>> So far we've learned a lot about what dinosaurs looked like and how they lived.

But we haven't deal as much with exactly how they went from living breathing animals to fossilized skeletons. There are a lot of things that can happen to a dinosaur between the time that it dies. Until somebody digs it up. And once we've found a dinosaur skeleton, it just doesn't pop out of the ground ready to be put on display. Like the skeletons here. There's a lot of hard work involved in finding, excavating, and preparing dinosaur bones. These are the things we're going to be talking about in this module. >> Here in Dinosaur Provincial Park in southern Alberta, there are millions of dinosaurs that were living and dying about 75 million years ago. Now, we not only find bones here, but we find bones in association with the sediments, and by studying how those bones are situated in the sediments. We practice a science called taphonomy, and taphonomy basically tells us what happened between the time of death of an animal and the time that it was buried and eventually dug up by a paleontologist. Now by using taphonomy we can learn something about the environments those dinosaurs were living in. And we can also learn something about perhaps what caused the death of those dinosaurs. And finally, if we're really lucky, we can learn something about what those animals were doing up to the time that they died. So taphonomy is a very important part of our studies. And, every fossil tells a story. So, let's go see if we can find a story. >> Dinosaur Provincial Park is a great place to look for dinosaur bones. Why do you think that is? Check all that you think apply. A, the region was once covered by massive glaciers. B, the dry climate limits plant

growth. C, the rock exposures date back to 100,000 years. Or D, during the age of dinosaurs, the region was a forested mountain range. Although the connection is not obvious, Alberta's treasure trove of fossils would've remained locked away for millions of years to come. Had it not been for the land sculpting work of glaciers. Long after the age of the dinosaurs, roughly thirteen thousand years ago, the region that is now Dinosaur Park was covered. By huge glaciers. These slow-moving mountains of ice acted like giant bulldozers. And scraped away the top layers of sediment. Removing these younger sediments put older and dinosaur-bearing sediments closer to the surface. Then, as the world's temperatures rose, the glaciers melted. The resulting melt water further eroded the surface of Dinosaur Provincial Park, and left large surfaces of Cretaceous aged rocks exposed. Erosion did not stop with the end of glaciation. Wind and rain continue to erode the rocks of Dinosaur Park, and expose new dinosaur bones every year. This rapid rate of modern erosion is possible because of the park's sparse vegetation. A lusher covering of plants would shield the sediments from the elements. And plant roots would hold the topsoil in place. As for the age of the exposed rocks, 100,000 years isn't even close to old enough. The sediments of Dinosaur Park date back to between 72 and 78 million years ago. Finally, the region that is today, Dinosaur Provincial Park, was never a forested mountain range. And that's a good thing. As you will learn shortly, forests and mountains are environments that seldom preserve fossils. So, answers A and B are correct. >> You can't just expect to go anywhere and dig a hole and find dinosaur bones.

First of all, you need exposures, because if the rocks are covered up by soil, by forests, by pavement, by cities; your chances of finding dinosaur bones are really not very good. Secondly, the rocks have to represent the right age. We know that these rocks are the right age because geologists have worked here for more than 100 years. And they tell us these rocks are from the Cretaceous period. And in the Cretaceous, dinosaurs were dominating all around the world. The next thing is you have to have the right environment represented too, because dinosaurs only lived on land. These rocks were laid down essentially in a terrestrial environment, where water was washing through the area and buried the dinosaur bones in the river, but those dinosaurs lived on land. Finally, it helps if you know you found dinosaur bones there before. And literally millions of dinosaur bones have been found here in Dinosaur Provincial Park. So all four factors are working in our favor. We can come here every year and expect that we're going to find new dinosaur resources. >> Do you think Dinosaur Provincial Park would be a good place for bones to fossilize today? Although Dinosaur Provincial Park is a great place to find fossils, it is not a great place for new fossils to form. It is very dry in the Badlands. Sand and mud do not build up over animal carcasses, which is required for the fossilization process. >> Dinosaur bones are very abundant in Dinosaur Park because 75 million years ago, it was a good place for dinosaur bones to be buried. There were big rivers running through this area, and those rivers carried a lot of sand and mud. And those buried the animals, and that means they had a very good chance of being fossilized.

When we look at modern animals that die in the same environment that we're in today though, those modern animals, when they die, their bones disperse over the Badlands, the, the bones dry up, they crack, they break, they turn to dust. They do not get buried, and they have no chance of being fossilized. >> The Badlands are arid and rocky today, but what would the terrain and climate have been like when the dinosaurs were alive? Check all that you think apply. A, wet. B, dry. C, flat. D, hilly. E, rivers and wetlands. Or F, plains and bluffs. Dinosaur Park is dry today, but 70 million years ago, this area was a lot wetter and more humid. It would've been a bit like today's Gulf of Mexico and the southern American states. Lots of rivers and small creeks, and relatively flat and swampy. Sometimes large storms, maybe even hurricanes, would have caused flooding. Dinosaurs that died in this region especially during storms would have been quickly buried. Which is why we find so many dinosaurs here today. So A, C, and E are correct. >> Here in Dinosaur Provincial Park, we're surrounded by sedimentary rocks. Sedimentary rocks take many forms. Sandstones, mudstones, shales, ironstones, you name it. But basically they all share one common characteristic. That is they're the breakdown product of other rocks. Those rocks are broken down into sand and silt and, and mud. And then they get redeposited in water or by wind, to form these layers. And sedimentary rocks are a good place for animals to get buried and therefore fossilized. Igneous rocks include things like this glacial erratic.

We do find them in Dinosaur Park. But igneous rocks represent ancient molten magma and this is not a good place for things to be fossilized in. The third type of rock are the metamorphics. And the metamorphics can either be sedimentary or igneous rocks that have been changed by heat and pressure deep under ground. And you're not going to find fossils in those as well, under normal circumstances. Now we work with geologists, who are called sedimentary geologists. Who basically come to an area like this, and they look at the structures in each one of these levels. And they can tell us what environments those represented. And they can maximize our chances of finding fossils of certain types. For example, we would look in sandstones. When we were looking for dinosaur skeletons.