Daily Darwin

[{"type":"text","text":"Of course, the goal is for the table to break your fall..."}]

Darwin 5 7 24

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Daily Darwin: Tuesday, May 7, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Of course, the goal is for the table to break your fall...

Daily Darwin: Tuesday, May 7, 2024

 Of course, the goal is for the table to break your fall...

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Around Wyoming

One of the centerpiece exhibits at the Natural History Museum of London is Sophie, one of the most complete and well-preserved Stegosaurus specimens ever found.

When it was unveiled at the museum in December 2014, paleontologist Paul Barrett praised it as the best Stegosaurus anywhere in the world.

“This skeleton is very special, not just because it’s complete, but also because the bones have been preserved in three dimensions instead of being squashed over time, as happens with many other fossils,” he said. “We can get a very accurate view of how the whole body looked.”

That wasn’t news to Bob Simon and Robert Boscarelli. They were two of the three-man crew that found and excavated the stellar Stegosaurus near Shell in 2004.

“I didn’t know what happened to it once we got it out,” Boscarelli told Cowboy State Daily. “When my family went to London, we walked up the stairs into the museum, and there she was. It was incredible to see her mounted there.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Tail End"}]

Sophie, a Stegosaurus stenops, was found in 

 near Shell, dating to the Late Jurassic, around 150 million years ago. She escaped the prehistoric mudstone encasing her perfectly preserved fossils between 2003 and 2004.

Boscarelli got in on “the tail end” of the excavation. He spent the summer of 2004 excavating the 360 fossilized bones, teeth, plates, and spikes with Simon and Don Pfister.

[{"type":"text","text":"It remains one of the most fulfilling experiences of his life."}]

“When I was young in Cleveland, Ohio, I got an encyclopedia and read about paleontology and dinosaurs,” he said. “I never forgot it, and after getting out of the Marines and getting an anthropology degree from the University of Florida, I finally got an opportunity to get into it.”

Boscarelli had been traveling to Wyoming for years to dig dinosaurs when he reached out to Simon. He was looking for anyone interested in helping him excavate a promising spot near Shell.

“At the end of 2003, Bob told me that they did a big dig and saw some bones coming out of the side of the hill,” he said. “I knew that he had already found something that he thought was a stego. When I got there in 2004, that's when we started digging on it.”

The most distinctive parts of a Stegosaurus are the ornate plates on its back and the thagomizer, the paleontological term (co-opted from Gary Larson’s The Far Side) for the long spikes at the end of the tail.

Boscarelli had his camera ready when Sophie’s thagomizer saw sunlight for the first time in 146 million years. It was the tail-end of the dinosaur and the crowning moment of validation.

“That’s when we knew it was a Stegosaurus,” he said. “I was there for Sophie.”

The excavation revealed a nearly complete Stegosaurus skeleton, including articulated sections of the back, hips and tail, nearly articulated arms and legs, a significant portion of the skull, and most of the iconic back plates.

The fossils were also preserved three-dimensionally, meaning the weight and pressure of hundreds of millions of years hadn’t flattened them. It was, then and now, one of the most anatomically accurate and important Stegosaurus specimens ever found.

[{"type":"text","text":"“It was amazing. It was incredible. I loved it,” Boscarelli said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Following The Lost River"}]

Bob Simon is a legendary figure in the paleontological world. He has the distinction of finding some of the best skeletons ever found, and all from the same spot near Shell.

“I tell people that finding dinosaurs is 30% skill and 70% luck,” he told Cowboy State Daily.

Simon, who has a Master’s Degree in geology, worked for an oil company before founding DinoSafaris in the 1990s. After scouting out an optimal spot to dig on a private ranch, he got permission from the landowners to start excavating and went to work.

The key to a successful dinosaur dig, according to Simon, isn’t to go looking for dinosaurs. Instead, look for a river – or, at least, the evidence of a river that disappeared thousands of millennia ago.

“What I tell people is that to find dinosaur bones, first you look for evidence of water,” he said. “If you have water, you have plants. If you have plants, you have plant eaters. If you have plant eaters, you have meat eaters and then flooding events to cover things up.”

Simon picked the spot where Sophie would be found because the geology indicated it was an optimal place to look. Based on the rocks and depositional environment, Simon realized the spot was a large bend in a meandering river system during the lush, sub-tropical Late Jurassic period of Wyoming.

“The (dead dinosaurs) just stayed there, and they were covered quickly,” he said. “If the bones aren't covered quickly, they get destroyed by nature.”

Simon’s geological survey immediately struck gold. One of the first things he excavated was one of the best dinosaur specimens ever found: a massive Camarasaurus, over 60 feet long, with nearly every bone in its body preserved.

“We pulled up some toe bones with the bucket of a backhoe,” he said. “After that, we went sideways and took out part of a hill, and started to expose it, real careful.”

Simon’s Camarasaurus was as close to perfect as a paleontologist could get. He was able to follow the toes to the legs, and then found every bone in both directions, from the tip of the neck to the end of the tail.

The only thing missing was the ever-elusive skull, which wasn’t waiting at the end of the neck. Refusing to give up, Simon read the landscape once again.

“I went up 30 feet onto the hill, looked down, and could see the ancient motion of water,” he said. “I could see the way the bones had shifted a little bit, and I knew if the skull was still in existence, it was where I hadn't dug yet.”

Simon identified the spot where the skull should be. Sure enough, after a few days of digging, there it was.

“That was the moment where everything was right,” he said. “That's where you say, ‘OK, we're good. We've done our job.’”

That Camarasaurus is on display at the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum in Japan.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Emotions Of Excavation"}]

After finding the perfect Camarasaurus, a smaller and slightly less impressive Stegosaurus might seem underwhelming. Simon said he felt the same emotions when they uncovered Sophie: excitement and fear.

“People say, ‘Oh, it must have been amazing when you found it,’ but no, it wasn’t,” he said. “You know you have something that might be unique and important, but you don't know until you see it all. It was great that we were starting to find something, but until we could find all of it, it's always kind of a scary situation.”

Boscarelli, meanwhile, was jubilant from the get-go. As soon as Sophie’s thagomizer was found, he was having the time of his life.

“We had a lot of visitors come out to see the site,” he said. “Bob ran the system, and by the end of the season, we had uncovered about 80% of it.”

The only important part missing was, yet again, the skull. Boscarelli recalled following a crumb trail of fragments in the hope of finding the Stegosaurus skull.

“I traced a lot of bone fragments and shed teeth to a big boulder,” he said. “Bob's like, ‘Yeah, get that thing,’ and we got that thing out. It took a lot of work, but we found the skull under there.”

One highlight of the excavation for Boscarelli was meeting 

, the paleontology celebrity from the University of Chicago, who came out to Shell to see Sophie in situ.

Another notable visitor was Hans Jakob "Kirby" Siber, founder of 

the Aathal Dinosaur Museum in Switzerland

. That museum is filled with Late Jurassic dinosaurs that Siber and his crew found not far from where Simon was digging.

“I left before Kirby visited, but I’ve met him since,” Boscarelli said.

Simon, meanwhile, kept his emotions in check. As incredible as Sophie appeared in the ground, it was still a jumbled pile of bones that could ultimately be just as disappointing as they seemed extraordinary.

“You're always assessing how much you have, but it’s in the back of your mind,” he said. “You hope it doesn't stop, because that’s always a possibility. You hope it keeps going. You hope there’s a skull. That’s why it’s always a little scary.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"From Sarah To Sophie (?)"}]

While Simon and Boscarelli were excavating their stellar Stegosaurus, they named it Sarah after the landowners' daughter.

[{"type":"text","text":"“I got to meet her once,” Boscarelli said. “She was a nice girl.”"}]

When all of the fossils were excavated, the plaster jackets encasing them were shipped to Switzerland. Siber and his team at the Aathal Dinosaur Museum spent the next several years meticulously removing the rock and strengthening the fossils.

Sarah remained an open secret among paleontologists until 2013, when it was revealed that the Natural History Museum of London had acquired the specimen for its permanent paleontological collection. They got all 360 Stegosaurus bones, roughly 85% of the total skeleton.

That’s when Sarah became Sophie. It was a name honoring a different daughter, whose father’s donation made the acquisition possible.

Sophie finally got her moment in the 2015 paper, “The Postcranial Skeleton of an Exceptionally Complete Individual of the Plated Dinosaur Stegosaurus stenops (Dinosauria: Thyreophora) from the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation of Wyoming, U.S.A.”

In the study, Barrett and other paleontologists determined that the Stegosaurus wasn’t fully grown. It was either a young or sub-adult dinosaur when it died and was buried, entirely undisturbed, according to Simon.

“There was no evidence of scavenging on any of the bones, and (the bodies) weren't torn apart,” Simon said of Sophie, the Camarasaurus, and other dinosaurs found in that spot. “That led me to think that the scavengers couldn't get there. They couldn't cross the water to get to where the floods had piled up the dinosaur remains.”

Also, Sophie might not be a Sophie. Despite the name, there is no conclusive way, 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'Wow, That’s Pretty Cool'"}]

Over 20 years after Sophie’s discovery, both Boscarelli and Simon are out of the dinosaur digging gig.

“As you get older, you miss it less and less,” Simon said. “It cost a lot of money to be out there and do what I was doing. It was a fantastic time. The rancher was fantastic. The land was fantastic. The community was great. I had a blast, and I miss it, but I don't think I could do it again.”

After leaving Shell in 2004, Boscarelli didn’t hear or see anything about Sophie until her glorious arrival in London. A few years later, when he was going on a family trip to Sicily, he decided to stop in London to see the fruits of his labor.

“They have an escalator going up to the dinosaur part of the museum, and Sophie’s right in front,” he said. “We uncovered most of it, but to actually go up there and see it was unbelievable.”

Today, Boscarelli, who lives in Soquel, California, has two cats he fondly named Sarah and Sophie. Finding the Stegosaurus was “the biggest moment” of his foray into paleontology, but he admitted he still has mixed feelings about where Sophie ended up.

“I still have my ‘Keep It in Wyoming’ shirt from the other digs I did with Bob Bakker at Como Bluff,” he said. “I'm not a big fan of the fossils going out of the country. When I met Dr. Barrett (in London), I told him, ‘You take a girl out of the country, you shouldn't change your name too.’”

That’s why Boscarelli was happy to hear the Wild West Dino Den in Shell, which recently unveiled 

a cast of the famous Allosaurus “Big Al,”

 intended to acquire a replica of Sophie for t

“It’s really amazing that their museum is coming to fruition,” he said. “I wanted Sophie to be there.”

Simon, who is in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, finally got his moment of vindication when he saw a fully mounted replica of Sophie. It was the moment he let himself be engulfed by the wave of emotions his spectacular Stegosaurus has and will continue to inspire in others.

“I was very fortunate that most of the dinosaurs that I found were very complete and are in museums,” he said. “When everything was found and prepared, and I saw a cast of (Sophie) on display, that’s when it really hit home. That's when you sit back and go, ‘Wow, that's pretty cool.’”

Contact Andrew Rossi at andrew@cowboystatedaily.com

Stegosaurus image1 8 8 26

<title>Sophie, The World's Most Complete Stegosaurus, Was Found In Shell, Wyoming | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Stegosaurus discovered near Shell, Wyoming, is believed to be the most complete and well-preserved specimen ever found. When it was unveiled as the centerpiece exhibit at the Natural History Museum of London, paleontologists praised it as the best in the world.

Sophie, The World's Most Complete Stegosaurus, Was Found In Shell, Wyoming

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Crime & Courts

Wyoming knife enthusiasts have it good. Knife regulations here essentially mirror the state’s firearms statutes.

For instance, law-abiding adults over age 21 who qualify to carry a concealed firearm also qualify to carry a concealed blade, including such knives as switchblades.

That might not be the case in other states. Knife regulations vary not only by state but also by city, county and town jurisdiction, Doug Ritter, the founder, chairman and CEO of the national Knife Rights organization, told Cowboy State Daily.

Generally speaking, if a state has permissive firearms regulations, it likely also has broad knife freedoms, he said. And if a state restricts firearms, it likely restricts knives.

So, Wyomingites shouldn’t take for granted that their favorite knife will be legal everywhere they travel, Ritter said. He recommends using Knife Rights’ 

 app to check state, county and local regulations when taking knives on the road.

Dylan Sparks of Buffalo told Cowboy State Daily that he appreciates Wyoming’s knife freedom.

“I carry about a 9- or 10-inch Ka-Bar. And I open carry it wherever I go,” he said.

A Ka-Bar (sometimes spelled K-Bar) is a fixed-blade fighting and utility knife. It was officially adopted by the Maine Corps in 1942 as the Mark 2.

“It’s primary purpose for it is that it’s a tool,” although it could be used for self-defense, said Sparks, a Marine Corps veteran who is running for mayor of Buffalo.

Sparks said his Ka-Bar has raised some eyebrows when he’s traveled outside Wyoming.

“I’ve been approached by police officers” and sometimes “quizzed” about why he had the knife clearly visible in a sheath on his hip, he said.

However, none of those encounters have resulted him in being cited for breaking any regulations, Sparks said.

“I’ll open carry it until somebody says, ‘Hey, you can’t do that',” he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Right To Bear Arms"}]

Knife rights should be protected under the Second Amendment, as firearms rights are, Sparks said.

“It should be a universal freedom,” he said. “It’s a matter of freedom, to keep and bear arms.”

As he sees it, law-abiding citizens shouldn’t lose knife freedoms over what criminals might do with knives.

“A criminal can hurt you with whatever they want to hurt you with. It can be a gun, it could be a knife, it could be a stapler, or anything,” Sparks said.

Firearms policy expert George Mocsary stated in a text message to Cowboy State Daily that, according to its wording, the Second Amendment covers knives.

“The Second Amendment doesn't say ‘firearms.’ It says ‘arms’,” wrote Mocsary, a professor of law at the University of Wyoming and director of UW’s Firearms Research Center.

“That includes knives, swords, and other edged weapons. Sabres, for example, were common cavalry weapons in the Founding era,” he stated.

“Stun guns came up in the 2016 Supreme Court case of Caetano v. Massachusetts, in which Justice Alito's concurrence strongly suggested that they were, or at least could be, protected.” 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Double-Edged Blades"}]

Master bladesmith Audra Draper of Riverton told Cowboy State Daily that most of her customers order hunting knives or kitchen cutlery.

“I very rarely get people who want fighting knives or anything like that,” she said.

She added that she hasn’t run into legal snags making knives for customers in other states.

“I have had customers from overseas whose knives could not get to them” because they were banned in those countries, Draper said.

She noted that people who own “doubled-edged” blades, such as daggers, should be mindful of regulations against such knives when they travel.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Length Restrictions"}]

Ritter said many of the people who reach out to his organization for help and advice regarding alleged knife restriction violations weren’t directly busted for having the knife.

Instead, the trouble frequently starts with a traffic stop, during which an officer notices a knife, he said, mentioning hunters traveling with large, fix-bladed hunting knives.

“There are many cities and towns that have blade length restrictions,” he said.

“If you’re carrying a big old 7-inch cold steel blade, that might be a problem, even it’s a folding knife, and you’ve got it clipped in your pocket,” Sparks said.

Knife Rights has lobbied for “knife law preemption” in several states, he said, meaning state regulations should preempt any further restrictions that local jurisdictions attempt to impose.

Knife Rights successfully litigated to overturn a restriction on switchblades in Massachusetts, and is litigating to have similar bans overturned in Minnesota and California, Ritter said.

“People need to be careful, because they have to (abide by knife restrictions). That’s why we’re trying to get rid of those restrictions. And hopefully, I’ll live long enough to see that happen,” he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Get Training"}]

Firearms and self-defense trainer Bill Tallen of Cody told Cowboy State daily that people considering carrying a knife for self-defense should take the same approach as those looking to carry a firearm.

“If you think you would want to rely on a knife as a self-defense weapon, you better train with it. Find a qualified trainer,” he said.

On an historical note, Tallen said that as he understands it, knife restrictions might have resulted from past class prejudice.

Pistols were considered a “a gentleman’s weapon” whereas knives, clubs and the like were regarded as the weapons of common rabble, he said.   

Former Sublette County Sheriff Hank Ruland told Cowboy State Daily he didn’t have to deal with much knife crime during his career.

However, law enforcement officers can’t take for granted how deadly knives can be, he added.

“Officers are trained according to the ’21-foot rule’,” he said.

“Meaning if a suspect comes at you with a knife, you have 1.5 seconds if he’s 21 feet away before he’s on you and stabs you,” Ruland said.  

Knife rights blade 8 2 26

<title>Knife Rights Advocates Say Second Amendment Should Apply To Blades, Too | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Knife rights advocates say knives should be protected like guns as the Second Amendment doesn't say ‘firearms,' it says ‘arms’, says UW professor George Mocsary. Wyoming adults with clean records can carry almost every type of knife, a right not all states enjoy.

Knife Rights Advocates Say Second Amendment Should Apply To Blades, Too

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Wildlife

As hunting season settles over the mountains surrounding Snyder Basin in Sublette County, the moose begin drifting toward a Wyoming woman's ranch. Sometimes alone, and sometimes with calves.

[{"type":"text","text":"To Pamela Chrisman, their arrival isn't surprising."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"It's been happening for nearly 40 years."}]

"They'd come in here and hide from the hunters," Chrisman explained. "This is kind of a safe haven for all those guys."

What began with one hungry old cow moose slowly blossomed into one of Wyoming's most remarkable wildlife stories — a bond built not through training or taming, but through decades of building trust.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Fish Creek Ranch "}]

Chrisman was born in Big Piney and has spent nearly her entire life ranching beneath Snyder Basin, where cattle, horses and wildlife have always been part of daily life.

[{"type":"text","text":"She was about 21 years old when she moved onto the remote ranch."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"There was no bathroom, no telephone, no running water,\" she recalled."}]

Winters meant trips to the outhouse through deep snow. Eventually, her mother helped install a well, and the two spoke each night over a CB radio.

[{"type":"text","text":"The isolation never bothered Chrisman."}]

She grew up following her father while he worked cattle and said she always felt at home outdoors.

[{"type":"text","text":"Animals had always occupied a special place in her life."}]

She remembered adopting a steer as a girl, loving her horses, dogs and cats, and riding horseback home after her school bus became stranded in the snow.

Long before the moose arrived, caring for animals was simply part of who she was.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Grandma Mouse"}]

"Sometime in the 1980s", Chrisman says an aging cow moose wandered onto the ranch and began eating hay alongside her horses.

[{"type":"text","text":"The old moose was gaunt."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"She was really, really gray,\" Chrisman recalled."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Instead of chasing the animal away, she let it eat."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"She affectionately named the old cow \"Grandma Mouse.\""}]

[{"type":"text","text":"The name stuck, and so did the moose."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Grandma Mouse kept returning."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Then she brought offspring."}]

Chrisman watched as one generation followed another. There was Merry Mouse, Miss Mouse, Baby Mouse and an old bull she simply called Old Boy. Each had its own personality.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"They have different temperaments,\" she said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Building Trust"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"At first, the moose simply shared pasture with Chrisman's horses."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"The horses accepted them."}]

"They'd go in and stand next to her in the corral," Chrisman said. "She could eat with them."

[{"type":"text","text":"Over time, something even more unusual happened."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"The moose began trusting Chrisman herself."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"She developed a routine."}]

"I just gave them a hoop or a holler and shook the bucket," she said. "There they come."

Eventually, the relationship became close enough that Chrisman posed for photographs hugging the animals and even briefly sitting atop one especially gentle cow named Miss Mouse.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"I could actually get on her,\" she said. \"They just liked me.\""}]

[{"type":"text","text":"She never tried turning the experience into a roadside attraction."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"In fact, she discouraged visitors."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"The moose accepted her, but they remained wary of everyone else."}]

"I wouldn't let them up there," Chrisman said. "You better stand back, because they're just not really impressed about having quite a few people around."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'They Know Where To Come' "}]

To many people who spend time in Wyoming's backcountry, getting close to a moose is reason for concern, not celebration.

competing in an ultramarathon through the Wyoming wilderness, and nearly all agreed on the animal they feared most. 

[{"type":"text","text":"It wasn't bears."}]

Massive, territorial and fiercely protective of calves, moose have earned a reputation as one of Wyoming's most unpredictable wild animals.

[{"type":"text","text":"That is what makes Chrisman's story so extraordinary."}]

To outsiders, the idea that generations of wild moose would willingly return to the same ranch — and trust the same woman — might sound almost impossible.

But John Lund, regional wildlife supervisor for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department's Pinedale Region, said the behavior makes biological sense.

"It's not uncommon," Lund said of multiple generations returning to the same property, especially when an area provides high-quality habitat and protection from people, predators and other disturbances.

Lund said wildlife managers believe moose, much like deer and elk, likely learn seasonal locations from their mothers.

He also said big-game animals quickly learn where hunting pressure is low and return to those places year after year.

While moose hunting is much more limited than elk hunting, he believes the same principle applies.

[{"type":"text","text":"For Chrisman, that's exactly what she has witnessed."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"They know where to come,\" she said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"R-E-S-P-E-C-T "}]

For nearly 40 years, generations of wild moose have returned to Fish Creek Ranch near Big Piney, Wyoming, where they trust Pamela Chrisman so much she can walk up and pet them. "This is kind of a safe haven for all those guys," she said.

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