A small town in Wyoming is making a big contribution to the world of paleontology.
Yellowstone Public Radio’s Orlinda Worthington takes us on a dinosaur dig using new technology to unlock the mysteries found in old bones.
“My goodness, look at that” “Isn’t that something.” “Yeah, hexagons and pentagons.”
Dr. Scott Persons and his team of eight students appear awestruck as they uncover a large series of osteoderms, boney deposits forming scales or plates similar to what you see on an armadillo. This one is from a nodosaur, a heavily armored dinosaur that likely roamed Wyoming about 66 million years ago.
“I love it.” “It just keeps going.”
Dr. Persons is a professor at The College of Charleston in South Carolina and the research curator of the Paleo Museum, in Glenrock, Wyoming. Each summer he brings students to spend three weeks in the tiny central-Wyoming town of about 2500 residents. They slowly and meticulously search for fossils on the nearby Glenrock Exposure in the Lance Formation. This hilly, dry, sagebrush dotted landscape is where the deer and the antelope - and long ago - the dinosaurs roamed.
Over the course of four summers, Persons’ teams have also uncovered an impressive array of fossilized plants, shrimp, snails, fish, turtles and birds one tiny piece at a time.
“And we are looking at the enamel on teeth of all the critters we find here,” student Clell Carnes said.
Clell Carnes is a graduate student. His research project is doing isotope analysis on what they find.
“So carbon, oxygen, sulfur isotopes, all of that stuff can give us insights into the diet and ecology of all the stuff we find here. So most of the time we’ll figure out what they eat and where they live based on their bones,” Carnes said.
Doctor Persons says the Glenrock Exposure is one of the best places in the county for his field school because of the incredible wealth of fossils to be found.
“They're digging on a great big Triceratops skeleton right now. But just over there, there they're working on a dinosaur track site. And a little bit further up we've got a wonderful microsite. Microsites are places where very small fossils are preserved. They give you not just small bones from big dinosaurs, but also the scales from garfish, the teeth of little freshwater rays. We've got leaf fossils preserved here all within very short walking distance. It's a fantastic place to teach paleontology,” Persons said.
The students spend full days scouring the hillside for bones - avoiding cactus, snakes and heat stroke on hot, Wyoming afternoons.
“So we've got our very big footprints. Look how wide this is. And this is definitely a quadruped, right?” Person’s said.
Student Michael Wallington is part of the team uncovering some big tracks - about 15 inches wide embedded in a sandstone slope.
“ My job is to figure out who it was that left these tracks, how fast they were going, how heavy they were, that sort of a thing,” Wallington said.
Not everyday yields big discoveries like a quadruped or a nodosaur. Some days the team returns to the hotel tired, dirty and empty handed as far as new, old bones go. But student William Steelman shares one reason they'll go back into the field the next day and the day after that.
“There is a cool factor. And, it's our story. Like this, it's our planet. We're living here. We're, we're just like all these things we're digging up, you know. In, in millions of years, someone may be digging us up. And, maybe it's important they know about us, and so maybe it's important we know about these things,” Steelman said.
The landowner made only on condition when allowing the students to dig on this land - what’s found in Wyoming, stays in Wyoming.
“The specimens that we find here all ultimately wind up in the Glenrock Paleon Museum where they can go on public display, where they are protected for future scientific research.” But ultimately, they all remain the property of the Paleon Museum,” Person’s said.
In Glenrock, Wyoming, I’m Orlinda Worthington.
So where do these fossils go first? And where can you see them? Next week, we’ll take you back to Glenrock for a visit to the Paleon Museum as our series “Dig This” continues.
