Rural Missouri - February 2022 - 18

Guy Darrough, curator of the museum, is happy to discuss the lifesize dinosaur displays he created for the Hall of Giants. His collection, which
ranges from rare fossils to crystal radios, has found a new home at the center in Ste. Genevieve.
estimated to weigh 3 to 4 tons and have 1,000 teeth in its
duckbilled head. " Our exhibit here is called 'A Tale of a
Tail,' " says Guy, the museum's curator. " That's because
it all started with the tail of a dinosaur and after all that's
happened it's come full circle and a lot of the bones are
here. "
In November the body of the Missouri dinosaur fi nally
was unearthed from a location in Bollinger County after
years of careful excavation. Parts of its tail were discovered
in 1942 when a man named Dan Stewart was searching
for clay deposits and a young boy led him to
a well his parents were digging. " Dan looked
down and said, 'Those are dinosaur bones,' "
Guy says. " Shortly after, the Smithsonian gave
the family $50 for the bones. She bought a cow
with that so everything worked out real good. "
The bones ended up more or less forgotten
until the late 1970s. That's when Bruce Stinchcomb,
a professor of geology and paleontology,
bought the site hoping to fi nd more fossils. His
test pits turned up more bones. That's when Guy got involved.
over
the dig site so work could go on despite the weather.
" We started digging and eventually we found a partial
skeleton of about a 20-foot dinosaur and along with that
was a jaw section with some really unique teeth in it. We
had been fi nding bones all along but when we found this
partially articulated skeleton, we knew this was something
really special. I knew it was time to talk to the big boys. "
He called in Pete Makovicky, then curator of dinosaurs
at Chicago's Field Museum. For the past three years Pete
and his team have been patiently working at the site. In
November they removed what is now known to be a completely
new species of dinosaur.
In time, a 3D printed skeleton of the Missouri
dinosaur will be on display at the museum. Visitors
can watch while scientists work on bones from the
dinosaur along with a giant turtle also found at
Ste. Genevieve
the Bollinger County site.
Among the displays is the Hall of Giants, an
entire room devoted to dinosaurs. These lifesize
replicas were how Guy earned his living and
supported his collecting. He created the dinosaur
Bruce - the author of 13 books on the fossils of Missouri
- was the chief inspiration for Guy, who met him
when he was 17 at a rock and mineral show in St. Louis.
" When he showed me his collection it just totally blew my
mind, " Guy says. " I understood at that point that you don't
have to be in Australia or Madagascar to make discoveries.
There's plenty of discoveries right here in Missouri. "
Guy took over the excavation, erecting a greenhouse
18 RURAL MISSOURI | FEBRUARY 2022
replicas in his studio in Cadet, then rented them for display
at dinosaur shows around the country.
" I've found so many fossils in my lifetime I'm probably
on my third collection now, " Guy says. " When I was
younger, I would have a collection of things and then to
keep things going or to travel I would sell some of them.
That went on for a while. Then it got to a point where I
didn't want to sell my fossils anymore. I decided to start
building full-size dinosaurs, leasing them, touring with

Rural Missouri - February 2022

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