20th Anniversary of the Montana Dinosaur Trail

I was happy to see some new paleontology videos appearing on YouTube by Emily Graslie where she visits The Montana Dinosaur Trail. Emily made a name for herself as Chicago's Field Museum's Chief Curiosity Correspondent making videos under the The Brain Scoop name. She followed up with the excellent video series in 2019 called the Prehistoric Road Trip and shown on PBS stations.

The first video takes us to Ekalaka, Montana. A place where the Carter County Museum is located. It was founded in 1936 and was first county museum in the state. It houses fossils found by ranchers and farmers in the area. They have a mounted Edmontosaurus (Lambe, 1917) dinosaur.

Her second video takes us to Makoshika State Park at Glendive, Montana. It is home to at least 10 different dinosaur species found in the Hell Creek Formation of the late Cretaceous Period. Some dinosaur fossils found there are of Edmontosaurus (Lambe, 1917), Ankylosauria (Osborn, 1923), Tyrannosaurus rex (Osborn, 1905), and Triceratops (Marsh, 1889). One geological feature that can be seen in the landscape is the KPG boundary. They have a nice collection of aquatic fossils (turtles, gar scales, crocodile pieces, clams, Mosasaur, Elasmosaur). Another highlight is an exhibit of the 1990s excavation of one of the best preserved Thescelosaurus (Gilmore, 1913) fossils found.

She ends the video at Fort Peck Dam where you can find a restaurant that serves cheesy fried pickles.

For the third video, it highlights the Frontier Gateway Museum (201 State Street, Glendive, Montana). They have a mounted Struthiomimus (Osborn, 1917) dinosaur named Margie. Also Hadrosaurus (Leidy, 1858) fossils are on display. After leaving this museum she visits the Phillips County Museum at Malta, Montana. This museum houses a Brachylophosaurus (Sternberg, 1953) fossil named Elvis. They have a display of Montana agates.

I remember visiting the state as a child with my family and my uncle's family. My aunt was buying moss agate jewelry and I still have a few polished pieces from that trip. The museum also has a meteorite display in which Emile comments "I wonder if the dinosaurs feel a little weird about the meteorites being so close." :)  Another unique display is that of different types of barbed wire from the late 1800s.

Her last video is of a visit to the Great Plain Dinosaur Museum in Malta, Montana. The museum has ammonite fossils from the Western Interior Seaway (77 million years ago) that covered part of modern day Montana. Also found out the museum is display case showing shark teeth fossil from around the United States and fish fossils from the Green River Formation of Wyoming.

I am always looking for natural history museums to visit and now have some new locations to add to my list to visit. Please check out these informative videos about paleontology sites to visit in Montana.

Yogoniscus gulo Fossil

This image is of a Yogoniscus gulo (Lowney, 1980) fish fossil. The animal existed in the Serpukhovian Stage Carboniferous Period (326-318 million years ago). Fossil was discovered in Bear Gulch, Montana, USA. Fossil was on display at the Natural History Museum Vienna (Naturhistorisches Museum Wien) on August 2024.

Yogoniscus gulo Fish Fossil

This image is of a Yogoniscus gulo (Lowney, 1980) fish fossil. The animal existed in the Serpukhovian Stage Carboniferous Period (326-318 million years ago). Fossil was discovered in Bear Gulch, Montana, USA. Fossil was on display at the Natural History Museum Vienna (Naturhistorisches Museum Wien) on August 2024.

Caridosuctor populosum Coelacanth Fossil

This image is of a Caridosuctor populosum (Lund & Lund, 1984) coelacanth fossil. The animal existed in the Serpukhovian Stage Carboniferous Period (326-318 million years ago). Fossil was discovered in Bear Gulch, Montana, USA. Fossil was on display at the Natural History Museum Vienna (Naturhistorisches Museum Wien) on August 2024.

Harpagofututor volsellorhinus Fish Fossil

This image is of a Harpagofututor volsellorhinus (Lund, 1982) eel like fish fossil. The animal existed in the Carboniferous Period. Fossil was discovered in Bear Gulch, Montana, USA. Fossil was on display at the Natural History Museum Vienna (Naturhistorisches Museum Wien) on August 2024.

Rhaeboceras Ammonite Fossil

This image is of a Rhaeboceras  (Meek, 1876) ammonite fossil. The animal existed in the Cretaceous Period. Fossil was discovered in Montana, USA. Fossil was on display at the Natural History Museum Vienna (Naturhistorisches Museum Wien) on August 2024.

Tenontosaurus tilletti Dinosaur Fossil

This fossil was displayed on August 2022, at the Harvard Museum of Natural History in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. This dinosaur limb bone belonged to a herbivore ornithopod Tenontosaurus tilletti (Ostrom, 1970). This specimen was found in the Cloverly Formation at Montana USA. It dates to the Middle Cretaceous Period.

Acanthoscaphites nodosus Ammonoid Fossil

 

The image shown above is ammonoid mollusk fossil called Acanthoscaphites nodosus (Owen, 1852). This animal fossil dates to the  Late Maastrichtian Stage, Cretaceous Period between 144 and 65 million years ago of the Mesozoic Era. It was found Montana, USA. 

The fossil was on display in the Evolving Planet section of The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago Illinois, USA as of August 2020. Accession number is PE3908.

Species named by David Dale Owen, he collected during geological surveys of Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota. Published in 1852 and at that time called Scaphites nodosus. The genus was named by Nowak in 1912.

Sauropod Dinosaur Tail Vertebrae Fossil

This image is of a sauropod dinosaur tail vertebrae. The fossil was found in Pryor Mountains, Montana, USA. It was on display at the Indiana University Southeast (IUS) campus, first floor of Sciences Building as part of Glenn M. Mason collection. Image taken November 2018.

Tyrannosaurus rex Dinosaur Skull Fossil

Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaur skull fossil ("tyrant reptile") displayed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, USA. It was found in 1908 at Big Dry Creek Montana, USA by Barnum Brown and K. C. Kaisen. The fossil dates to the Late Cretaceous Period (65 million years ago). This fossil was the first complete T. rex skull ever collected.

Image taken July 2018.

Tyrannosaurus rex Dinosaur Fossil

Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaur fossil ("tyrant reptile") displayed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, USA. It was found in 1908 at Big Dry Creek Montana, USA by B. Brown and K. C. Kaisen. The fossil dates to the Late Cretaceous Period (65 million years ago). This fossil is one of the few real ones on display in the world.

Images taken July 2018.

Mummified Brachylophosaurus Dinosaur Tail Fossil

These pictures show the mummified remains of a duck billed dinosaur's tail. The dinosaur is known as Brachylophosaurus canadensis. It was found in the Judith River Formation of Phillips County Montana USA. The fossil dates to the late Cretaceous Period.

Fossils were on display at Children's Museum of Indianapolis Dinosphere exhibit as of July 2015. The museum has named this fossil creature Leonardo.

The museum was founded in 1925 and consists of an approximate 44,000 square meter facility on a 29 acre area site. Their natural science collection contains more than 10,000 items. Some of the items in the collection are the dinosaur Dracorex hogwartsia, fossil of teenage T.rex, Christensen Mastodon, 3.5-4 billion year old Acasta Gneiss, and the Geisler geological collection. Learn more at this link.

T-rex at Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport

A colleague of mine recently returned from a vacation to Montana.When he was showing me pictures from his trip I found the one shown in this post intriguing. It turns out this Tyrannosaurus rex fossil replica is on display at the baggage display area of  Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport of Belgrade, Montana. Montana is the source of many dinosaur fossils so it seems fitting they chose this replica to represent an aspect of Montana geological past.

This dinosaur existed in the upper Cretaceous Period (68-66 million years ago; Maastrichtian). Learn more at Wikipedia.

Thanks to Ryan for the picture.

Find a T-rex replica on Amazon.com.

Cretaceous Clam Fossil

While touring the Natural History section of the Arizona Historical Society Museum at Papago Park (1300 N. College Ave, Tempe Arizona 85281) I saw this clam fossil specimen (AHS-NH#21712)

This fossil was probably found in the Pierre Shale Formation of Glendive, Dawson County, Montana, USA. It dates to the Cretaceous Period.

Image was taken in October 2014.

Sources:
Neat image of Cretaceous Inoceramus clam fossil with pearls
http://www.paleocurrents.com/baculite_mesa/img/2003-05-17mesa_fossils/HTML/img_2480.htm

Tyrannosaurus rex "Tyrant Lizard King"

Hail to the king baby! Once thought to be the largest land walking carnivore to ever exist on the planet, this creature could weigh up to 6400 kg and stretch almost 13 meters. Jaws lined with over 50 serrated teeth, this animal became one lean, mean, herbivore crunching machine roaming what is now southwest Canada and western United States. They lived about 68 to 66 million years ago (Cretaceous Period, Mesozoic Era).

This fossil cast is of the Tyrannosaurus rex fossil at the Museum of the Rockies (MOR 980). The cast (CM 81336; acq. 2007) is on display next to the T.rex holotype (partially seen in bottom photo to the left) at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Dinosaurs in Their Time exhibit. The original fossil (aka "Peck's Rex") was discovered by J. Keith Rigby, Jr. at the University of Notre Dame in 1997. 

Juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex Jaw

This is a cast of juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex jaws/teeth found in Montana in 1966. Studies have shown that it was less than 3 years old when it died.  The skull shape differs from a mature animal and was once thought to be a different species. These fossils were on display at the Carnegie Museum for Natural History in 2011.

Here is the mature skull shown in an exhibit at the museum.  Discovered at Hell Creek, Montana and given the accession number CM 9380. This carnivore prowled the plains of the western United States and southwestern Canada in the Late Cretaceous Period (68-66 million years ago), Mesozoic Era.

This skull contains the actual fossils that are part of the holotype for the T. rex. The holotype was discovered by Barnum Brown in 1902.  Those remains were used to create a intact skeleton for the American Museum of Natural History in New York city.  The Carnegie Museum acquired this skeleton in 1941. In 2003, the museum dismantled the skeleton for analysis and cleaning.  The work was finished in 2008 and the dinosaur was presented in its new pose. Read about the process at the PaleoLab section of their web site: http://www.carnegiemnh.org/exhibitions/paleolab/rex.html

See this site at the museum web site for media images of the skull including shots from inside the skull: http://www.carnegiemnh.org/press/08-apr-jun/051208rex-images.htm

"A Decade of Dinosaurs" Talk

Dr. Glenn Storrs, Assistant Vice-President of Collections and Research at the Cincinnati Museum Center, will be speaking about the ten years of research at the Mother's Day excavation site in Montana.  He will also cover recent discoveries at the location. Learn more about Dr. Storrs at cincyevolution.com

The talk is entitled "A Decade of Dinosaurs" and will occur Friday, September 23, 2011 at 8 PM EST on the University of Cincinnati campus in room 201 of Braunstein Hall (Old Physics Building).  This presentation is part of the larger Dry Dredgers meeting which is an association of amateur geologists and fossil collectors.

I am a member and it is a very friendly group.  I find the meetings educational and being held in a classroom the seating and displays are great for presentations.

Learn more at their web site: www.drydredgers.org

Ginkgo biloba Fossil

 

A short time ago, I read an informative post on about Ginkgo biloba fossils on my friend's blog: Views of the Mahantango.  Reviewing pictures from a recent trip to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, they have a display on living fossils which they cover the Ginkgo or Maidenhair Tree (aka Ginkgo biloba).  The text of the display says this tree is what Charles Darwin referred to as the "living fossil".  The plant has is origins over 290 million years ago or the Late Carboniferous Period.

The plant is known for its fan-shaped leaves which can be seen in the fossil pictures.  The above picture is of a Ginkgo digitata of the Jurassic Period found in Spitsbergen.  The last two pictures of a ginkgo leaf fossil found in Montana of the Paleocene.