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Field Collecting
Notes from our Fall 2006 trip
Another exciting trip into the Hell Creek Formation in the Badlands of South Dakota brought many new finds to add to our growing collection of late Cretaceous fossils. Our Early October 2006 trip was our eleventh year of collecting at this site. As always, it was filled with many surprises.
Triceratops, ankylosaur,
and various carnivore remains were found in association with the
duckbill dinosaur bones we were digging. Cretaceous pinecones
and leaves were some of the associated flora recovered, and even
some beautifully handcrafted points and arrowheads
created by skilled early Native American craftsmen were found.
This year's additions to our duckbilled dinosaur skeleton include many beautiful bones. Among these were two ulna, several vertebra, a juvenile humerus and rib, various skull parts and more. Many of these bones belong to the Cretaceous dinosaur Edmontosaurus annectens that lived at the end of the era of dinosaurs over 65 million years ago. This giant of the Cretaceous could grow to a length of 44 feet and weigh several tons. It lived in large herds and was probably a major source of food for the tyrannosaurus rex.
