I’m Dr. Cary Woodruff, Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at Frost Science. Take a step into my office with this monthly blog series and let’s dig deeper.

Most summers our paleontology crew embarks on a quest to find and excavate dinosaur fossils. We’ve hunted for dinosaurs in the badlands of the American West, to the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, and even as far away as the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. And now we want to share that opportunity with you!

This summer, you can join our Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology, Dr. Cary Woodruff (me!), for a dinosaur dig in the badlands of Montana, though our newest program Digging Expeditions. Program participants will take part in a week-long experience using real tools, gaining valuable skills, and be a part of scientific discovery, excavating dinosaur fossils.

What can you expect as digging expeditions participant? Previously, in this area we’ve found a beautiful skull to a horned dinosaur called Chasmosaurus (pronounced kaz-mo-sore-us), a partial “mummy” hadrosaur (a “duck-billed” dino), a giant petrified tree, and many other cool and amazing fossils.

This summer, we’ll focus on an ankylosaur (ang-kai-low-sore) that we found at the very end of the 2023 digging season. Ankylosaurs were literally walking tanks. Their bodies were covered in bony armor (some even had bony eyelids!), and several had massive clubs on the ends of their tail. We don’t know yet what kind we’ve found, but hopefully we’ll find more bones from this animal and be able to identify what kind of ankylosaur it was.

If you’ve always wanted to dig up a dinosaur and learn first-hand from a paleontologist, contribute to science, and be immersed in hands-on field work, here’s your chance! Never done it before? No worries! Just bring your excitement and enthusiasm, and we’ll teach you the rest. Join our paleontologists as we make new and exciting discoveries together.