The Hell Creek of North Dakota; a Chunkosaur or More?

[Thomas.Dodson]

To make a long start to a story short, due to work connections of a relative I recently got invited to excavate a dino on a property. I was quite unsure what I was dealing with until I got there. Aside from the fact this was my first real foray into that part of Hell Creek territory there was a lot that wasn't clear; how well preserved was it? Is it better left to left professional hands? Was it within my ability to excavate (how was the rock, how large was it, etc.). Because of all this I ended up making the 4.5 hour drive to Bowman County with the simple expectation of scouting and seeing what I was dealing with. I ended up leaving with a lot more. Before you invest yourself in the story you should know that nothing substantial was collected, at least not yet. But it is interesting nevertheless.

 

Upon arriving I learned this wasn't the first time someone looked at this site. After visiting the site I learned from the landowner that a group of paleontologists was the first to stay in their loft they offer on the property 20 years ago and they began an excavation then. I was told during this excavation their group found a more complete skeleton in South Dakota and abandoned the excavation mid-dig, covered it with a tarp, and left a bunch of excavated material in the landowner's shed.  Aside from what I collected during the brief survey of the excavation site this shed material was also graciously given to me. Affixed to the label was this. The blocked name is the name of the landowner. Did they decide everything they had excavated so far was expendable to rush to their new SD dig site or did they actually end up taking anything more substantial? I don't know. It sounded to me like the landowners weren't aware of them taking anything with (although they had permission).

The people on the property drove me out to the site in their UTV and were quite curious about everything. I spent a lot of time answering questions which was quite fun. The tarp over the excavation site lay dormant for 20 years and as you can probably guess was quite silted in and rotten. Initially I began uncovering these tarp pieces slowly to try and get an idea of the site and its fragility but it became clear that very little was exposed under the tarp so we ended up pulling up all the rotten pieces and tossing them aside. Occasionally there was a piece of matrix wrapped in plastic that was peaking out from under the soil. There were also 2 ziploc bags full of bone fragments that were left at the site and, by this point, were filled with soil and mud. Still, both under the tarp and around the fragments of bone were abundant, some rather large although still not diagnostic.

 

During that time I completely forgot to take pictures of the site. I remembered on the walk back to the UTV and snapped this quick pic but I will hopefully be back to take some later. It may be worth excavating the area to see if there is anything more substantial. On the return I talked to the landowner and they mentioned fossils were also collected in the low creek bed on the property by the paleontologists so I also need to survey that.

The material from the shed was mostly wrapped in aluminum foil and shoved in a bucket. There's quite a lot of chunkosaur here, at least 60 pounds. You can see the original 20 year old ziploc bags I mentioned I collected from the excavation as well. This area was poorly lit so the images aren't great but my lab is filled with WIP Fox Hills stuff at the moment so I spread it all out here.

The previous excavators thought it was important enough to wrap this in plastic (although not to take it with them). This was left under the tarp. Tektite? 

I

If any of the chunkosaur pieces have hopes of ID it's probably from this piece. A femoral or humeral head? I plan to post these off in a ID thread later.

 

These stuck out going through the fragments as more scute like.

 

This piece is just pretty.

Edited June 13, 2021 by Thomas.Dodson

[hadrosauridae]

Nice report. That certainly is a lot of chunk-o-saurus material!  Your "scutes" look like bits of turtle shell. I would expect that your dino site was once a largely complete skeleton but the shallowness and fragile nature rendered it into a pile of scrap and that was likely the real reason it was abandoned.  I've seen other similar dino material left alone.  They usually get nicknames like "splinter" and "chunky".  It would take herculean effort to record and catalog the huge amount of pieces just to have students attempt to recreate the 3D puzzle (along with lots of putty) back in the lab.  Most "professional" teams consider it a waste of time. There are plenty of more complete animals to chase after.  Now for me, I would love to access, and I would spend my summers digging out the area.

[Thomas.Dodson]

5 minutes ago, hadrosauridae said:

Nice report. That certainly is a lot of chunk-o-saurus material!  Your "scutes" look like bits of turtle shell. I would expect that your dino site was once a largely complete skeleton but the shallowness and fragile nature rendered it into a pile of scrap and that was likely the real reason it was abandoned.  I've seen other similar dino material left alone.  They usually get nicknames like "splinter" and "chunky".  It would take herculean effort to record and catalog the huge amount of pieces just to have students attempt to recreate the 3D puzzle (along with lots of putty) back in the lab.  Most "professional" teams consider it a waste of time. There are plenty of more complete animals to chase after.  Now for me, I would love to access, and I would spend my summers digging out the area.

I had a feeling that was the case with the site being abandoned. Aside from the paleontologists moving to SD from this one there is a lot going on in the general area. The landowner's brother has a ranch nearby with a complete skeleton being excavated. I may check it out just to look. The neighbors also have 2 T-rex that are being excavated (or have been, there was disagreement whether they had finished one yet). As for me, I'm welcome to come back and dig all this up. The landowners are very nice and have also graciously offered me free use of a loft they let hunters use. I just need to find the time among everything else I have going on this summer. There are other fossil sites I intend to visit this summer still.

[Troodon]

Nice report, I would spend a day digging at that site to see if anything was left behind.   They could have been digging a Ceratopsian or Edmontosaurus given the size of that femurs condyle. I think those scutes are from a croc.

[jpc]

I was shown a Triceratops site about 20 years ago in Bowman County that was on flat ground like in your photo.  The rancher had been exposing it and asked if I was interested in continuing the project.  I did not have the time or means at that point so I passed on it.  I wonder if this is the same one?

 

 

[Thomas.Dodson]

21 minutes ago, jpc said:

I was shown a Triceratops site about 20 years ago in Bowman County that was on flat ground like in your photo.  The rancher had been exposing it and asked if I was interested in continuing the project.  I did not have the time or means at that point so I passed on it.  I wonder if this is the same one?

 

 

I would guess not. The excavation was actually on a flatish ledge on the hill in the photo, about 7 feet up the side of hill. I just forgot to take a picture of it when I was there and didn't want to walk back at that point and make my UTV ride wait. I'll definitely remember when I go back. From what I understood the paleontologists are also the ones who discovered it back then. The landowners definitely haven't done anything with it since.

[FranzBernhard]

Very interesting story, thanks for sharing!
Franz Bernhard

[Tigereagle12345]

I think your chunkosaurus is triceratops, I was also collecting in North Dakota not to long ago and some of the triceratops bits I found had a similar bone structure. The Scutes are crocodile, I think the word is dermal plates.

 

Sorry for any typos I'm typing on a phone.

Edited September 14, 2021 by Tigereagle12345