UMPI receives dinosaur bones Montana museum sends tibia, skull

PRESQUE ISLE – Dr. Kevin McCartney knows how important real dinosaur bones are to kids.

The geology professor and director of the Northern Maine Museum of Science said Monday that he seldom completes a tour without several hopeful schoolchildren asking him whether the museum has any big dinosaur bones.

After eight years of having to tell the youngsters a regretful no, McCartney finally can give them a different answer.

That’s because the museum, located at the University of Maine at Presque Isle, recently acquired two large dinosaur bones from the Museum of the Rockies in Montana.

The bones – a tibia, or leg bone, from a hadrosaur “duck-billed” dinosaur and a partial triceratops skull – weigh in at about 200 pounds each. The Montana museum gave the hadrosaur bone as a gift and offered the other as a 10-year loan.

The species of the hadrosaur bone is unknown, though officials do know that it is from the Cretaceous Period and is about 75 million years old. Hadrosaur refers to a family of duck-billed dinosaurs. The bone was found in 1985 in the Judith River formation. The triceratops bone also is from the Cretaceous Period, and it was found in the Hells Creek Formation in Wyoming. McCartney pointed out that no dinosaur remains have been found in Maine, as the sediment in which such bones would have been preserved has eroded away.

Officials plan to display the bones as soon as possible in a prominent spot at the museum in the university’s Folsom Hall.

But because museum officials do not want to make dinosaur lovers wait, on Monday a simple exhibit was set up featuring the 4-foot-long hadrosaur leg bone. People can view – and touch – the temporary display at Preble Hall, UMPI’s administrative building, until a permanent exhibit is created at the museum.

McCartney said the public would have to wait, however, to see the triceratops skull, which has not been removed yet from its packing crate.

The incomplete but substantial skull, McCartney said, must be restored and preserved before it can be put on display. He said the skull appeared to have an intact frill, a part connected to the skull that may have anchored jaw muscles.

McCartney hopes the university can work with students from the Maine School of Science and Mathematics in Limestone on the restoration project.

Right now, though, the museum director is grateful just to have the specimens in hand.

“I’m still just tingling with having a complete dinosaur bone here at the museum,” McCartney said.

In November 2004, McCartney traveled to Denver for a geology conference. He had just done two museum tours filled with children asking about dinosaur bones, and he was hoping to run into an old acquaintance who could help him out.

McCartney met Dr. John “Jack” Horner, a well-known dinosaur hunter and curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies, almost a decade ago and kept in touch over the years. McCartney and Horner crossed paths in Denver and the geologist told the curator what he was looking for.

“[Horner] said, ‘I’ll see what I can do,'” McCartney remembered.

McCartney thought he would get some information months down the road, but just a few weeks after their conversation, Horner’s lab assistant called saying the bones, former pieces for traveling exhibits, were ready to ship.

The Presque Isle Rotary Club donated about $500 to have the bones sent to the northern Maine university. McCartney received the heavy crates just before Christmas and university officials Dave Putnam and Jeanie McGowan immediately started restoring the hadrosaur bone.

With the new specimens, the Northern Maine Museum of Science is the only museum in Maine that has sizable dinosaur bones, McCartney said.

He believes the gift serves as recognition that the museum is noteworthy in Maine.

Just as important, McCartney said, the bones will help to get children interested in science.

“Nothing does that better than a dinosaur bone,” he said.