The Dinosaur Artist

by Paige Williams

  4. “Despite their alleged”: See Bumochir Dulam and Rebecca Empson, “The Black Box of Presidential Politics,” UCL Emerging Subjects Blog, June 17, 2017, blogs.ucl.ac.uk. Bumochir and Empson sought not to prove or disprove wrongdoing but rather to capture the “form that politics is currently taking in Mongolia” (italics in the original).

  5. “significant promotion”: Oyuna said this to a Mongolian tourism-centric website that’s no longer active, but you can find a good overview of her thoughts on Mongolia’s enormous potential and obstacles in “Widening Appeal: OBG Talks to Ts. Oyungerel, Minister of Culture, Sports, and Tourism of Mongolia,” The Report: Mongolia 2013 (Dubai: Oxford Business Group, 2013), available at oxford businessgroup.com.

  6. “retrieval operation”: B. Khash-Erdene, “Economic Forum 2013 Aims to Establish Mongolian Brand,” UB Post, March 7, 2013.

  7. “Mongolia’s been criticized”: Al Jazeera video, http://www.yousubtitles.com/ Mongolian-dinosaur-returns-to-heros-welcome-id-1291147.

  8. “Roy Chapman Andrews’s expedition”: Interviews with Oyuna Tsedevdamba.

  9. “If they decided”: Tania Branigan, “It’s Goodbye Lenin, Hello Dinosaur as Fossils Head to Mongolia Museum,” Guardian, January 27, 2013.

  10. “We have a wonderful dinosaur heritage”: Ibid.

  11. “In this business”: Ralph Blumenthal, “Dinosaur Skeleton to Be Returned to Mongolia,” New York Times, May 5, 2013.

  12. “We simply cannot allow the greed”: Video of the T. bataar repatriation ceremony can be found on YouTube.

  13. “every Mongolian’s pride and idol”: See “Another Name Change for Ulaanbaatar’s Main Square,” News.MN, September 16, 2016.

  14. Auspicious days for weddings: In the summer of 2015 I was walking near the square when I looked up and saw a couple of newlyweds on the open ledge of an unfinished building, hundreds of vertiginous feet above the pavement, posing for a camera like a couple of costumed daredevils. Other details about the current state of the square are my observations from my time in Ulaanbaatar; but the fin/sail/etc. characterizations are mentioned anytime a reporter describes the shape of that distinctive hotel.

  15. “She’s mostly castrated”: Interviews with Oyuna Tsedevdamba.

  16. “dying on the square”: Ibid.

  17. “It’s not bone” and related: Ibid.

  18. “made up”: Interviews with Oyuna Tsedevdamba, Jeff Falt, and Robert Painter.

  19. “Okay, you guys” and related: Interviews with Oyuna Tsedevdamba. Various videos are available on YouTube of the T. bataar’s reemergence in Mongolia. One short spot shows the skeleton at the Sukhbaatar Square pop-up exhibit before the LED screens and display cabinets went in. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwI4wgmlhd4.

  20. “Those expeditions”: One day at the city museum the curator, B. Tungalag, was kind enough to show me the original Roy Chapman Andrews signature on a contract from the 1920s, “leader” just barely showing anymore, in blue ink.

  21. “enriched the true nature”: The statement has been removed from the president of Mongolia’s website but an Internet Archive copy is available. See “Remarks by Mr. Puntsagiin Tsagaan Chief of Staff of the President of Mongolia at the Tarbosaurus Bataar Return Ceremony,” May 18, 2013.

  22. Rumors about vote-rigging: Bumochir and Empson, “The Black Box of Presidential Politics.”

  23. “overall lack of transparency”: See “Mongolia Presidential Election, Election Observation Mission Final Report,” Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, June 26, 2013. (The OSCE is an intergovernmental partnership among fifty-seven states that monitors arms control, elections, human rights, and press freedoms.) Many related reports are available online through OSCE and other organizations such as Freedom House and Transparency International.

  24. “programming error,” “correctly calculating,” “essential,” “would not affect”: Ibid.

  25. “directly or indirectly owned”: Ibid.

  26. “black PR”: Ibid.

  27. “A lack of transparency”: Ibid. The OSCE report notes, “Freedom of information, including the right to access information held by public authorities, is a core element of the guarantee of freedom of expression. This principle allows only exceptional limitations that must be previously established by law in case of a real and imminent threat to national security. Allowing for other secrecy provisions to override the right to information fails to respect these principles.” The struggle for transparency is ongoing. See Michael Kohn, “Nothing to See Here: Mongolia Media Goes Dark to Protest Curbs,” Bloomberg, April 27, 2017.

  28. Hillary Clinton: Clinton first visited Mongolia in 1995, as First Lady. “It was important for the United States to show support for the Mongolian people and their elected leadership, and a visit from the First Lady to one of the most remote capitals of the world was one way to do it,” she wrote in her memoir Living History (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003). Deputy Secretary of State Winston Lord, who had been the first to say Mongolia should be “held as an example for anyone doubting democracy’s ability to take root in unlikely places,” told the New York Times, “A visit like this can put a spotlight on a country like Mongolia, which Americans pay little attention to.” In diplomatic terms, the First Lady outranks even the secretary of state, so Clinton was the highest-ranking American to visit Mongolia since a fleeting stop by Vice President Henry Wallace in 1944. Her ten-car motorcade set out for the gers of a herder named Zanabaatar, his wife, Haliun, and their six children, roughly an hour’s drive outside the city. Wearing black suede boots, Clinton carried a handmade saddle as a gift, which she presented to Zanabaatar as she explained that her husband too “came from a region with horses and cattle.” She learned how to milk a horse. She exulted at the sight of a yak. In a speech at Mongolian National University, she praised the Mongolian people’s courage and urged them to “continue their struggle toward democracy.” Then she told a story she’d heard, about a lesson Genghis Khan’s mom had tried to teach her children: “To make her point, she showed them how easily one arrow could be broken, but how hard it is to break five arrows when they are held together.” See Seth Faison, “After China, Hillary Clinton Finds Mongolia a Gentler Place,” New York Times, September 8, 1995.

  29. “continue down the democratic path”: See Hillary Clinton, Hard Choices: A Memoir (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014).

  30. “perfectly at home”: Addleton, Mongolia and the United States.

  31. “hope that the U.S. pivot to Asia”: This is from a Washington Post editorial, “A Proper Pivot toward Asia,” July 14, 2012.

  32. Peabody Energy: I obtained details of the meetings involving Clinton and Elbegdorj from the State Department through the Freedom of Information Act. Much of the file, including large amounts of the material involving Peabody, was redacted.

  33. “our Oval Office”: Addleton, Mongolia and the United States.

  34. “information”: This, detail, too, was obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. U.S. Department of State to the Department of Homeland Security, Report of Investigation No. 006, May 19, 2012. The State Department’s mission is to “shape and sustain a peaceful, prosperous, just, and democratic world and foster conditions for stability and progress for the benefit of the American people and people everywhere,” according to its mission. More and more, this cannot help but involve Russia, China, and North Korea.

  35. “dinosaur bataar”: Elbegdorj’s speech is archived on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV16q2PMZG4. See “A Public Address by His Excellency Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, President of Mongolia,” September 21, 2012. Before the speech, Elbegdorj had stopped off at the Coop, at Harvard Square, to buy twenty-five Harvard T-shirts (five for his biological children and the rest for the kids he and his wife had adopted). His old dean and adviser, David Ellwood, introduced him. Former Massachusetts governor William Weld sat on the front row. Former classmates and heads of state from Ec
uador and Greece were in attendance. Elbegdorj often speaks the language of inspirational posters: “A man can never ruin what he built with heart and soul” and “No authoritarian government can stand against the collective will of a people determined to be free.”

  36. “Opportunities for corruption”: For more information, see USAID, Assessment of Corruption in Mongolia, Final Report, August 31, 2005. Also see Transparency International’s corruption-perception index. In 2017, the organization gave Mongolia a score of 36 on a scale of 0 (“highly corrupt”) to 100 (“very clean”). Mongolia fell between Côte d´Ivoire and Tanzania, and behind 103 other countries. (The U.S. had a score of 75, tied with Belgium and just ahead of Ireland.) See https://www.transparency.org/country/MNG.

  CHAPTER 21: PETERSBURG LOW

  1. “God has subpoenaed”: I was there and saw it. You can find photos at www.paigewilliams.com.

  2. “Get up here” and the rest of this section and the next: Ibid.

  3. Fortieth birthday and fish funeral: Ibid.

  4. “Aren’t you sick”: Interviews with Amanda Prokopi.

  5. All-night box-truck trip: I was there.

  6. “It was the size of a small dog”: Ibid.

  7. Tony’s photos: Ibid.

  8. Joe and Charlene’s: Ibid.

  9. “You loot, we shoot”: Ibid.

  10. “not Braille blind”: Interviews with Amanda Prokopi.

  11. “Fuck the government!”: Interview with Joe Kutis.

  12. “That’s Prokopi”: I was there.

  13. Prison day: I was there for everything but the school dropoff, which the Prokopis told me about later. Other information comes from interviews with Amanda and Eric Prokopi. On the night before he went to prison, Eric helped Amanda load the van with Bizarre Bazaar items, then parked it in Betty’s garage, beam to floor, in preparation for the Christmas show. Eric watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom with the kids, then made a final trek to the river house. Homeland Security had returned some of his possessions, including the family iMac, so when he got back to Betty’s, he checked his email, then posted to Facebook: “On Tuesday I will be surrendering myself to the federal prison in Petersburg, Virginia, to begin the three-month incarceration that my government has deemed necessary to rehabilitate me.” It worried Amanda that he felt like such victim. She kept thinking, “There’s gonna have to be a point where all the excuses end, and he just moves on.” Tyler, on the other hand, had heard Eric acknowledge his mistakes, and at one point told me, “I guess with him it feels like they’re taking so much, that it’s cost so much.”

  14. “Mayday”: Eric Prokopi prison diaries and interviews, plus interviews with Amanda Prokopi, as well as photos and documents she had saved.

  15. “great apple muffin,” “Started playing,” “Felt sad”: Eric Prokopi prison diary.

  16. “fantasizing”: Papers of Amanda Prokopi. Amanda planned to visit Eric in prison maybe weekly, but that didn’t happen. When he told her he planned to eBay full time when he got out, and to prep for other dealers, she worried that he planned “just to step right back into his old life. Which is gone.” At one point, he talked about starting a scrapyard, and she sent him a book on the topic.

  17. “I loved that trip”: Ibid.

  18. “just go”: Ibid.

  19. “a cozy nest”: Interviews with Amanda Prokopi.

  CHAPTER 22: THE DINOSAUR BUS

  1. “Like, the hole”: Interviews with Bolor Minjin.

  2. Bolor Minjin in Ulaanbaatar: I was reporting in Mongolia at the time Minjin made her Gobi excursion, and accompanied her on part of it.

  3. “Nature-Study and Literature”: A good resource is the AMNH research library. Another is Teaching Children Science: Hands-on Nature Study in North America, 1890–1930, by Sally Gregory Kohlstedt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).

  4. “started with a suitcase”: Jonathan Mandell, “All Aboard for a Museum that Rolls On and On,” New York Times, August 20, 2000.

  5. “Tom Sawyer of paleontology”: Gardner, “Digging for Dinos.”

  6. “gets people excited”: Ibid.

  7. “one of Silicon Valley’s favorite villains”: Nick Wingfield, “Debating the Merits of Patent Warfare,” New York Times, May 30, 2012. See also Jennifer 8. Lee, “An Auction of ‘Nature’s Sculpture’: Rare Dinosaur Skulls,” New York Times, June 1, 2009.

  8. “To be blunt”: John Noble Wilford, “Did Dinosaurs Break the Sound Barrier?,” New York Times, December 2, 1997.

  9. PERC: For more information, see perc.org. Archives of PERC Reports can be found at https://www.perc.org/report-archive/.

  10. Ohrstrom foundations: Bolor Minjin credited Gerry Ohrstrom’s Epicurus Fund with the donation that covered the shipment of the dinosaur bus from New York to Mongolia. There are also Ohrstrom family foundations, both listed on Charity Navigator at 665 Fifth Avenue in New York. One is the George L. Ohrstrom Jr. Foundation, which in 2016 reported over $59 million in assets and paid $3.5 million in grants and contributions. The other is Ohrstrom Foundation Inc., which in 2016 reported over $55 million in assets and paid $1.2 million in grants and contributions. Regular beneficiaries include hospitals, libraries, the CIA Officers Memorial Foundation, fire departments, food pantries, and nature and wildlife conservation organizations.

  11. “huge disservice”: Ibid.

  12. “private landowners”: Ibid.

  13. “Once upon a time”: Linda E. Platts, “Fossil Farming Blooms Where Barley Withers,” PERC Reports, Fall 2007.

  14. UAZ Bukhanka: The UAZ is a photogenic torture box ubiquitous in Mongolian tourism. At least that was true of the one I hired. No discermible shock absorbers, no seat belts. Every bump in the road registered in the teeth. I’m no fragile flower but forget it, I was done. If your seat belt–free UAZ happens to catch the jagged edge of the eroding pavement at a high speed, you are finished.

  15. “tourism”: I was there.

  16. Children and horse racing: For a fascinating twenty-five-minute TV segment on this, see Drew Ambrose and Daniel Connell, “Mongolia’s Child Jockeys Risk Death to Race,” Al Jazeera, August 28, 2017, aljazeera.com.

  17. “We are going to party”: Interviews with Bolor Minjin.

  18. “Nomads are really good singers”: Ibid.

  19. “Someday they can sell it”: Interviews with Selenge Yadmaa.

  20. “Good for health”: I was there.

  21. “Maybe I will make an arrest”: Ibid.

  22. “Thank you very much”: Ibid.

  23. “drooling with fossils”: Interviews in Mongolia and later by Skype with Dr. Rosemary Bush and Dr. Steve Won. Bolor Minjin later recounted the discovery of the eggs to a reporter, saying, “We didn’t know what to do. I had a park ranger with me, but she didn’t have the skill to dig out that fossil. Even if she had the skill, she has no place to store that fossil. If she even had a place to store it, she doesn’t have the lab to prepare it. It’s one problem after another that we were facing.” See Jacqueline Ronson, “How to Shut Down Black Markets in Velociraptor Country,” inverse.com, February 7, 2017.

  24. “Those are eggs”: Interviews with Rosemary Bush and Steve Won.

  25. “they would wind up”: Ibid.

  EPILOGUE

  1. “unfailing gift”: “Dr. Andrews Resigns,” New York Times, November 11, 1941.

  2. “not only made the Museum a vital force”: Ibid.

  3. stolen: “Mongols Accuse Explorer of ’25,” New York Times, September 9, 1956.

  4. “perfectly ridiculous”: see “$5,000 Dinosaur Egg stolen from Colgate U,” the Troy Record, March 26, 1957. The egg was insured for $10,000. On the night of March 22, 1957, the glass case in which the egg was kept in Lathrop Hall was shattered, the egg stolen. The fossil was quickly found beneath the steps of a local church after Dr. Carl Kallgren, dean of the college, received an anonymous phone tip. (Some press reported that the egg was found on the church lawn.)

  5. Auctioned egg: The Robert M. Linsley Mus
eum at Colgate, in Hamilton, New York, calls the egg its most famous fossil.

  6. “necessarily permanent”: Novacek, Dinosaurs of the Flaming Cliffs.

  7. Philip Currie: See Tristin Hopper, “How a $34M dinosaur museum in northern Alberta went from big awards to bailouts,” National Post, December 4, 2016. See also Terry Reith and Briar Stewart, “Dinosaur museum in small-town Alberta hopes to hit the big time,” CBC News, September 2, 2015. Also Dan Ilika, “Celebrity Dino Dig Brings Stars,” Grand Prairie Daily Herald Tribune, July 3, 2011.

  8. Once upon a time: I bought an English version of A Story of Tarbosaurus Bataar at the Central Museum of Mongolian Dinosaurs in August 2015.

  9. “I fulfilled my duties”: Interview with Otgo, Ulaanbaatar, August 2015.

  10. Tsogtbaatar: Tsogtbaatar and I talked in his office in Ulaanbaatar in August 2015. He told me about coming to the States for the inspection, naming the team as “Phil Currie, from Canada, and Mark Norell, from MNH; and I’m from Mongolia.” He didn’t mention Bolor Minjin except to say that after she finished her PhD, he “invited her to join this official institute, and she organized some NGO instead.” He said that in the early days, after the fall of Communism, the Mongolian Academy of Sciences always attached paleontologists to foreign expeditions. He said Bataa, or Bat, the digger Eric Prokopi had met through Tuvshin, had once worked in the prep lab. “There are many herds people, especially old people, old herdsmen, they love to protect the illegal diggers’ activity,” he said, adding that they probably did so to get paid. Herders acted as park rangers but also as scouts. I didn’t yet know about the GEO article, much less have an English translation. In Tsogtbaatar’s office that day, I asked him what the difference would be, between the Natural History Museum (should it ever reopen) and the Central Museum of Mongolian Dinosaurs. By now the United States was repatriating skeleton after skeleton, to be housed in the old Lenin Museum. “The idea [for a dinosaur museum] is very good but it’s materialized wrong,” he told me. “There isn’t any specialty of paleontology. I was trying to help them but we have our own job. By my opinion it’s illegal diggers’ specimens, never published. It’s a shame to show the public.”