Excavation site in Carbon County Yields Miniature Dinosaurs

Story by Jennifer Macy, Archaeologist, Billings Field Office
Photos by Laurel Owen, Archaeology Technician, Billings Field Office

On July 3, BLM Billings Field Office archaeologists visited the excavation location where the suspected stegosaurus bones are being removed with painstaking care (see previous story).

Paleontologist Rick Schmidt shows where
newer fossil finds are emerging at the
stegosaurus site, while an intern looks on.

The tentative identification of a stegosaur was based on bones from a foot, or a “toe claw,” to be specific. Even more interesting than a possible stegosaur discovery could be that the location yielding the fossils might have been an estuary, or even an island, based on ripple lines in vertical rocks. The ripple lines indicate the location was once a shoreline in ancient times!

Further evidence is the size of dinosaurs coming out of the ground at this location; they are adult specimens, but smaller than “normal” dinosaurs of the same species.

“Miniaturization” of animals in an island context has been demonstrated in the case of the Wooly Mammoth, where ‘dwarf’ animals lived well beyond the extinction of the mammoth in North America and other parts of the planet, in part through reduced size and therefore fewer resource requirements (Wrangel Island, Crete, St. Paul Island).

Dr. Schmidt shows us a gastrolith – a rock
that has been rounded over the course of
many years in the stomach/gut of a
dinosaur.

Like many fields with a strong geological components, paleontological research is a marathon, not a sprint. Because of the abundant paleontological resources at this possible one-time island location, these paleontologists have years of material to work with in the hopes of shedding light on what this dry desert-like land might have looked like millions of years ago.

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