Sandpoint gets Cretaceous

Idaho Museum of Natural History brings mobile exhibit for a visit

By Soncirey Mitchell
Reader Staff

The Idaho Museum of Natural History will bring its brand new mobile exhibit to the Sandpoint and Clark Fork branches of the East Bonner County Library on Wednesday, Aug. 13, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 3-6 p.m., respectively. The interactive exhibit highlights Idaho’s relatively untapped wealth of paleontological treasures — especially dinosaurs from the late Cretaceous period.

“Everything in the van is going to be 3D printed replicas, so they’re all touchable. One of the big names I’m bringing is a fully articulated skeleton of Idaho’s state dinosaur, the Oryctodromeus,” said Mobile Museum Educator Pam Pascali, who will be on hand to talk about the exhibit and answer questions.

In 2023, Idaho became the 19th state to select an official dinosaur, thanks to lobbying by students at White Pine Charter School near Idaho Falls. 

The Oryctodromeus was a common inhabitant of Idaho roughly 100 million years ago and is the first known burrowing dinosaur, which helped preserve its fossils. Flooding would often entomb the creatures within their burrows, making for ideal paleontological discoveries millions of years later, which is why an Oryctodromeus fossil was the first fully intact dinosaur skeleton found in Idaho. 

“I’m also bringing a full-sized skull of Idaho’s giant crocodile and the skull of a Giant Oviraptorosaur. Its nickname is the ‘Hell Chicken’ because it’s this really tall bird dinosaur. It had feathers, but couldn’t fly because it was so big,” said Pascali.

Visitors have the opportunity to touch the exhibit and participate in different group activities that bring prehistory to life. Compare different vertebrae and attempt to match them to their corresponding dinosaurs, or try different possible tails on a replica of an armored dinosaur.

“I have a variety of tails, because we break down the armored dinosaurs’ families based on their tails. Idaho’s Ankylosauria fossil doesn’t have its tail, so we don’t know what family it falls into or if it’s brand new,” said Pascali.

Unlike states like California, Wyoming and Montana, Idaho doesn’t have a history of major paleontological discoveries. As Pascali explained, scientists only discovered the state’s first dinosaurs in the mid-’80s and did not undertake more extensive searches until the mid-’90s. 

The relative lack of large discoveries doesn’t mean the dinosaurs weren’t here.

“One of the big things people always ask is, ‘How do we find more?’; ‘Why haven’t we found any in Boise?’ Well, if we think of Hagerman [Fossil Beds National Monument], it’s a river bed that’s been washed out, so nature is doing half of the work for us,” said Pascali.

“All of the dinosaurs in Idaho actually come from one spot in the Caribou Range in southeastern Idaho that’s been uplifted and eroded. That’s because right there on the border of Idaho, there was a giant inland sea that went from the Arctic to the Gulf of Mexico. We were right on the edge of it, so we had things like the giant croc that lived in the waters. We had a huge diversity on land,” she added.

Thanks to the inland sea, prehistoric Idaho resembled Washington’s modern rainforests, with dense foliage and a towering canopy. Its ancient, undiscovered biodiversity has recently put Idaho at the forefront of paleontological research, with scientists vying to excavate its unexplored depths.

“The research on Idaho’s dinosaurs is really brand new. We have paleontologists from all over come out here and do research at Idaho State University because it’s the new, shiny place to come investigate. You can find a dinosaur and name it after yourself,” said Pascali.

“We don’t usually think of Idaho as being on the cutting edge — a brand new scientific community — but we are. Our dinosaurs are really having their 15 minutes of fame,” she added.

Make like an Ornithomimus (the fastest dinosaur genus) and run over to the Sandpoint library (1407 Cedar St.) or the Clark Fork library (601 North Main St.) to see what all the hubbub is about. For more information, visit ebonnerlibrary.org and isu.edu/imnh.