wannagan Creek Paleontological Field Camp. Visitors could browse through the tents and scrapbooks of the paleontologists to see the tools, partially earthed fossils, recording methods and livings conditions of the researchers.
The exhibit, "After the Dinosaurs: When Crocodiles Ruled," has since left San Diego. But its opening at the Cranbrook Institute of Science in Bloomfield, Michigan this coming September will allow others to witness this unique part of North Dakota’s past.
Written by Christina Campbell
Sources:
http://www.crocsrule.org/home.html