North Dakota
Mammoth dig site in North Dakota shows promise • North Dakota Monitor
A dig at a site believed to have mammoth bones shows it is worthy of further excavation, according to the North Dakota Geological Survey.
Mammoth bones were first discovered at the site in northwest North Dakota in 1988 during the construction of a garage. The North Dakota Geological Survey and state Historical Society returned to this site in September to confirm that mammoth bones are there.
Senior Paleontologist Clint Boyd said the fossil dig near the garage aligns with what construction workers reported and that there are likely more bones beneath the garage.
A dig below the garage would require money from the Legislature to move a portion of the garage, dig beneath and then restore the garage.
Boyd said there has been “great collaboration” with the property owner, who is not the same owner that built the garage.
Boyd reviewed the mammoth dig site and other archaeological explorations Tuesday with the North Dakota Industrial Commission, which oversees the agency.
Boyd said the woolly mammoth was likely not yet an adult and is about 13,500 years old, right about the time that evidence shows the first humans living in North America. He said no evidence of human activity has been found at the site.
North Dakota
Today in History, 1993: North Dakota-born astronaut leaves Fargo school kids starstruck
On this day in 1993, Jamestown native and astronaut Rick Hieb visited Fargo’s Roosevelt Elementary School, captivating students with stories of his record-breaking spacewalks and the daily realities of life in orbit.
Here is the complete story as it appeared in the paper that day:
Students have blast with astronaut
By Tom Pantera, STAFF WRITER
Like some astronauts, Rick Hieb downplays the importance of the profession. “We have an astronaut office; there’s a hundred of us in there,” he said. “My office-mates are astronauts. My neighbor one street over is the commander of my last flight. The next street over is the commander of the previous flight. We’re kind of a dime a dozen around where we all live” in Houston, he said.
“We sort of realize that if we make a mistake, it’s going to be of historic proportions,” he said. “But you don’t really think of yourself as being some kind of historic figure.”
But the 37-year-old Jamestown, N.D., native said his importance as a role model comes home when he speaks to children, as he did Thursday at Fargo’s Roosevelt Elementary School.
He kept the kids spellbound with a description of the May 1992 space shuttle mission in which he was one of three astronauts who walked in space to recover an errant satellite — the largest and longest space walk in history. He illustrated his talk with slides and film of the mission, including the capture of the satellite.
But he drew perhaps his biggest reactions when he explained how astronauts handle going to the bathroom during long spacewalks — adult-size diapers — and the peculiar cleanup problems that come with getting nauseous in a weightless environment.
Hieb already has started training for his next mission, when he will be payload commander aboard the shuttle Columbia in July 1994, although he noted the schedule “might slip a little bit.”
It will be an international spacelab mission, meaning a pressurized laboratory containing 80 different experiments will be housed in the shuttle’s payload bay.
“Every one of those scientists wants to teach us their science we’ll be doing on that flight,” he said.
About 40 percent of the experiments will be done for Japanese scientists, about 50 percent will be for Europeans, 5 percent for Canadians and the rest for Americans. The flight will last 13 days, and the shuttle will carry enough astronauts for two work shifts.
Hieb and others in the crew spent much of December in Europe for training and will be going to Europe and Japan for more training until about June.
He said he could have put in for a flight that featured another spacewalk, but he wanted to be a payload commander of a spacelab instead.
A 1973 graduate of Jamestown High School, Hieb earned degrees in math and physics from Northwest Nazarene College in Nampa, Idaho, in 1977 and a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Colorado in 1979. He joined NASA right out of graduate school, becoming an astronaut in 1986.
His first mission was in spring 1991 as a crew member of the shuttle Discovery.
Hieb would not say Thursday if the 1994 mission would be his last.
“I’m not promising anybody anything beyond this,” he said. “A spacelab flight is not nearly as sexy as putting on a spacesuit and going outside and grabbing onto satellites and stuff like that. But for me, it’ll kind of fill out the checklist of all the kinds of things that mission specialists can do. I’ll have kind of done everything that we do. I’m not for sure going to quit, but I’m not for sure going to stay either.”
Kate Almquist is the social media manager for InForum. After working as an intern, she joined The Forum full time starting in January 2022. Readers can reach her at kalmquist@forumcomm.com.
North Dakota
Plain Talk: ‘You’re talking over 4,000 more victims every year than was the case in 2014’
MINOT — “I just didn’t get it prioritized to get out the door.”
That’s what Attorney General Drew Wrigley said on this episode of Plain Talk when asked about the state’s annual crime report, which is typically released over the summer, but this year wasn’t made public until New Year’s Eve.
The delayed report comes amid an intense debate over crime in North Dakota. The most recent report, covering the year 2024, showed some declines from recent peaks in serious crime categories, but they’re still significantly up over the last decade.
“Violent crime and robbery crimes against the person … came down 2%,” Wrigley said, “but that 2% … makes last year the 10th highest of the last 11 years. You’re talking over 4,000 more victims every year than was the case in 2014.”
Wrigley said he plans to continue his push for stricter sentencing policies in next year’s legislative session. He was unsuccessful in winning enough votes among lawmakers for his proposed reforms during the first two legislative sessions of his tenure in office.
Wrigley also addressed delays in his office in responding to open records and open meetings complaints filed by the public, and the news media — “the number of requests is quite robust,” he said — and said that he planned to address a legislative request for an opinion on Retirement and Investment Office bonuses in “weeks” not months.
Also on this episode, co-host Chad Oban and I react to my story about top executives at the F5 Project giving themselves personal loans out of the nonprofit’s revenues, as well as my report about Legislature’s potentially preempting, during their upcoming special session, a ballot measure for universal school meals with a proposal of their own.
If you want to participate in Plain Talk, just give us a call or text at
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North Dakota
Flu cases surge across North Dakota, hitting emergency departments in Fargo
FARGO — Health officials say influenza cases are surging across North Dakota, hitting hospitals and clinics earlier and more aggressively than usual this season.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is tracking a rise in flu illnesses across the country, with roughly 8% of visits to health care providers labeled as flu-like illness, the highest in more than 25 years.
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