OUR WEEKEND ROADTRIP ACTUALLY BEGAN about 66 million years ago when an asteroid roughly the size of New York City smashed into Earth, a calamity that wiped out the dinosaurs along with much of life on the planet.
Close Encounter at Devil's Tower
It was a last minute invitation—were we interested in joining a dinosaur dig in the Hell Creek Formation with the Denver Museum of Nature and Science? Let’s see—it’s a 600-mile drive to the “Badlands,” there is only one decent place to stay in the area and we had been on a two-week paleo-dig in Utah before. And it’s over the Fourth of July weekend. Of course we’ll go!
Oh, give me a home/Where the Dinosaurs Rome—Hell Creek Formation
We stayed at the Red River Inn in Baker MT, the dig “headquarters” was in Marmarth, ND and the dig sites were somewhere between, maybe in South Dakota for all we know. The 500-foot thick, dinosaur-rich Hell Creek Formation covers parts of all three states and was home to many theropod species including vegetarian hadrosaurs, “duckbilled” dinosaurs, and predatory carnivores like T-Rex.
Tyler and Hadrosaur Fossil
It takes more than a Village, it takes a family
Tyler from DMNS Paleontology Department was a natural to run the show—he grew up in Marmarth and has been collecting dinosaur fossils and guiding paleontologists since he was a kid. He also owns the dig headquarters building and nearby prep lab, his brother has the heavy equipment needed to move the massive bones around, especially after they have been coated with protective plaster “jackets” and he and his wife, Justine, can spend the 4th with his folks.
Six feet long . . . and he doesn't look friendly!
This can't be the right place, can it?
We were joined by Christina, a museum VP with less field experience than we have, but our first day didn’t exactly deal with massive bones. Our first stop was to move a 6-foot Prairie Rattlesnake from the road—naively, we hadn’t counted on snakes! We followed unmarked dirt roads, seemingly at random, past those ubiquitous oil beam pumps on BLM land, finally stopping at a locked gate.
Hiking to the Gumbo formation
On Top of the World; Christina, Connie and Tyler
It's easy—just remove everything that doesn't look like a Dinosaur
A hike of about a mile brought us to a “gumbo” formation where Tyler knew of some partially exposed duck-billed dino bones. More of the team would excavate them later—we were sifting through a “micro-site,” getting familiar with our icepick-like tools and finding mostly gar fish scales that are helpful in dating the site.
Plant fossils are easier than Animals
Fossilized Pine Cones
After an al fresco lunch we stopped at another rock formation to split rocks for leaf fossils, a much easier and productive endeavor. Nearly every rock-hammer blow revealed fern, pine cone or other unidentified leaf fossils. Paleobotany might be a better career path!
Prehistoric Turtles are Tylers Speciality
"It's Turtles all the way down, Sonny"
Meanwhile, Back in the Lab . . .
Back at dig HQ in Marmarth Tyler introduced us to his folks and Natalie, a Museum post-doc, took a break from moving jacketed fossils to show us the prep lab. One piece that was nearly finished was a number of ancient turtles that died when the lake dried up, maybe as a result of the asteroid. Turns out that turtles are Tyler’s speciality and this piece is his pride and joy. Connie even took a turn at preparing a large rib fossil using a dentist-type drill. She removed a lot of the encasing rock but was super-careful not to get too close to the bone.
