By: Leo Li

On July 31, 2022, Jessin Fisher, who was ten years old, his brother Liam, who was seven years old, and cousin Kaiden Madsen, who was nine years old, went on a normal hike in Hell Creek Formation in the Badlands of North Dakota. The area is rich with dinosaur fossils. Little did they know that they would end up helping hundreds of scientists. The exciting discovery began when Liam and his dad, Sam Fisher, saw a long bone sticking out of the ground. Sam sent a photo of the fossil to Dr. Tyler Lyson, a paleontologist who works at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. The expert confirmed Jessin’s hunch that the bone sticking out of the ground was a dinosaur fossil.

After receiving the necessary permits in 2023, Dr. Lyson set up an excavation team, which included the three boys. He had thought that the bone belonged to a duckbill of a common dinosaur, but when he got to the site, the scientist and Jessin found what appeared to be a T. rex tooth. Digging deeper, they found four teeth on a jaw. After an extensive excavation, they found about half of the dinosaur fossil. Scientists who studied the fossils say that the dinosaur was 13-15 years old; it was a teenage dinosaur that died about 67 million years ago. That half is now in the Denver Museum. All in all, now you know that little kids can make history in paleontology.