6/15/2020 - Slow on the updates, but we are on it. In the past few weeks, we have opened up one of our major sites for this season, JKrex2020! This was a major undertaking. We first hired a professional surveyor to come in and establish the legal line due to the proximity of public land. What an education for our group yet again. It was outstanding to see the surveyor use the early 1900's notes to find the original stone markers. Then using modern GPS equipment, draw the line within mm's! We put in posts to clearly mark the boundary to ensure we did not disturb any public land soil and habitat.
Next, we hired a large excavator to come in and remove the massive amount of overburden on the site. Roger just finished a few days ago, almost 8 days for dirt moving. We are now in the site finding and mapping elements. Follow this site under our "Current Projects" section.
While all that work was being done, we spent some time in a Channel Deposit where we located many spectacular individual fossils. We will be adding pictures of several of them soon. We may also be undertaking an Articulated Triceratops skeleton that a nearby rancher found a year ago, the site is looking very interesting!
4/12/2020 - Dang it, it snowed! Picture below.
4/10/2020 - Nate was out prospecting today. No new major site discoveries but a lot of land covered. He also worked a little in the new channel site Katie found. Found a few tumbled fossils and part of a turtle shell. We are just starting to explore the perimeter of the new channel site, hopefully some nice material will come from it this summer. Snow in the forecast for our area, may be a week before we are out again.
4/8/2020 - Our team has been out a couple more times this past week. Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, we are hiking separately in different areas. Fortunately, there are no people out in the badlands where we hike so we are able to keep working without risk of contact. It has been nice to get out in the fresh Montana air and get much needed exercise! Our biggest worries are those pesky BuzzWorms that are just waking up from their winter sleep "AKA Rattlesnakes". CK found a few small fossils at our microsites that we check every year on 4/6/2020, a nice paranychodon tooth and a rooted mammal tooth. With every rain, these sites expose some new small fossils, we check them year round because they are destroyed by the elements if we do not collect them. The layer is not productive to dig so we just wait for erosion. Clayton and his son Luke visited one of their channel sites on 4/7/2020 and discovered a variety of nice isolated fossils. They had a much better day then us but they had to endure harsh winds and blowing sand. Just click on the gallery images to be able to read full description and scroll.
3/29/2020 - We made it out to the badlands for the first time in 2020. Great to be outdoors and hiking the beautiful Hell Creek Formation in Montana. We didn't make any great discoveries today but enjoyed the 6 mile hike! Just click on a gallery image to read full caption and scroll.
