Is PaleoAdventures my only option?

[Clanjones]

My family is going on vacation in South Dakota this summer and I have always wanted to dig for dinosaur fossils, but it is illegal pretty much everywhere. I don't know any ranchers out there and I have heard they are very unwilling to let people dig on their land anymore. It looks like this PaleoAdventures service is my only option. They say they let you keep common fossils, but most of them will be sold to private collectors and museums.

Has anyone had any experience with this company?

[Wendell Ricketts]

You might also check with PaleoJoe, http://www.paleojoe.com/, who runs some dino digs, to see whether he has something that might work for you or can make a recommendation. There are also a number of university programs that take volunteers for their digs, as does Earthwatch. I doubt you'd be able to keep what you find in either of those cases, however. The reality, though, is that it isn't and probably shouldn't be legal for amateurs to go off on their own and start trying to pull large vert remains out of the ground. You'll ruin most of what you find, and, if it's of any scientific value, you may easily fix it so that the specimen becomes worthless. That's aside from the issue of whether people will let you on their land, which is likely more an insurance/liability issue than anything else.

W.

[Raggedy Man]

You could buy the land. BLM sells 1000's of acres in the badlands. Pretty cheap too! If you do go this route, I would love written permission for access! ☺ lol

Best regards,

Paul

***Edit***

The information I read about the land for sale was from a private rancher. 3200 acres were sold to other ranchers and the rest, 800 acres was blm lease property.

The writer of the story didn't not convey the information all that well. The editor didn't catch the mistake insinuating the BLM sold the land. Any land being sold there is from a private resident. This actually makes me happy and sad; Happy that these sites remain protected; Sad, because I really wanted to buy a couple hundred acres...lol.

Sorry for misunderstanding.

Edited May 10, 2016 by Raggedy Man

[Troodon]

I've spoken to folks who have gone and know the person running it. Great experience, very knowledgeable people running it, you will have fun and learn how to collect in the Hell Creek. The big down side is you cannot keep any nice dinosaur find like you said. The folks I spoke with said they enjoyed themselves completely but were disappointed that they could not keep more. Not for everyone.

Edit: It's a great family experience that you would not otherwise be able to do

Edited May 10, 2016 by Troodon

[old dead things]

I don't know if Raggedy Man is saying this tongue in cheek, but the BLM does not sell land in the badlands. I don't know what the BLM does in Wisconsin, but it does not sell land in the Dakotas or anywhere else in the West. Lease, yes, they lease land primarily for grazing, but also for coal, oil and gas, but collecting vertebrate fossils on BLM land even if it is leased is illegal, unless you are collecting for a repository of vertebrate fossils, like the Tate museum.

[jpc]

You could buy the land. BLM sells 1000's of acres in the badlands. Pretty cheap too! If you do go this route, I would love written permission for access! ☺ lol

Best regards,

Paul

Whoa, there, Buddy. No... this rarely ever happens. The link below is direct from the BLM.

http://www.blm.gov/style/medialib/blm/wy/information/docs.Par.9212.File.dat/wynf-0013.pdf

I know many ranchers who have BLM in holdings that would only make sense for the BLM to sell them a random 40 acres here and there, and they won't.

[jpc]

If you just want the experience of dino digging, we here at the Tate Museum in Casper do offer dinosaur collecting trips every summer. They are sold out for 2016, though. And, yes, you would be helping the museum expand its collections, not your own.

http://www.caspercollege.edu/tate-geological-museum/events/digs

[Raggedy Man]

I went back and read the article thoroughly. Then I noticed several retractions added after I had read it. I updated my original post. Thank you everyone for pointing that out!!! There's nothing worse than looking like a fool because of misinformation...other than being an actual fool.

[Clanjones]

Wendell Rickets, I am fully aware that amateurs should not be digging up bones. I agree. Excavations should be handled by experts (especially since there is a possibility of soft tissue preservation) and exceptional finds belong in museums, not in the hands of private collectors. As an amateur, all I am interested in doing is surface collecting bone fragments and common teeth.

[Raggedy Man]

I don't know if Raggedy Man is saying this tongue in cheek, but the BLM does not sell land in the badlands. I don't know what the BLM does in Wisconsin, but it does not sell land in the Dakotas or anywhere else in the West. Lease, yes, they lease land primarily for grazing, but also for coal, oil and gas, but collecting vertebrate fossils on BLM land even if it is leased is illegal, unless you are collecting for a repository of vertebrate fossils, like the Tate museum.

Wisconsin sells the land to the highest bidder, even if it's a state park. Our land here is protected from the public and researchers. Actually, I don't think my state funds any scientific research at all. There are however, a few quarries, that openly invite UW Madison paleontologists to remove specimens and do research,ie,(those amazingly preserved jellyfish). In the end, it's a testament on how the state perceives the value of important scientific research. Which is almost non existent.

Edit:I edited my comment a bit just in case it was interpretated incorrectly.

Edited May 10, 2016 by Raggedy Man

[Raggedy Man]

http://www4.uwsp.edu/geo/faculty/hefferan/MosineeFossils.html

In case anyone's interested.

[Clanjones]

It seems like I will be sticking to agates and inverts then.

[FossilDAWG]

It seems like I will be sticking to agates and inverts then.

Well, that or head to Florida. You won't be digging up dinosaurs, but you could find some cool Miocene/Pliocene/Pleistocene vertebrates. You'll have to get a permit ($5 I think) and report what you find, but it's rare that the state will want anything and 99.9% of the time you can keep what you find.

Don

[raptorman88]

Hey ClanJones! Thanks for the question. Sorry for the long delayed response. Hopefully your family trip to SD went well back in 2016. Sorry we missed you. I'm Walter and my wife and I have run PaleoAdventures now since 2005. We started it from the ground up and now operate on 5 different ranches covering close to 50,000 acres that we have under contract to hunt for fossils. I understand your concerns with going out on a pay to dig trip. You have to be careful who you join up with. Some are not very scrupulous and others not very good. Most of the responsible ones will not let you keep anything and some of the irresponsible ones  are just hack and slash free-for alls, on severely over-hunted ground. We try to strike a careful balance between science and commerce, defending the rights of both land owners and the principles of science. I'd say, that we are pretty darn good at what we do and our ethical standards are higher than most (including some academics. lol!). 

 

It is true, that our trips are primarily educational in nature. We cater to families with young kids who are interested in pursuing paleontology as a career. So, we focus heavily on excavation techniques, tool use, safety and ethics. We take guests to known quarries where I fully expect you to find things. Its not just surface collecting. Unlike most trips like this, we do allow you to keep some of the common fossils you find like Triceratops and Edmontosaurus teeth, prepositionally broken chucks of trike and ducky bones, unidentifiable bone fragments, croc teeth and scutes, petrified wood, fossil pine cones and leaf fossils and of course rock and mineral samples. Commercial grade fossils like Tyrannosaur teeth and more complete, but isolated bones, of the common genera Triceratops and Edmontosaurus you can purchase for an additional fee if you like. The sales of these fossils help fund our digs and support our very generous land owners.  Scientifically significant finds are reserved for museums/research centers only because those kinds of things do need to be accessed by professionals. At the moment we have one of the largest private research collections in the US. So, no, you would not get to keep that one of a kind Acheroraptor killing claw or Triceratops skeleton, but you would walk away with a set of common fossils, as much knowledge as we can throw at you, a fun trip with great people and maybe one or two nice commercial pieces to add to your collection. If you still have doubts, please visit Tripadvisor and look at some of the reviews we've gotten over the years. Hope to see you down the line! Best wishes, Walter

 

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g54515-d4132986-Reviews-PaleoAdventures-Belle_Fourche_South_Dakota.html