Have I told you how amazing my job is? As the Social Media Specialist for the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, I’ve had the opportunity to delve into some of the greatest historical information in my state and spend time at my favorite museum ever! What I didn’t expect, was that my position would open up so many opportunities to explore other museums and historic sites around my state!
This last weekend I traveled with my colleague, Bonnie, down to The Wyoming Dinosaur Center & Dig Sites in Thermopolis, Wyoming. If you don’t know much about Wyoming or Yellowstone National Park, that’s ok 😊 This trip will give you a little bit of a snapshot into this incredible place I call home!
If you haven’t heard of Wyoming, it’s much more likely that you’ve heard of Yellowstone National Park. It’s a place of natural beauty and wonder sitting in the caldera of a sleeping supervolcano! As a result of that sleeping supervolcano, we can see geysers, hot springs, and boiling mud pots of every variety you could possibly imagine. The natural phenomena of hot springs are also present in Thermopolis! The sad thing is that, so many come to swim in the hot springs and totally miss seeing the Dinosaur Center! Even I had never visited the Center until this last weekend and I’ve lived in Wyoming for just a little under a decade!
Did you know that the first Tyrannosaurus-Rex and the first Triceratops were discovered in Wyoming? Neither did I! At the Center I, I learned that Wyoming has one of the richest fossil beds (where these dinosaurs and other exciting treasures can be discovered) in the world but most of our dinosaurs don’t stay here for very long. Go into the nearest Natural History Museum near you… I guarantee you will probably find at least one dinosaur from Wyoming! So it’s pretty special to go into a museum here, where the dinosaurs are dug up here, studied here, and displayed here for everyone’s enjoyment!
My favorite part was when our tour guide began describing the story of a dinosaur they had discovered. This dino had been through quite a lot before it became a fossil! The paleontologists (dinosaur scientists) on-site could tell you all about their dinosaur’s fight for survival based upon what they were studying in the bones from old injuries to new injuries, they could even give us a small glimpse back in time to how that dinosaur had died! In the summer you can become a part of this process, helping to excavate fossils from the dig site or just touring the dig site to see the latest progress!
If you’re visiting Yellowstone National Park this summer, I highly encourage you to travel south just a little bit further to experience this place for yourself! After all, who doesn’t love dinosaurs?
You can learn more here… https://wyomingdinosaurcenter.org/
Thank you, fellow adventurers! You can follow The Montana Bear Paw page on Facebook and Instagram @littlemissbearpaw, and on Twitter @lilmissbearpaw for sneak peeks into upcoming posts and my adventures. This will also be a great place to share your own adventures!
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