Genealogy

Want to get out your rock hammer and start digging, or take a stroll around a museum to see them up close and personal? Here are just a few of the places you can find fossils – in the ground or on display – in each of the 50 states.

The annual Dino Shindig in Ekalaka, Montana offers dino enthusiasts a chance to put on their fossil-hunting hats, lace up their dancing shoes, and fry up some steak on a pitchfork. In 2020, the event will be virtual, but Emily Graslie stopped by the 2019 Dino Shindig to see how a community uses paleontology to come together.

In the Yellowstone River in Montana, there’s an endangered species called the pallid sturgeon, which is part of an ancient group of fish that first evolved in the Jurassic period. Scientists are studying them to understand their evolution and their future.

To whom does a fossil belong? That’s a complicated question for those living on Native American reservations, where there has long been a history of taking fossils without permission.

When a backhoe operator was clearing land for a housing development in South Dakota in the 1970s, he stumbled upon something incredible: a mammoth graveyard, with dozens of fossils preserved in an Ice Age sinkhole.

A bizarre trace fossil at Agate Fossil Beds National Monument was once home to an ancient beaver that used some clever engineering to build its home.

Badlands National Park is home to an abundance of mammal fossils. Meet some of the funky creatures that were predecessors to some of the animals that we know and love (or keep our distance from) today.

Fossil plants hold the answers to some of the questions behind a global warming event 56 million years ago. What do those answers tell us about the future as our planet warms?

How do scientists examine microfossils, such as the little teeth of Paleogene mammals? Dr. Laura Vietti from the University of Wyoming Geological Museum explains how the latest technology captures images of fossils.

A small museum in Bowman, North Dakota holds a big collection of itty-bitty fossils of the small vertebrates that survived the mass extinction event 66 million years ago. A team of volunteers has done a ton of work to sift through these small but important finds.

An asteroid collided with Earth 66 million years ago in a cataclysmic event that wiped out the dinosaurs and many other creatures. So how did anything survive? One expert explains what the fossil record reveals and what hints it may offer for the future of the planet.

Get to know a Triceratops, another famous dinosaur – and one of SUE’s favorite snacks. The Triceratops “answers” questions about what she ate, how she lived, and why her frill is so fabulous.

Think you know SUE, the Field Museum’s T. rex fossil specimen? Test your knowledge of the most well-preserved T. rex specimen ever found.

A now-defunct national monument was once a rich paleobotany site. Before its resources were pilfered, essentially depleting the site, it held the remains of fossil cycads, which served as dinner for the dinosaurs.