MEDIA, Pa., February 12, 2026, PRNewswire/ -- Explorer, author, exhibit creator, and Jurassic Park advisor Don Lessem has been awarded the Order of the Polar Star, the highest civilian award Mongolia can present to a foreign citizen. Created in 1936, the Order was bestowed upon Lessem in acknowledgment of his contributions over three decades to world awareness of Mongolian history and culture.
Lessem initially visited Mongolia in 1989, one of the first Westerners to do so since the 1930’s. He researched its rich dinosaur quarries at the famed Flaming Cliffs where the first nests of dinosaur eggs were discovered. Since then, he has included Mongolian dinosaurs in exhibits seen worldwide by tens of millions of visitors at premiere venues including the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Mr. Lessem spent 10+ years creating his Genghis Khan: the Great Civilizer exhibit, which opened in 2009 at the Houston Museum of Natural History. In 2013, he was chosen by the Mongolian Government to create the permanent Genghis Khan exhibit displayed at Mongolia’s National Museum in Ulaanbataar.
On accepting the award at the Mongolian Embassy in Washington DC on February 6, 2026, Lessem said: “I am humbled and honored to receive this recognition of my work with colleagues- paleontologists, curators, educators, museums and collectors from around the world.” From his earliest visits to Mongolia, Lessem became aware of the vast, and now neglected, civilizing influence Genghis Khan exerted on the world. Known for having conquered three times more of the world than Alexander the Great, Genghis’s introductions to the West - including democracy, meritocracy, religious freedom, and diplomatic immunity, among others, have been essential to the making of the modern world.
Lessem’s Genghis Khan exhibit continues its U.S. tour. It is currently on display at the Mulva Cultural Museum in De Pere, Wisconsin. (https://mulvacenter.org/exhibits/)
Previous American recipients of Mongolia’s Order of the Polar Star include President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Arizona Senator John McCain.
In addition to promoting Genghis Khan and Mongolia, “Dino” Don has authored more than 40 books on dinosaurs, led excavations of the world's largest dinosaurs from Mongolia to Patagonia, raised money for dinosaur research which lead to him becoming the only living person to have a dinosaur named after him, the Lessemsaurus, and won a $500,000 investment in his dinosaur robotics company from entrepreneur Mark Cuban on Shark Tank.
According to Don Lessem: “in an always-changing and increasingly global and fragile society, this recognition is a beacon for younger generations to understand, respect and empower scientific knowledge and multicultural cooperation. Like the dinosaurs that the Mongolian excavations and the research teams helped to unravel in the past 30 years, and just like the exhibits that my company displays around the world, in national museums and progressive zoos, our societies need to be strong, united and cooperative in order to avoid extinction.”