Discover North Dakota’s prehistoric past with Pioneer Trails Museum’s Paleontology Tours

BOWMAN, ND — Discover the prehistoric previous of North Dakota with the Pioneer Trails Regional Museum’s Paleontology Excursions. The museum’s workers will take guests on a fossil highway journey to the Hell Creek Formation, recognized for its vital discoveries of the last-known dinosaurs — together with the Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops and Edmontosaurus.

The museum’s workers will take guests on a fossil highway journey, the place they’ll journey to dig websites positioned within the neighborhood of Bowman, in western North Dakota, to seek for fossils which might be thousands and thousands of years previous. After a morning of fossil looking, individuals will return to the museum to see their discoveries within the paleontology lab the place they will be taught in regards to the means of bringing a fossil from the sector to show.

“We’ll take you again to the age that the dinosaurs lived and died, exploring the land 66 million years in the past within the Hell Creek Formation. These rocks replicate the swampy and humid atmosphere that dinosaurs as soon as lived in. Right this moment, the rocks are plentiful in fossils huge and small,” Darrah Steffen, Paleontology Curator with The Pioneer Trails Regional Museum, mentioned. “No matter we discover – enamel, scales, bones, fragments, and shell items will assist us proceed to reconstruct the story of western North Dakota because it modified over the eons.”

The paleontology discipline excursions are scheduled all through the summer time season from June to August, with a morning session within the discipline and a day session within the lab. Fossils discovered on the excursions can usually be recognized by the museum’s discipline workers all through the day.

The museum can also be on the lookout for summer time interns to work in its paleontology division, serving to with discipline excursions, creating digital engagement, show design and development amongst different obligations. The internships are open to all college students with a real curiosity and data of paleontology, particularly these aspiring to additional their expertise outdoors the classroom.

The internship affords a $5,000 stipend for about 11 weeks of labor, with versatile begin and finish dates. The museum can even present help with housing and gasoline reimbursement, specialised coaching, and training and interpretive program coaching amongst different advantages.

The Pioneer Trails Regional Museum has a thirty-year historical past of serving rural North Dakota as a hub for historical past, archaeology, family tree and paleontology. The museum has established programming taking guests to quite a few paleontologic discipline websites, together with the assorted pioneer trails that run via the realm. Lately, the museum has been working in the direction of re-establishing the paleontology discipline applications.

The museum’s departments are lively in archaeological, genealogical and paleontological analysis in addition to collections regarding native historical past. In accordance with the museum’s mission, the establishment goals to protect and preserve historic artifacts and fossils whereas offering instructional, cultural and analysis alternatives to the area’s faculties, people and organizations.

For extra info on the Paleontology Excursions, events could contact the museum at paleo@ptrm.org or (701) 523-3600. Those that are fascinated with making use of for the internship could contact the museum at information@ptrm.org or (701) 523-3600.

James B. Miller, Jr. is the Editor of The Dickinson Press in Dickinson, North Dakota. He strives to deliver community-driven, skilled and hyper-local centered information protection of southwest North Dakota.