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During a recent visit on April 25th, 2023 to the Field Museum, one of the best museums in all of Chicago, I stopped by the new Native Truths: Our Voices, Our Stories exhibit. I must say, it's a pretty good exhibit (perhaps my third favorite exhibit, only behind the Hall of Conservation and (one of the Museums's best and most accurate exhibits) the Evolving Planet)!!! The Native Truths exhibit shows and talks about the struggles and triumphs of the many Native American Nations from their origins to the modern day in blunt and extremely accurate ways. But there was one part of the exhibit that somewhat surprised me. It's a display case with several Late Cretaceous fossils from North and South Dakota alongside an interactive pad that talked about how the specimens were originally held by the Standing Rock Institute of Natural History. I'd never heard of the Standing Rock Institute of Natural History before. I was immediately intrigued but saddened to hear it closed due to lack of funding. I researched it a bit more and discovered it's located in Fort Yates, North Dakota. It's website is also apparently still up. https://srinstituteofnaturalhistory.com The museum was located in the heart of the Standing Rocks Reservation, home to the Hunkpapa, Sihasapa, Ihanktonwona, and Pabaksa bands of the Great Sioux Native American Nation. The Reservation itself is the result of the U.S. Government's continual and illicit breaking of Treaties with the regions Native American Tribes in order to grab as much of regions gold as possible in the 1870s-1890s. This is a very simplified explanation as to what happened as whole pages could be filled with with confirmed accounts of truly barbaric atrocities sections of the U.S. Government and the U.S. army inflicted on these Native American Nations at this period in time...something likely too graphic and horrifying to talk about on the forum. But I encourage you all to research it yourselves for if we don't learn or heed the lessons from history, we are doomed to repeat it. Anyways, from what could gather, the museum wasn't particularly large but still impressive in its own right. Opening in 2007, the Standing Rock Institute of Natural History is apparently the first tribal run museum to have it's own Paleontology Code of Ethics and at its height had 10,000 Paleontological specimens. I'm very sad to hear it closed due to lack of funding.

In November 2018 I found a site in the Middle Cenomanian Tarrant Formation. Parts of the site were in the Lewisville member of the Woodbine. In the Lewisville I only found a few common bivalves, but the Tarrant produced multiple large concretions packed with ammonites, plant material, fish bones, and some unknowns. Some of the largest concretions were about 2 meters by 2 meters by 2/3 meter thick. But of course sizes and shapes varied. The concretions were a bit crunchy on their weathered exteriors, but in their blue interior they were harder than concrete. Lots of weathered ammonites covering the concretions, but when broken open the concretions' blue showed how well the ammonites inside were preserved. Their shells had been replaced with (I think?) calcite, so they were nicely shiny. Most of the ammonites seemed to be Acanthoceras amphibolum and Tarrantoceras sp. On March 1, 2020 I got a trailer and bobcat to, with the landowner's permission, haul a few giant concretions home. I did, and they are sitting in my barn. It would take years of preparation for one person, but there are probably some cool things in them. I hauled off around 2 tonnes of concretions, at least. Here are some pictures, spanning November 2018 to March 1, 2020. November 2018. FIG. 1-2: Concretion size. FIG. 3: Fossil wood. FIG. 4-7: Fossil hash. FIG. 8: Dog for scale. May 2019. FIG. 9: More hash. FIG. 10: Too much to carry... May/June 2019: Close-ups at home. FIG. 11-13: Same rock with close-up on wood with boreholes. FIG. 14: Ammonites and fish-bits hash. FIG. 15-16: Two different rocks. FIG. 17: Plant material. March 1, 2020. FIG. 18: The haul home.

As of 5/5/16, this large specimen of Late Cretaceous Amber Resin has received a new home in the McClung Museum at the University Of Tennessee (Knoxville). It is from my collection of West Tennessee Amber and is Campanian. This was my 4th-5th largest specimen from my collection.