Crew members get ready to finish a plaster jacket around a fossil at a 2008 dig site.

This is MOR Paleontology Educator Molly Ward guest-blogging on Jack Horner's Bone Blog. Jack and his crews (around 80 people at any given time) are currently scattered around the state of Montana at at least five different dig sites. The digs are located in areas where rocks from the Creteaceous period (rocks that are the right age to contain dinosaur fossils) are exposed at the surface of the Earth, and dinosaur fossils have been found weathering out of the rock.

I was lucky enough to visit two of these dig sites this summer. I can tell you that dig crews spend long hot days getting very dirty! They camp in tents and trailers in the dry Montana badlands and have to watch out for snakes. The dirt and lack of sleep is worth it though, when you discover a dinosaur bone!