After my first Earthwatch trip, I wanted to do something different, something with dinosaurs. I’ve always been fascinated by fossils, so when I found an Earthwatch expedition that involved a real dinosaur dig, I signed up immediately. The site was in eastern Montana, near Fort Peck Reservoir, close to where the first T. rex was discovered. I even got to view the exact spot where that T. rex was found.

The Badlands out there are rugged, treeless hills made of loose sediment from the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods. Perfect for fossil hunting. Our mission wasn’t to uncover full skeletons but to do statistical sampling around the KT boundary, the layer that marks the asteroid impact extinction event.

We would dig up 6,000 pounds of sediment at a time, fill burlap sacks, and haul them back to the lake to sift. The idea was to see what kinds of different fossils showed up below and above the KT layer. Any fossils counted. Reptiles, mammals, birds, and dinosaurs.

Our lead scientist believed he found dinosaur fossils above the KT boundary, suggesting some dinosaurs might’ve survived the extinction. That theory is still debated. Could those bones have just been re-deposited from older layers? Maybe. Maybe not. But we did find some.

One of the ranchers also tipped us off to some bones poking out of the ground. We started excavating and uncovered a Triceratops. Part of the head shield and some ribs. That was a thrill.

The best moment though? I spotted a huge shoulder bone in a gully and got excited. The scientist took one look and said, “That’s a bison. Maybe 25,000 years old. Practically yesterday in geologic time.”

It was hard, dusty work. But I loved every minute of it. Read about current Earthwatch expeditions here.