This is a printer-friendly version of an article from Zip06.com.
08/01/2018 08:30 AMDinosaur fever has been raging since Jurassic Park first hit theaters in 1993. For some, maybe it started in 1988 with Steven Spielberg’s animated film The Land Before Time. There have been many avenues to dinosaur fascination since the first dinosaur fossil (Megalosaurus, meaning great lizard) was scientifically named in 1824.
East Haven resident Joe Albe wants dinosaur lovers to see the real thing. He lent his fossil collection to the Hagaman Memorial Library last month and offered to let the library keep it at least through the fall when school starts again.
“I figure, hey, the kids deserve to see them, you know, Jurassic Park is going on, so might as well show them the real stuff,” Joe says.
His fossil collection consists of a football-sized dinosaur skull with a full set of teeth, dinosaur droppings, a clam “the size of a hubcap” that’s never been opened, a nautilus with mother-of-pearl on it, a baculite (a prehistoric squid relative) about 16 inches long from South Dakota’s Black Hills, snails, and other small pieces, Joe says.
Of the baculite, “It’s in volcanic rock and it’s probably about 75 to 100 million years old,” he says. “When I opened the rock, all the mother of pearl came off and exposed all the internal organs. It’s beautiful—it looks like black and white stitching like a snake, like it was polished.”
Sascha Gardiner, children’s librarian at Hagaman Memorial Library, says, “All of us at Hagaman Library are excited to be hosting Joe’s fascinating collection through the fall. We are doing further research and working on getting an expert in to help identify some of the pieces. We welcome everyone with an interest in fossils to come view the fossils up close.”
The exhibit was arranged with Hagaman Reference Librarian Fawn Gillespie.
Joe’s path to paleontology came about through two unlikely sources: his motorcycle and a nascent form of Airbnb.
“About the year 2000,” Joe says, “I started going to South Dakota for the Sturgis motorcycle rally and got tired of paying for hotels because they’d double the prices. I contacted the Chamber of Commerce in Rapid City and they had like seven pages of people who wanted to rent rooms in their house, campers on the side of their house, and tents on their front lawn.
“I picked one out and I happened to pick out a good one—it was a real estate agent from Rapid City, his wife was a retired LPN nurse,” he continues. “Nice, nice people. They were charging me like $25 a night. I had my own room, I had my own bathroom, and I had a garage to put my motorcycle in.”
The couple’s nephew, whom Joe met a couple years later, was a fossil hunter.
“He knew where to go and what to do,” Joe says. “We went on private property, because it’s against the law to dig fossils anywhere but on private property. They’ll lock you up.”
They hunted together for five or six years.
“I’m not a paleontologist at all. I’m an amateur,” Joe explains. “But I got interested in it because he was going for agates, the gem agates that they find in the rivers. I did that with him and then we went gold panning for a while and got some flakes; we didn’t get a whole lot. I found some coins that belonged to an old mine that went out of business over 100 years ago.”
Joe has since discovered and sold a few pieces.
“I had a prehistoric turtle that I sold. I sold a couple of my fossils. You know, people are interested,” he says. “I got an attorney who’s interested in a piece for his desk.”
Joe says he approached the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History about his collection.
“They wanted me to donate. I said, ‘No, no. No donating.’ They said, ‘Well, we’ll put your name on it for eternity.’ I said, ‘Well, I’m not going to be here that long.’”
Joe, a two-time cancer survivor, is 71 and has lived in East Haven for 40 years. He and his wife, Donna, who works at Quinnipiac University, have been married for 16 years. They have five children and five grandchildren between them.
Joe’s generosity extends to his hair, as well. He has donated a foot of hair four times through Locks of Love.
“They send me a cute card thanking me for my sacrifice,” Joe says. “I figured I’d give back a little. I survived, I should give back a little if I could.”
When asked about the dinosaur skull, Joe said, “It’s a small skull, a little smaller than a football. That would probably sell for maybe $1,500 or $2,000. I mean, they’re not ridiculously expensive. Somebody wants something on their desk that they can’t buy at Walmart, I got it.”
Hagaman Memorial Library, 227 Main Street, East Haven, is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday and Friday and 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday. It reopens on Saturdays starting Sept. 8. For more information, call Fawn or Sascha at the library at 203-468-3890.