Visual Stories

Photos: 'Expedition Alaska' exhibit in Fairbanks showcases Dinosaurs of the north

The University of Alaska Museum of the North opened an exhibit dedicated to dinosaurs in Alaska in May. It has teeth, skeletons and tracks of the extinct reptiles and their contemporaries that have never been seen by the public before. "Expedition Alaska: Dinosaurs" is the first show of its kind at the museum and, as such, "fairly monumental," said Earth sciences curator Patrick Druckenmiller.

In addition to dinosaurs in the far north, "Expedition Alaska" is also, in no small part, about how those fossils are found and recovered.

For the last several years those expeditions have been coordinated by Druckenmiller, a scientist with a mountain climber's body. Somewhat like the fictional Indian Jones, he is a professor at UAF during the winter and extreme wilderness adventurer in the summer, cliff-climbing, racing tides, slogging through mud and rain, hiking through snowfields, bouncing in small boats through chilly fog on remote rivers and, when things really get bad, hunkering in a wet, overcrowded tent for days at a time.

It's a far cry from traditional dinosaur hunters who have made headlines and history in the Badlands of the Dakotas, the parched, sunny prairies of the American and Canadian west or the Gobi Desert.

"Coming to Alaska is a different world," Druckenmiller said.

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