Minot Daily News printed an article today covering some of the recent fossil finds in the state.  Leading the article was a section on a two-foot rhino skull found on a farm near Dickinson.  From the article:

A skull and lower jaw of a 30-million-year-old rhinoceros found on a ranch southwest of Dickinson is a significant and rare fossil find in North Dakota, said John Hoganson, paleontologist for the North Dakota Geological Survey.

“The rhino skull is significant because it is mostly complete and well preserved. They also are not common fossils,” said Hoganson. “This fossil provides more information about what life in North Dakota was like 30 million years ago.”

Hoganson, Bismarck, said he just stopped by to visit the ranch owner this past summer. “He said, ‘I have something to show you up in the hills,’” Hoganson said, relating their conversation that day. The two went to a site in the buttes on the ranch.

“Here he had found a rhinoceros skull. It was just absolutely beautiful – all the teeth were exposed,” Hoganson said. He said the skull is about 2 feet long.

The N.D. Geological Survey has done quite a bit of work at this ranch, Hoganson said.

When the rhinoceros, Subhyracodon, lived, Hoganson said, North Dakota was like an African savannah with huge herds of rhinoceros. “We had rhinos maybe 6 to 8 feet long. They didn’t have horns,” he said.

He said small three-toed horses and small saber-toothed cats also lived at that time. The remains of the three-toed horses and a tooth of a saber-toothed cat have also been found at the ranch where the rhinoceros skull was discovered.

The ranch owner helped collect the rhinoceros fossils from the site in September and the fossils now are in the N.D. Geological Survey’s paleontology laboratory in the North Dakota Heritage Center, where Brent Woodward, paleontology laboratory specialist, will prepare them for exhibit.

“We’re hoping to put it on display this coming year,” Hoganson said. The new exhibit with fossils from 30 million years ago, the Oligocene period, will be the third phase of the Corridor of Time exhibit.

A skeleton cast of the three-toed horse, Mesohippus Bairdi, can be seen at the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Medora.  Mesohippus stood only two feet tall.

The articlealso described fossils of an unknown mammal and fossils of bear-like creatures called Titanoides.