Dinosaur hunting is one of the classic endeavors of field science. Venturing into wild and rugged territory, field scientists continue to make exciting new discoveries that change and improve our understanding of dinosaurs, and through them the history of life on Earth. In a twenty-first century filled with amazing technological developments, some kinds of discovery still require old-fashioned fieldwork and physical endurance. And there is certainly a distinctive thrill in uncovering the evidence with your own hands, brushing away the earth and bringing to light something that no one has ever seen before. Here you'll find the story of a Phaeton dinosaur hunting mission that took seven team members, our colleagues, and a video crew on a search for an unknown species.
The Badlands: Dinosaur Hunting Grounds
Deep within the western Canadian prairies of Alberta lie the greatest dinosaur hunting grounds in the world. As you travel through the surrounding level terrain, the ground suddenly drops into the badlands, a gulf carved into time that is invisible from even a few miles away. These exposed strata are a five-million-year slice of the last chapter of dinosaur history. 75 million years ago, this place was a Louisiana-like swamp, with conditions ideal for the preservation of dinosaurs as fossils. So today these sediments are packed with dinosaur bones in profusion to astonish anyone accustomed to the difficulty of finding such fossils elsewhere. The site has been recognized by the United Nations as a World Heritage Site, and it is carefully administered by the Canadian government as Dinosaur Provincial Park. Phaeton Chief Paleontologist Michael J. Ryan has been working in these canyons of time for over fifteen years, and it was to this fantastic location that a Phaeton team traveled on a paleontology mission in late summer 2002.
Coming next--Part 1: Prospecting
