South Dakota Reference Libraries

Wind Cave National Park is located in South Dakota in the United States, only ten miles away from the town of Hot Springs. The park holds 33,847 acres of cave system, and was the first national park of its kind. European explorers and Native Americans that traveled through the area knew that the cave was there, but there has been no existence of habitation found within the cave. Although the...

Badlands national Park is located in the southwest region of South Dakota. It holds 242,756 acres of land, with 64,144 acres comprising a protected wilderness area. The park was designated as a national monument in 1929 and established in 1939, but attained national park status in 1978. The Stronghold Unit area of the park is managed by the National Park Service and the Oglala Lakota tribe and...

Tyrannosaurus, meaning “tyrant lizard,” was a genus of theropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Period (68 to 65 million years ago). It was among the last non-avian dinosaurs to exist prior to the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event. Perhaps the most famous Tyrannosaurus species, T. rex, was named in 1905 by Henry Fairfield Osborn, president of the American Museum of Natural History...

The Roseate Tern (Sterna dougallii) is a seabird from the tern family, Sternidae. This bird has a number of geographical races that mainly differ in bill color and minor plumage details. S. d. dougallii breeds on the Atlantic coasts of Europe and North America, and winters south to the Caribbean and West Africa. Both the European and North American populations have been in long term decline,...