Alaskan Dinosaur Expedition

The story of Alaskan Dinosaurs

These rocks are the same age as those I'm studying in Big Bend National Park in west Texas. So although at first glance it may seem odd to be this far north to gain insight into Texas dinosaurs, hopefully this expedition will yield clues as to why we don't find the same dinosaurs in both places. We don't find polar bears wandering around in the Dallas area, and we have a good appreciation for the reasons why. When we're done up here, I hope we can better understand why we don't see our Texas dinosaurs in Alaska.

Unlike other areas that I've worked that have long histories, this area has only recently been recognized for its fossil resources. The first discovery of dinosaur bones from this area was in 1961 by a Shell Oil geologist named Robert Liscomb. Unfortunately, Liscomb was killed the following year in a rockslide, and his collections and notes went unstudied in the Shell archives for a long time.

In the 1970s, dinosaur footprints were starting to be found, but they weren't accepted as real footprints until the mid '80s. Finally, Shell reviewed the company holdings and sent Liscomb's collections to the U.S. Geological Suvey, who forwarded them to the University of Texas. So there was an early Texas-Alaska connection.

Then the bones were brought to the attention of the University of California, Berkeley, and in 1985 the USGS, the University of Alaska, and Berkeley explored the area that Liscomb had worked for five years. Since the early 1990s the University of Alaska, with crews directed by Roland, has been attempting to survey this area for all the dinosaur material it may hold.

My primary responsibility will be to evaluate some of these bone beds that appear in the bluffs along the Colville River.