Bones of contention: Should dinosaur remains be a tourist mecca?

Professor James Carter, left, and another scientist lying next to the dinosaur's enormous neck bones

June 2, 2000
Web posted at: 3:49 p.m. EDT (1949 GMT)

In this story: Remember the alamosaurus Science vs. site-seeing RELATED STORIES, SITES

From Correspondent Charles Zewe

BIG BEND NATIONAL PARK, Texas (CNN) -- Bones from possibly the largest dinosaur ever found in North America have set off a dispute of mammoth proportions between some paleontologists and Texans.

Scientists who found the neck bones want to excavate and study them in a lab. But nearby residents want them to remain in the ground as a tourist attraction.

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Geoscientist James Carter found the 65 million-year-old skeletal remains of an alamosaurus in Big Bend National Park, a vast and rugged stretch of desert and mountains straddling the Rio Grande River along the Mexican border.

"This is a very unique bone that has never been found before," Carter said of the 65 million-year-old find, which includes 10 vertebrae, stretching almost 23 feet.

The discovery raised questions about how long the animals existed.

These giant dinosaurs were thought to have died out 100 million years before the animal lived, said Carter, a professor at the University of Texas at Dallas.

Three vertebrae were taken to a university lab, where researchers chipped away dirt and reassembled the bones.

Based on the neck bones, Carter figures the specimen was massive. Scientists are not sure what the dinosaur looked like, but it probably resembled sauripods, leaf-eaters with long curving necks and giant thick bodies.

The alamosaurus is believed to be even bigger, 100 feet long and 30 feet tall. Carter would like to dig up the other vertebrae, which some Big Bend residents oppose.

Jan Forte, co-owner of Big Bend River Tours in nearby Lajitas, accuses the National Park Service of "grave robbing" on protected federal land, where removing a single pebble is prohibited.

Conservationists want the bones to stay in the ground at Big Bend National Park as a tourist attraction

"Why not leave it in its natural environment, build a display and let people come from all over the world to see this magnificent creature," Forte said. Dinosaur National Monument in Utah, for example, exhibits hundreds of dinosaur fossils in this manner.

Yet scientists said such a display would leave many mysteries.

"What did it look like? How did it live? How's it related to other dinosaurs? We won't be able to answer any of those questions if it just lays out there in the desert and slowly erodes away," said Don Corrick, a NPS archeologist.

The National Park Service said it will decide what to do with the fossils by late summer.

Be sure to check out the Ancient Footprints dinosaur special on CNN's Science and Technology Week, Saturday June 3, 1:30-2 p.m. EDT

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