William Lee Stokes, revered as a pioneer Utah geologist, a great teacher and the discoverer of one of the world's premier dinosaur quarries, died Monday.
The 79-year-old scientist died at University Hospital of complications of diabetes, said Betty Stokes, his wife of 55 years. Funeral arrangements are pending."His geology research has made an important and permanent contribution to our knowledge about our physical surroundings," said Gov. Mike Leavitt.
In June, Leavitt honored Mr. Stokes with the Governor's Medal for Science and Technology, citing his work in discovering the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry in Emery County and in establishing what is now the Utah Museum of Natural History.
Mr. Stokes, who taught at the University of Utah since 1947 until his retirement in 1980, authored important volumes about geology. Besides his work in paleontology, he was noted as a geologist, helping create the state's first comprehensive geological map.
Lehi Hintze, geology professor emeritus at Brigham Young University recalled that he and Mr. Stokes worked for four years on the geological map. In making the now-classic contribution, Mr. Stokes covered the eastern section of the state while Hintze took on the western part. The map was first published in the 1960s.
"He was quite perceptive. He was very good at interpreting the things that he discovered," Hintze said.
"He was a major contributor to our understanding of what the geology of Utah was like . . . His classes in paleontology were cited by his students as being extremely helpful. He was well-prepared, well-informed, well-organized, and his classes were never a waste of time," Hintze added.
Mr. Stokes was born in 1915 in Hiawatha, Emery County. Growing up, he discovered that cowboys and sheepherders were coming upon strange bone fossils - later identified as dinosaurs.
When he attended Princeton University, he wrote his Ph.D. thesis on the Morrison formation, where many dinosaur fossils are preserved throughout much of the West. Eventually, he developed the Cleveland-Lloyd quarry, a project that recovered 10,000 dinosaur bones.
To honor his work, eight fossil specimens were named after him, including the Stokesoaurus.
He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from Brigham Young University in 1937 and 1938, respectively, and his doctorate from Princeton in 1941.