Bruce Erickson, paleontologist at Science Museum of Minnesota, dies at 91

As an ambitious paleontologist fresh out of college, Bruce Erickson promised the Science Museum of Minnesota that he would find a dinosaur for its collection when it decided to hire him in 1959.

Two years later, he and his team delivered.

First spotted by his keen-eyed wife, Lois, they uncovered a triceratops at the bottom of a ravine in the Hell Creek Formation of Montana. It was one of the earliest and largest nearly complete skeletons of its kind in the world, and became a centerpiece of the museum's collection.

But it was digging up crocodilian fossils — mostly in the Wannagan Creek area of western North Dakota, where crocodiles roamed 60 million years ago right after the age of dinosaurs — that captivated Erickson for most of his 58-year-long career. Those crocodiles are thought to be the ancestors of modern-day alligators found today in places like Florida.

Erickson, the Science Museum's longtime curator of paleontology who helped it amass an impressive trove of fossils, died on Jan. 16. He was 91.

"What he built at the museum with the collection, that's a dataset that will be mined by scientists for years and generations to come," said Laurie Fink, the museum's chair of science. "We sometimes forget how valuable these collections are, but they're going to tell us about climate change — looking at what happened before dinosaurs were extinct and after. It tells us about the environment. These fossils will tell that story."

She added that researchers from around the world will soon be able to more easily access it since the museum recently secured funding to digitize its collection of crocodilian fossils from North Dakota that Erickson and his teams unearthed over nearly three decades.

Alex Hastings, who succeeded him as the museum's curator of paleontology, shares Erickson's passion for crocodiles. When he came to interview for the job, he recalled his awe when Erickson first gave him a glimpse of the vast collection.

"He started opening up all of the crocodile cabinets and I almost started crying," Hastings said. "I was like, 'Oh, my goodness, this is so amazing and wonderful.' "

Not only is the collection notable for its size that includes samples from multiple sites and that spans multiple time periods, but Hastings said Erickson was also a meticulous note-taker and made detailed maps and illustrations.

"That's really important for any kind of scientific research," he said.

The son of a coffee salesman, Erickson was born and raised in Minneapolis. His love of fossils started when he was about 10 years old. He was playing with a friend by his house on the banks of the Mississippi River when they saw something peculiar.

"They saw a man picking up rocks and cracking them open with a hammer," said Lois Erickson. "He turned out to be a geology professor at the University of Minnesota. He taught the boys how to find fossils. And that started it."

He was drafted into the Korean War when he was 19 and spent two years on the front, she said. When he returned home, he attended the University of Minnesota, where he met his wife.

He worked at the Field Museum in Chicago before returning to Minnesota to finish his degree, she said.

Erickson was drawn to Wannagan Creek in North Dakota after a shoebox of bones discovered by a rancher in western North Dakota came to Erickson's attention in 1970. He determined that they were crocodile remains. Intrigued, he started digging around in that area for more.

He ended up uncovering a massive trove of specimens at that site over 27 years that are now contained in the museum's displays and research vault.

Erickson's wife, and later his three sons, often accompanied him when he was out doing fieldwork in North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming.

"The kids would pitch in, too, and would help plaster," his wife said. "They learned a lot. … They had the biggest sandbox in the world at the digs."

He also had a dedicated group of volunteers, many of whom worked with him for decades.

"The relationship he had with them — it was touching to see," said Fink, recalling how it evolved in his later years when he spent more time at the museum. "They would have their twice-a-day coffee breaks where he would go with them and just sit and talk about fossils."

Even after his retirement in 2017, he continued to study fossils. At the time of his death, he was working on a paper with a colleague about fossils found in southwestern Minnesota, northwestern Iowa and parts of South Dakota,

"They had it almost completed," his wife said. "He just couldn't stop."

Besides his wife, survivors include sons Brooke, Todd and Timothy Erickson, and a granddaughter.

Services have been held.