Michele Torrey's Blog

Bone Digging at Hell Creek “Tell Me a Secret” Trailer Launch Party

Bone Digging at Hell Creek — Part II

Ten-year-old Liam gives fossil-hunting a try.

I'll be honest, I wasn't sure whether I'd like squatting in the dirt all day long under the hot Montana sun, chipping away at dirt or at a rock wall with my dino-hammer. PaleoWorld warned me when I signed up: "This is not a tour." They weren't kidding. If one doesn't like heat, bugs, dirt, thundershowers, squatting, sitting on rocks, or hammering until your arm falls off, then maybe a visit to an air-conditioned dinosaur museum would be a better choice.

Some people didn't tolerate it too well; after five minutes of chip-chip-chipping with the ol' sweat drip-drip-dripping, they'd sit and yak with their neighbor, or check their watch to see if it was lunchtime yet. Not me, man. Turns out, fossil-hunter blood flows through my veins. I was content to dig for eight hours a day, heat or not, fueled by the anticipation of discovery.

Violators have been warned!

At first, the discoveries were modest: croc teeth and croc skin (called scute), dino dung (coprolite), small therapod teeth, mini-vertebrae, fish scales, weathered fossil bone, hadrosaur teeth, tortoise shell, and pieces of triceritops frill. But then came the day when we went to one of Jessica's must-watch microsites.

Now Jessica Martin is PaleoWorld's intrepid, ever-patient paleontologist and field leader. For the past three years, she had been dutifully keeping an eye on this area as it was sloughing off large pieces of rib bone. Three times a year she scouted the area, looking for the source — the dinosaur embedded in a sedimentary layer, eroding off bits of bone as it gradually became exposed and weathered. . . .

So on this day, while prospecting, I spotted a bone sticking out of a hillside and sounded the dinosaur-call. Jessica hurried over to the spot and, while clinging to the side of the hill, announced that it was, indeed, fossil bone. She called for her tools. The excitement was palpable. Would the bone continue into the hillside, or was it just a little piece temporarily embedded in the surface on its gravitational journey to the bottom? Jessica chipped away at the hillside while I stood alongside. At 10 inches the bone was still going strong. At 14 inches, still going. Finally, at a whopping 20 inches, the bone came to its natural end. Ecstatic and anticipating a soon-to-be-completely-exposed dinosaur, we named our discovery, Judy. We even held a little Judy-celebration party which consisted of big smiles, plenty of woo-hoos, and the dancing of jigs. (Although identification is not yet absolute, we believe the bone to belong to a carnivore. A BIG carnivore!)

The next day, which was to be my final day, we precariously dove back into the hillside with our rock hammers and excitement, officially creating site #4 for PaleoWorld. Seven of us chipped and hammered away until the opening was so large we could stand in it. In the course of the day we uncovered a perfectly preserved tooth belonging, again, to a BIG carnivore! Possibly and hopefully, the same one! It was a thrilling end to what, I hope, is only the beginning. . . . I'll keep tabs on the team and on "Judy" through their daily logs at www.paleoworld.org (click "2010 Field Investigation" in the upper left corner).