{"id":11905,"date":"2024-04-11T19:11:17","date_gmt":"2024-04-12T01:11:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yellowstonegate.com\/?p=11888"},"modified":"2024-06-07T21:44:40","modified_gmt":"2024-06-08T03:44:40","slug":"bighorn-basin-has-dinosaurs-everywhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yellowstonegate.com\/?p=11905","title":{"rendered":"Bighorn Basin has Dinosaurs \u2018Everywhere\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Paleontologist Jason Schein compares his own size to that of a fossilized tibia from a dreadnaughtus dinosaur, an 85-foot-long sauropod from the Cretaceous Period. (Courtesy photo from Elevation Science Institute)<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

CODY, Wyo. \u2014 Many amateur dinosaur enthusiasts, and even some career paleontologists, have a lifelong wish to find the fossilized remains of a tyrannosaurus, diplodocus or triceratops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Jason Schein is a little sick of finding triceratops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTriceratops\u2014those things are just everywhere,\u201d he said Thursday during a lecture at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. \u201cSeriously, triceratops are just a dime-a-dozen. It\u2019s almost a little frustrating.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All joking aside, Schein, a paleontologist at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University in Philadelphia, described a region so rich in dinosaur remains that even the amateur, volunteer members of his field crew can\u2019t help but stumble upon dinosaur fossils.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWithin five minutes, I can show you what dinosaur bones look like. Then within 10 minutes out in the field, I can show you what they look like in the ground. And you just start seeing it everywhere,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This promised land of abundant dinosaurs isn\u2019t in a far-flung locale famous for fossils, like China\u2019s Henan province. Nor is it at a famous U.S. site like Dinosaur National Monument in Utah. It is the Bighorn Basin, an arid, sprawling, sparsely populated expanse of small towns, public lands and large, private ranches stretching across 100 miles of northwestern Wyoming and reaching into southern Montana.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are places out there where you literally cannot walk without stepping on dinosaur bones,\u201d Schein told a standing-room-only crowd at the Center\u2019s Coe Auditorium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
A dinosaur footprint from the Jurassic Period is preserved in limestone at the Red Gulch Dinosaur Tracksite near Shell. (Courtesy photo from Bob Wick\/Bureau of Land Management)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As founder of the nonprofit Elevation Science Institute, Schein has been leading paleontological expeditions in the Bighorn Basin since 2010, digging at sites stretching from near Powell to around Bridger, Montana.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fossils he and others might find in the Bighorn Basin range from ancient plants and invertebrates to familiar Late Cretaceous favorites like the ferocious tyrannosaurus, the duck-billed hadrosaurs, the heavily armored ankylosaurus and the ubiquitous triceratops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bighorn Basin\u2019s unique geology \u2014 both during the era of dinosaurs and today \u2014makes it a uniquely productive place for fossil hunting, Schein said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a bone, leaf or other organic matter to become fossilized, it must be captured and preserved in a sedimentary layer, something that typically happens around rivers, swamps, lakes and shallow inland seas. Between 70 and 150 million years ago, the Bighorn Basin sat at a spot where rivers emptied into a shallow ocean formed during a much hotter global climate pattern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Revolutionary discoveries<\/strong><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat makes the Bighorn Basin so great is that for almost the last 500 million years, almost without interruption, we had rivers or oceans covering this area,\u201d Schein said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vast stretches of high desert around the Wyoming communities of Cody, Powell, Lovell and Shell that today could be called badlands were quite similar in climate during the age of dinosaurs to coastal Louisiana today, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other places might share a similar prehistoric profile, but it\u2019s also the Basin\u2019s present-day geology that makes it special.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As tectonic forces 70 million years ago pushed up the mountains that encircle the Basin, sedimentary layers dating back hundreds of millions of years were warped and forced to the surface. That process formed a giant bowl that has revealed a striated, asymmetrical, billion-year geological history running along the landscape, accessible across a multitude of varied sites, all without the need for drilling or deep digging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo this is what makes the Bighorn Basin so special, makes it a natural laboratory and makes it a place for scientists from around the world to flock to, and [they] have for 100 years,\u201d Schein said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are so many amazing discoveries that are completely revolutionary to paleontology that came from the Bighorn Basin,\u201d Schein said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deinonychus, the species that established the evolutionary link between dinosaurs and birds, was found in the 1960s near Bridger. That fossil sparked a debate over whether some dinosaurs were slow, plodding, cold-blooded creatures or more dynamic, warm-blooded ones akin to modern ostriches or emus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJust a couple of years ago, someone found really compelling evidence for migration routes for a certain species of dinosaur,\u201d he said. \u201cThat was found in the Bighorn Basin, and that\u2019s just the tip of the iceberg of what\u2019s here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Near Shell, visitors can literally retrace the steps of various species of Middle Jurassic theropods at the Red Gulch Dinosaur Tracksite, located on public land overseen by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). That collection of fossilized footprints preserved in limestone has drawn researchers looking for clues about how dinosaurs walked and ran, and how they may have traveled in groups and with their young.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Fossil hunter Bob Simon works in 2007 to excavate a nearly complete, highly articulated fossilized Camarasaurus skeleton on a private ranch at the eastern edge of the Bighorn Basin in Wyoming. (Yellowstone Gate file photo by Ruffin Prevost)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

How young dinosaurs traveled together is at the heart of another mystery Schein and others are trying to unravel, based on fossils found at a Bighorn Basin site where over 3,000 individual bones have been recovered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Teenage dinosaurs<\/strong><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

All of those bones are from a single species\u2014the massive diplodocus\u2014and they all came from younger, sub-adult dinosaurs Schein described as \u201cteenagers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhy in the world was there a band of teenage dinosaurs running around there?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The current prevailing theory hypothesizes that, as they reached a certain age, the teenage dinosaurs left the main herd, similar to how modern wolves or lions disperse from the pack. But as they waited near a familiar watering hole during a drought, the rains never came, leaving them to die.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because adult dinosaurs had longer legs and could travel to distant sources of water more easily \u2014 and the youngest ones had comparably abundant fat reserves \u2014 it was the teenagers who would be most vulnerable to drought, Schein said, just as with many modern large mammal species studied in Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schein declined to disclose the exact site of the teenage diplodocus graveyard \u2014 or any of his other digs \u2014 citing policies by federal agencies and the research community to guard against vandals and poachers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Private landowners can unearth bones on their own property and sell them on the open market to the highest bidder, including to celebrity fossil fans like Nicholas Cage and Leonardo DiCaprio. But pulling specimens from public land requires a permit from the managing agency, usually the BLM at most Bighorn Basin sites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Permit applicants must document how the fossils will be cared for and stored at a long-term repository where public access is ensured. Schein\u2019s specimens end up at the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History and Science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though you\u2019re unlikely to qualify for such a permit on your own, you can always join Schein on one of his digs, along with dozens of other citizen scientists who travel each year to the Bighorn Basin to assist in his expeditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a move that would make Tom Sawyer proud, Schein charges his volunteer dino diggers for the privilege of helping him, a common practice that helps fund research efforts. Despite a price of $2,250 per person for a week of digging in the hot, dusty badlands (the fee includes lodging, local transportation, meals, tools and training), Schein\u2019s 2023 summer expedition season was over 90% booked by May.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMost of the folks that come out with us are from back East,\u201d Schein said, but he makes an effort to share details of his work with local communities, including the nonprofit Boys & Girls Club of Red Lodge, Montana. Schein also has worked with the Make-A-Wish Foundation to let critically ill children experience a dinosaur dig.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe do a lot of cool things, and I\u2019m really proud of the science we do,\u201d he said. \u201cBut the Make-A-Wish stuff is the best thing we do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Originally published in Wyoming Truth<\/a>, used with permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paleontologist Jason Schein compares his own size to that of a fossilized tibia from a dreadnaughtus dinosaur, an 85-foot-long sauropod from the Cretaceous Period. (Courtesy photo from Elevation Science Institute) CODY, Wyo. \u2014 Many amateur dinosaur enthusiasts, and even some career paleontologists, have a lifelong wish to find the fossilized remains of a tyrannosaurus, diplodocus […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":11622,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"single-feature.php","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,950,10,949],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nBighorn Basin has Dinosaurs \u2018Everywhere\u2019 - Yellowstone Gate<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.yellowstonegate.com\/?p=11905\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bighorn Basin has Dinosaurs \u2018Everywhere\u2019 - Yellowstone Gate\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Paleontologist Jason Schein compares his own size to that of a fossilized tibia from a dreadnaughtus dinosaur, an 85-foot-long sauropod from the Cretaceous Period. 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