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By Dallas Evans, Natural Science Educator/Curator
The pursuit of dinosaurs can entail some hot days, hard labor, and very heavy lifting. We are lucky to discover and uncover the bones of duckbill dinosaurs at the Ruth Mason Quarry in South Dakota. This remote dig site contains bones by the 1000s, and almost all of them are from the same type of dinosaur—the Edmontosaurus.
These dinosaurs are big. A full grown Edmontosaurus would weigh as much as 4 tons and be as big as a school bus. But after nearly 10 years of digging at this site, we often want to excavate something that’s different, and well, smaller.
One of our curators, William Ripley, specializes in the search for “micro fossils.”
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It takes a very special kind of person to spend long hours sorting through debris in the search for micro fossils. And by all accounts William is considered a very special person. He extols the importance of Danish death metal music, World War 2 re-enactment, and chocolate pudding pie, all while looking for tiny fossil bones and teeth. But he finds some amazing stuff.
He has found small bones from big dinosaurs like Triceratops, T. rex and Ankylosaur. And he’s found the small bones from small dinosaurs too—like Pachycephalosaur, Dromaeosaur and Troodon.
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"39801","attributes":{"class":"media-image","typeof":"foaf:Image","style":"","width":"300","height":"201","title":"Teeth from the small predatory dinosaur called Troodon.","alt":"Teeth from the small predatory dinosaur called Troodon."}}]]His research has shown that where we dig was once a near shore, delta-like environment. William has discovered fish scales, ray and shark teeth, and even crocodile & turtle bones.
It takes a sharp eye to find fossils that are often no larger than a dime. And amazingly, it’s these smaller specimens that help fill in the details about the larger dinosaurs. These tiny fossils provide significant clues about the environment in which the duckbill dinosaurs lived.
You and your family can actually join William and myself this summer on one of these digs in Faith, South Dakota. They are an extraordinary family learning vacation opportunity . . . you just might find something, big or small!
