A rare dinosaur fossil discovery in Montana has been in Raleigh, North Carolina, for the past two decades.
Paleontologists from the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences visited Jordan to work with students.
They have been teaching eighth graders about microfossils for two years in North Carolina and are now taking that on the road.
Eighth graders in Jordan were the first for the national expansion of the project on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Garfield County science students looked for microfossils from the Hell Creek formation.
“The vertebrae were very hard to tell, but then like if you found a tooth fossil, it's pretty easy,” said Aubrey Smith, a Jordan eighth grader.
“The older the dinosaur is, the more interesting the fossil is,” said Hatley Weeding, who is also in the eighth grade.
The program is part of the museum’s Cretaceous Creatures project.
The soil has been shipped across the country from Garfield County to where students in North Carolina have already found 4,000 microfossils.
Now, the project is going national to other schools before it is sent to 15 other states across the country.
“Why not come back to where it all started and let the students here be a part of that history?” said Dr. Elizabeth Jones, Cretaeceous Creatures project manager.
The idea started in 2006 with the Dueling Dinosaurs discovered by Clayton Phipps and one of his amateur paleontologist friends.
“Very special find,” said Eric Lund, the museum’s DinoLab manager. “And then you have two of the most iconic dinosaurs together. A tyrannosaur and a triceratops found in the same spot that are very complete."
Lund is helping oversee the research of the fossil and part of that involves looking for more creatures in the microfossil soil.
It can be a long process, so the students help the museum and learn about fossils.
Phipps donates the dirt or microfossil soil from one of his dinosaur dig sites.
“The dirt that the kids have, there's usually dirt that I've already gone through with a knife to... get the bigger fossils out of, you know, like the leg bones and the vertebrae and the tooth and the claws,” said Phipps. “But without screening it, you can't get the microfossils.”
“The students need to see how they will apply the concepts that they are learning in the class into real-life situations such as this one,” said Alexander Vivar, Jordan Public Schools science teacher.
And while this is his first year here, Vivar already knew about the dueling dinosaurs and the learning opportunity of the rich fossil area.
“This is definitely one of the ways for us to increase their curiosity,” Vivar said. “And pride also of Montana."
“We are hoping to inspire them,” Jones. "But also we really hope that what they find and contribute can inspire us and inspire research.”
The project will be taken to 15 states and return to Montana in the spring in Billings.
