Southern Minnesota Museum of Natural History digs into state's prehistoric past

CBS News

01-05-2025

Small towns can offer a variety of businesses, but rarely will you come across one with full-grown dinosaur fossils. That's now the case in Blue Earth, Minnesota.
When you think of Blue Earth, you might think of the Jolly Green Giant near Interstate 90. He's 55.5 feet tall with size 78 shoes.
"It draws a lot of people from all over," said Karen Hickok of Amboy, Minnesota. "Busloads of people."
But the roadside giant isn't the only giant in town.
"There are many examples of tyrannosaurus. T-Rex was the biggest, baddest example," said Jim Pollard, of the Southern Minnesota Museum of Natural History.
Main Street is where you'll discover the museum, which Pollard and others opened in a former antique shop. Now, they're displaying a different kind of relic.
"I made my first big fossil find, I was about 7 years old with my friend George Walker," he said.
Growing up in Wisconsin, near the shores of Lake Michigan, Pollard collected beach fossils at a young age. Years later, he teamed up with paleontologists to do digs in South Dakota and Wyoming.
"We drove out there and we'd sleep under the truck, and we'd dig fossils all day. And as a young guy, it was heaven to do that," he said.
When Pollard left his day job as a portrait artist, he decided to move to the town that was halfway between his childhood fossil hunts and his adult dinosaur digs. Those digs often left him bone tired, but with enough artifacts to open a museum, fulfilling a lifelong dream.
"I wanted to have a variety of fossils that if a kid came in he could see a little of everything," he said.
Much of what you discover at the museum has a story, like a 40-pound humerus bone from a triceratops.
"The end of the bone was bitten off by a Tyrannosaurus rex. The bite force distorted the shape of the bone," he said.
The only display from Minnesota is what the Cherney family discovered decades ago in Coon Rapids.
"It's a herd of bison that were killed together with wolves, deer. Possibly by a glacial dam breaking," he said.
Having made connections over the years, people send Pollard all kinds of things. A friend in Siberia recently came across petrified mammoth droppings.
"You can still see what it ate. It's got this grassy material in here," he said.
With the exception of the mammoth droppings, Pollard wants visitors to get close to relics that are anywhere from 7,000 to 7 million years old — and even older. All that's required is a desire to learn about the past, and the present.
The museum will also lend a telescope to kids. It's like checking out a book at the library. And through it you can see the Earth's moon up close and even the moons of Jupiter.
Just another reason why this place is known as the biggest, little museum in Minnesota.
"We have footprints, we have bones, we have mammals, we have dinosaurs. Basically, if you come in, it's sort of like a time machine," Pollard said.
The museum is free to visit. Pollard says many of the fossils in the museum were actually discovered by amateurs.