Hell Creek, Montana: America's Key to the Prehistoric Past
Readers may be confused by the title of this book by paleontologist Dingus (The Mistaken Extinction), which doesn't do justice to his story: an occasionally lyrical and meditative history of Montana's Badlands, a desolate region that he has clearly come to love during his paleontological expeditions. The rugged Badlands of east-central Montana stretch for more than 100 miles along the south bank of the Missouri River. The area hasn't always been a giant's playground of buttes and coulees and inhospitable ravines. Seventy million years agoT. rexchased its prey through a luxuriant floodplain that covered the area. The first skeletalT. rexremains were discovered here, and the most complete specimen before the $7 million Sue was found on a local ranch by an amateur bone hunter in the 1960s. Meriwether Clark became the first fossil hunter of the American West when he picked up a dinosaur bone a little farther upriver on the Corps of Discovery's journey to the Pacific. The residents of the Badlands town of Jordan have seen their share of excitement more recently: in 1996 right-wing extremists called the Freemen engaged the FBI in a standoff that attracted national media attention. Given its wide range, this book should attract readers of history and lovers of the American West in addition to dinosaur junkies. 15 b&w photos.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.