Bone Digging at Hell Creek

While researching a book, I often am drawn to investigate a subject in more detail. Something has intrigued me. I must know more. . . .

This happened most recently while researching my book, The Case of the Terrible T. rex, book six in my Doyle and Fossey, Science Detectives mysteries series. I was neck-deep researching paleontology, including compiling a list of museums of natural history, and places where kids could go on summer dinosaur digs. As I investigated the dino-digs, I thought, I want to do that . . .

So here I am on the Levrick Homestead, thirty miles north of Jordan, Montana. Which is to say, in the middle of nowhere. This morning I packed sunglasses, sunblock, water bottle, TP, rain gear, camera and video equipment and headed off with a team of paleontologists, students, and amateur bone diggers like myself. In good spirits, we bumped our way along rutted tracks into the far north of Hell Creek basin, where some of the finest dinosaur fossils have been discovered, including the first Tyrannosaurus rex ever found in the world. (Prior to that, we never knew T. rexes existed!)

With picks in hand, we went to work on one of the excavation sites. For a while it was nothing but the soft thuds of our picks. As our intrepid leader, Jessica says, "There's something about the sound of picks hammering in the early morning." It's a musical melody that rings of adventure. You never know what you will find . . .

Every now and then someone would stop and say, "I think I found something." Sometimes it was nothing more than a rock. Sometimes a rather nondescript fossilized bone. But throughout the day, covered with dust as the Montana sun bore down on us, we unearthed mini-treasures millions of years old: fish scales, a rib bone, a toe bone, turtle shell, dinosaur teeth and dinosaur dung. . . .

I'll be here for the next seven days. I'll try to blog, but I'll admit, I'm pretty wiped by the time we get back to camp. (Plus the Internet is touch-and-go.) In the meantime, I'll keep playing that musical melody– discovering history, and having an adventure of a lifetime.