Brooks: From big beavers to little bears, meet Minnesota’s newest state symbols

Out of all the stars in the sky, out of all the bones beneath our feet, Minnesota lawmakers chose only the best.

Minnesota deserves the best, which is why choosing state symbols has always been a knock-down, drag-out fight at the Legislature. You try getting a room full of people to agree on which muffin captures the essence of an entire state.

(The answer is blueberry; the Legislature hammered out the whole muffin question in 1988.)

So it’s worth celebrating when a divided Legislature came together in the final hours of this year’s session to agree on not one but two new state symbols.

Ursa Minor, the little bear, home to the north star, will be the official constellation of the North Star State.

And finally, after decades of effort, Minnesota will have an official state fossil. Please welcome the giant beaver, mightiest rodent of the Pleistocene.

Former St. Paul resident Castoroides ohioensis was a beaver the size of a black bear. Minnesotans have been petitioning to get its oversized bones on the list of official state symbols for almost four decades. Despite the awkward “Ohio” in its name.

Credit for the campaign’s success this time around should be shared equally between the lawmakers who were willing to multitask during an unusually short and hectic session and the Minnesota museums that took up the cause.

In 2021, the Science Museum of Minnesota put the question of Most Minnesota Fossil to the people of Minnesota. The giant beaver was up against some of the coolest fossils in Minnesota. Scimitar-toothed cats. Ancient bison. Sharks. Crocodiles. A 1.9 billion-year-old lump of fossilized bacteria that gave us the air we’re still breathing today (honorable mention to the stromatolite — thanks for all the oxygen).

More than 11,000 Minnesotans voted, and it wasn’t even close. The giant beaver won, turning fossil enthusiasts into fossil lobbyists.

It took a bipartisan effort this year to tuck the fossil proposal into the bipartisan funding bill that will ensure state government will be able to function for the next two years. The bill now awaits Gov. Tim Walz’s signature.

“It’s still a good time to remember our history and what we think is important to the state,” state Sen. Jim Abeler, R-Anoka, said when the giant beaver came up for consideration in the middle of deeper debates on topics like elections and state agency funding. “If you were going to have a state fossil, you’d want to have something as cool as the giant beaver.”

For years, state Rep. Ginny Klevorn, DFL-Plymouth, resisted the idea of an official state fossil — until she saw the entire curriculum that the Science Museum of Minnesota developed based on the fossil and its history. On Monday, she thanked Rep. Andrew Myers, R-Tonka Bay, for sponsoring the proposal one last time.

“It’s good to know we can debate important issues and we can get an important bill across the finish line in time,” said Klevorn, co-chair of the House State Government Finance and Policy Committee, just before the conference report passed the House by a vote of 116-18 — including a tiny provision about giant beavers.

“I want to make a public apology to you,” she told Rep. Erin Koegel, DFL-Spring Lake Park, who sponsored the state fossil bill in 2021. “You have begged me to pass the giant beaver bill. I have refused.” But after seeing the giant beaver curriculum, she said she had a change of heart.

The Science Museum of Minnesota also celebrated the news.

“The Giant Beaver represents an important chapter in Minnesota’s natural heritage,” said museum president and CEO Alison Brown in a statement. “By designating it as our state fossil, we celebrate our rich paleontological legacy and create new opportunities to educate Minnesotans about the fascinating prehistoric creatures that once called our state home.”

Naming an official state symbol can take decades of effort by generations of enthusiasts. Every few years, school children head to the Legislature for a firsthand lesson in what it takes to get government to do what you want.

Back in 2012, it was a group of first graders, petitioning lawmakers to pick the black bear as Minnesota’s official state mammal. Lawmakers said no, which no doubt taught a bunch of 6-year-olds a different lesson, which they carry with them into the polling station now that they’re old enough to vote.

If it’s any consolation, the state now has an official bear made of stars, guiding us north.

Back in 1988, it was a group of third graders that headed to the Legislature to plead the case for an official state fossil — the giant beaver. There’s an old photo in the Star Tribune archives of two of the students, legs dangling from chairs in a Senate hearing room, looking hopeful.

The Legislature said no that time, and the next time, and the time after that. But if anyone knows those two little boys in the photo — Scott Sundly and Eric Singley, who were third-graders at North Star Elementary 37 years ago — congratulate them.

And tell them thanks for the new state symbol.