AGENTS DUG UP MORE PROBLEMS FOR ARCHAEOLOGIST

It all started with the fossilized skeleton of a tyrannosaurus rex that
Peter Larson excavated in South Dakota in 1990.

Larson had permission from the Indian rancher whose land he was searching
to look for fossils. And he paid the rancher $5,000 for this find, before
turning it over to the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research, which
Larson founded in 1974.

That’s where the government stepped in. The rancher had placed his land in
trust to the government, federal officials said. So Larson had no right to
anything found there and had to return the dinosaur bone. The rancher, in
fact, claimed he didn’t realize Larson’s check was for the dinosaur fossil.

Larson, of Hill City, S.D., appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court,
which sided with the government.

But that’s not where the story ended.

In fighting Larson’s civil case, federal agents seized his records and the
institute’s records in 1992, scrutinized them for two years, then brought a
39-count indictment against him. He was convicted of two misdemeanors that
are rarely enforced -- taking a fossil worth less than $100 from federal
lands and possessing a fossil from federal lands. He also was convicted on
two felony counts of possessing more than $10,000 in "monetary
instruments," cash and traveler’s checks without declaring it when leaving
or entering the country.

The charges were retaliation pure and simple for Larson’s outspoken
reaction to the federal government’s tactics, Larson’s defenders said.

None of the charges he faced related to the trophy dinosaur fossil he’d
found. The money he’d taken out of the country hadn’t been for drugs or
other criminal activity. But Larson lost his appeals and was sentenced to
two years in prison.

His lawyer, Patrick Duffy, offered this analysis to the media in South
Dakota at the time: "The moral is, 'Don’t [anger] the Department of
Justice, because they’ll crush you.’

Checked-by: Richard Lake