page_title: Paleontology in Montana
section_title: Scientific research
hierarchical_section_title: Paleontology in Montana / History / Scientific research
caption_attribution_description: English: Norman Ross of the division of Paleontology, National Museum, preparing the skeleton of a baby Brachyceratops skeleton, some seventy or eighty million years old, for exhibition. Fossil found in Montana.
context_page_description: Paleontology in Montana refers to paleontological research occurring within or conducted by people from the U.S. state of Montana. The fossil record in Montana stretches all the way back to the Precambrian. During the Late Precambrian, western Montana was covered by a warm, shallow sea where local bacteria formed stromatolites and bottom-dwelling marine life left tracks on the sediment that would later fossilize. This sea remained in place during the early Paleozoic, although withdrew during the Silurian and Early Devonian, leaving a gap in the local rock record until its return. This sea was home to creatures including brachiopods, conodonts, crinoids, fish, and trilobites. During the Carboniferous the state was home to an unusual cartilaginous fish fauna. Later in the Paleozoic the sea began to withdraw, but with a brief return during the Permian.
  During the Triassic Montana was again covered in a sea whose inhabitants are the state's only known fossils from this time. Much of Montana remained covered by seawater into the Late Jurassic, but exposed areas were greened by a flora of conifers, cycads, ferns, and ginkgoes.
context_section_description: In 1855, United States Geological Survey geologist Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden was exploring a region of what was then called Nebraska Territory, but which is located what is now central Montana. Not far from the mouth of the Judith River he discovered fossils of bones, shells, and teeth. After returning from his expedition he gave the fossils to Joseph Leidy in Philadelphia. Leidy could tell that these teeth were different than those of any known animal, yet were recognizably dinosaurian based on their similarities to previously discovered dinosaur fossils in England. Leidy had made the first scientific identification of dinosaur fossils from Montana. As the remains were distinct from any previously described dinosaur taxa, Leidy erected three new genera and species for them; Deinodon horridus, Trachodon mirabilis, and Troodon formosus.
  In 1901, Dr. Earl Douglass discovered fossil plants, mollusks, and vertebrae at Bear Butte, northwest of Melville in Sweet Grass County's Fort Union Beds. In 1933, another fossil site called the Scarritt site opened in the Fort Union beds. By the publication of a 1937 paper on the Fort Union beds by George Gaylord Simpson, 57 different fossil sites were known from the beds and 25 were of significant quality. Among the finds were arctocyonids, insectivores, multituberculates, pantodonts, primates, and taeniodonts.
  Montanan Tertiary deposits in the Ruby Valley basin were first studied in 1947 by Dr. Herman F. Becker on behalf of the New York Botanical Garden. These deposits from the southwestern part of the state are one of the best sources of plant and insect fossils in North America. In 1959 Becker's Ruby Valley excavations uncovered about 5,000 specimens of more than two hundred species of plants, insects, and fishes. Invertebrate finds included ants, bees, beetles, earwigs, caddis flies, crane flies, damsel flies, lantern flies, may flies, grasshoppers, leaf hoppers, mosquitoes, snails, and wasps. Vertebrate remains included feathers, and, once in a while, a bird. In 1961 a new flora was found nearby in a badger burrow. The flora is called the Badger Flora. Among the different kinds of plants were water lilies and lotuses.
  In 1964, John Ostrom led an expedition that included his student Robert T. Bakker into the south-central part of the state. The rocks they prospected were of the Cloverly Formation, dating back to the Early Cretaceous. Among their finds were the first documented remains of a small carnivorous dinosaur that would be named Deinonychus antirrhopus. This discovery helped ignite the Dinosaur Renaissance. It exhibited important anatomical similarities to birds that helped scientists shed antiquated ideas interpreting dinosaurs as "overgrown lizards".
  In 1978, paleontologist Bill Clemens alerted Jack Horner and Bob Makela to the presence of unidentified dinosaur fossils in Bynum. Horner visited the town and recognized the remains as belonging to a duck-billed dinosaur. While in town the owner of a local rock shop, Marion Brandvold, showed him some tiny bones. Horner identified them as baby duck-bill bones. Horner also knew that this was an important find and convinced Brandvold to donate her fossils to a museum. She obliged and gave them to Princeton University. Horner's team prospected in the area where Brandvold found the baby hadrosaur fossils. Their effort paid off with the discovery of the first scientifically documented dinosaur eggs of the Western Hemisphere and a new kind of duck-bill, Maiasaura peeblesorum.
caption: A Brachyceratops skeleton found in Montana being prepared for an exhibition in 1921.
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