Published: February 20, 2008 02:36 pm         

Boning up on fossils: Persistence, patience paid off

TAHLEQUAH, Okla. — When Cephis Hall and a paleontology team were excavating and preserving the skull of an acrocanthosaurus in McCurtain County, a car filled with a family pulled up, and they asked Hall what it was.

“I said, ‘A fossil,’” Hall said. “He said, ‘Oh, an old dead animal.’ I said, ‘Yes, he’s been dead a long time now – about 100 million years.’ That seemed to satisfy them, and they went on.”

The casual inquirers had no idea that the massive dinosaur fossil unearthed by Hall and a team in the early 1980s would become one of the most renowned – and most complete – dinosaur excavations to date. Hall discussed his finding, and his passion for fossil hunting, with members of the Tahlequah Rock and Mineral Society recently.

The acrocanthosaurus, which Hall described as “about the size of your average T-Rex, but 50 million years older,” stood 12 to 14 feet tall at the hip and was 40 feet long from head to tail. Scientists dubbed it “the terror of the South.”

“At the time, this thing was walking around in McCurtain County, Oklahoma, he was the top of the chain. He ate whatever he wanted to eat,” Hall said.

The massive carnivore had daggerlike teeth, similar to the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Hall, an Arkansas native who lives in Broken Bow, has been a fossil hunter 60 years.

“Rocks, we had plenty of them,” he said of his childhood. “That’s when I started collecting rocks. We were poor as poor could be. I always dreamed that one of these days, I’d pick the right rock up.”

He didn’t get to study paleontology in college, but throughout his life he has listened and learned whenever possible.

“You’ll never learn all there is to learn about rocks. People don’t live that long,” he said.

People have asked him how he came across the dinosaur fossil.

“It didn’t just happen. You’ve got to make it happen,” he said. “You don’t just stumble onto it. I’ve done a lot of stumbling in my time, but you’ve got to do some serious looking.”

He was fossil hunting when he discovered the first parts of what would prove to be the acrocanthosaurus, on property owned by a large timber company. He took his findings to experts, who first decided it probably was a dinosaur, then determined what type.

Acrocanthosaurus parts had been discovered before and the creature given its scientific name, but Hall at first couldn’t dream the extent of the fossil he had found.

“It’s the only one in the world, the only dinosaur fossil in Oklahoma that’s complete enough to make a reconstruction,” he had. “I had my hands on every part of it.”

His best friend, the late Sid Love, helped with the discovery.

“Sid was there with his camera. He was a bookkeeper that wouldn’t quit,” Hall said. “A tremendous amount of work went into it. It cost a tremendous amount of money.”

The Black Hills Institute in South Dakota helped with the excavation and casting of the fossil, at a cost of about $1 million. The original fossil may be seen in Raleigh, N.C., and four casts were made. One is on display at the Museum of the Red River in Idabel.

“None of this would have happened if I hadn’t first made a discovery,” he said.

It took three years to excavate the fossil and seven years to perform the casting.

Hall dug an excavation cave to determine whether he had only a few bones or a complete skeleton. A backhoe was brought in to remove 6 to 8 feet of soil covering the fossil, and the skeletal parts painstakingly uncovered. The team packed 200 pounds of plaster, plus other protective material, around the skull.

“I’d been told by the best in the world that I’d never find the skull,” Hall said.

The best were wrong.

Hall pointed to the skull as it appeared in the video.

“You see those black teeth there a-shining?” he said. “The skull is the largest dinosaur skull in the world.”

Some of the vertebrae were 3 feet long.

Hall said local people don’t need to see the original fossil in North Carolina to appreciate the dinosaur. A shorter trip to Idabel will suffice.

“The cast is better to look at than the actual pieces,” he said.

Local citizens helped raise the funds to build the wing housing the acrocanthosaurus. Broken Bow elementary children collected 200,000 pennies.

Hall also has discovered two partial dinosaur fossils but hasn’t unearthed them, focusing on the acrocanthosaurus. He’s leaving the others for someone else to study.

“I’m past it now. I’m not going to do it,” he said. “Keep in mind, if you start something like this, you’re not going to be able to do it in a day or two.”

The humorous fossil hunter offered advice to those who would follow in his footsteps.

“Stay out of the beer joints, stay off the barstools," he said, "then get out there and do something constructive.”

He did just that, spending the majority of his time on weekends and days off with the acrocanthosaurus.

“It’s mind-boggling to me that something like this was roaming around here 92 (million) to 100 million years ago, give or take a million,” he said “Some hillbilly Arkansas kid like myself brought this thing to light and the whole world was looking.”

Amidst all this attention, Hall has retained his modesty. Politicians, celebrities, and national news media figures gathered in McCurtain County for the unveiling of the acrocanthosaurus. Hall attended, clad in his everyday attire.

Someone asked him why he was there. “I just said, ‘Oh, I don’t know, I just saw a crowd over here and thought I might get a free barbecue sandwich.’”



Betty Smith writes for Tahlequah (Okla.) Daily Press.