Books: A tale of Oklahoma dinosaur-hunters

From NewsOK.com: Books: A tale of Oklahoma dinosaur-hunters
Oklahoma's state dinosaur — yes, the state has an official dinosaur — is the acrocanthosaurus, a carnivore and apex predator from the early Cretaceous period, roughly 110 million years ago.

Standing 16 feet tall and with a 40-foot-long body, the dinosaur sported razor teeth and raised spines all along its back that likely supported powerful muscles.

It wasn't the biggest dinosaur of its time, but it was the tyrannosaurus rex of its era — and for decades, little evidence of it was known.

That changed in the early 1980s, when the most complete fossil remains of the dinosaur to date were unearthed by two amateur paleontologists in southeastern Oklahoma. Cephis Hall and Sid Love dug up the dinosaur one bone at a time, excavating it from a dirt bank on land owned by the Weyerhaeuser timber company.

“This is one of the greatest dinosaur discoveries and excavations in history,” said Russell Ferrell, who has written a book about the find and the legal battles that followed.

“It's the first time in history that a couple of rockhounds ... had taken on a major dinosaur excavation totally independent of any outside financial or logistical support from a paleontology department at a major university or in conjunction with a major fossil company.”

The bulk of Ferrell's book, “Acrocanthosaurus: The Bones of Contention,” discusses what happened after the discovery.

“Digging it up was a big chore in itself,” he said, “but Cephis and Sid had to battle a number of powerful people and institutions to retain ownership rights to it and eventually get the thing into the proper hands.”

The bones were rare. Previous acrocanthosaurus finds were scattered and incomplete, 20 to 30 percent of the animal at most. Until Hall and Love, no one had seen an acrocanthosaurus head, and estimates of its size and brain capacity were way off.

The rarity made the bones valuable — financially and scientifically. Hall and Love faced criticism from academics and legal fights to retain ownership of their find. Although the bones ultimately sold for more than $3 million, Hall and Love earned only $285,000.

The dinosaur, nicknamed Fran after a woman who helped preserve it, now resides at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh. A cast of the skeleton can be seen at the Museum of the Red River in Idabel.

Ferrell learned of the story about four years ago. A semiretired Oklahoma cattleman, he lives south of Dallas and had been working on a couple book projects.

After interviewing Hall, Ferrell set aside his other work. Here was a story he wanted to tell.

Love had died long before Ferrell started the book. Hall wasn't a young man, and others with firsthand knowledge of the dig were aged and infirm.

“The story had to be told,” Ferrell said. “There wasn't time to wait. ... So I went ahead and did the research and wrote the story and had it published myself.”

Ferrell said the tale is unlike any other.

“I call this the greatest dinosaur story ever told, and I believe that,” he said. “I've read a number of other dinosaur books, but I've never come across another like this.”