(soft music) - So the first dinosaurs to be named from North America actually came from Montana.

They were found way back in 1854 and 1855, and then shipped east where all the scientists were at that time, so there's really no long history of fossil discoveries in Montana, and when kids think of dinosaurs, I mean, the classic dinosaurs that they typically name are T-Rex and triceratops, and those both come from eastern Montana, and were found in over a hundred years ago.

My name's David Varricchio, I'm a paleontologist at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana.

I feel that in doing paleontological work, especially fieldwork where you get hints of dinosaur life 75 million years ago, I feel like it's just this small window opens up that goes all the way back 75 million years and you get this small view of what was taking place then, and that really excites me.

No, you haven't found eggshell yet.

You found calcite, but not eggshells.

They range from maybe, just over a centimeter long, to some are four centimeters long.

Oh, that's really cool.

- [Student] Oh wow.

- So there's a whole bunch in.

These have some really nice textures.

- [Student] Oh, that's cool.

- The first time I came to Montana was with a geology field trip as a requirement for my undergraduate degree, but we looped through Montana for about two weeks, and I was like, ooh, Montana.

I don't know, somehow the landscape was really cool and I really liked it, I thought, oh wow, I really need to get back to Montana.

So this is the '78 nest site, so Jack Horner and his pal Bob Makela came out here and they dug up this area, and they collected about 14 individuals.

A lot of my work was, for paleontology, was up here along the eastern front of the Rockies.

And it's shortgrass prairie, often it's a mile or two before you can actually see a tree, so it's sort of a big open wide space.

It's truly the big sky of Montana, so it's very different from where I grew up.

I grew up in Pennsylvania, and when I came out first, here, to do fieldwork, I would stand in an area like Egg Mountain in this giant openness, was beautiful on a grand scale, but it also, it also kinda made me uneasy in some ways too, 'cause I was used to the, sort of the rolling hills and the trees of eastern Pennsylvania.

It took me a long time to go, wow, this is the landscape that I'm familiar with and comfortable with.

That seems like it's all sand, and it goes sand all the way up to where the upper people are sitting.

- [Student] It's weird.

- It is kinda weird.

- [Student] 'Cause it's thicker there, it seems like.

- Yeah.

- [Student] Dipping at about 40 degrees.

- Yeah.

- [Student] Kind of like everything's changing so much.

- You know, I study the geologic past, so things change in geologic time.

I mean, there's always things changing, nothing stays the same, so I guess in some ways I feel like, oh, it's inevitable that places change.

Bozeman's changed quite a bit since I first moved there, so that's 27 years.

Primarily just in growth, so the city's gone from a cozier town to a slightly less cozy town.

I feel like the sense of the place is still pretty similar to when I first got there, but it has grown.

It does kind of surprise me that there's that many cars and that makes me, I don't know, I guess I feel like, a little disappointed that there's much more asphalt and concrete and vehicles and pollution and stuff like that.

(soft music) So I guess it's hard for me to really say that I'm a real Montanan.

I've been here over 20 years, and I kinda have a odd profession, you know, I'm linked with the university, and I do dinosaurs, so it's kind of a odd role in American culture to begin with, so I'd feel more like a Montanan if I worked in a agricultural field, ranching or farming, that was linked to the land.

I'm linked, I feel like I'm definitely linked to the land through paleontology, through the geologic record, so to me, when I look at a map of Montana, I kinda get a sense of where the ocean was back in the Cretaceous, and where the land was and where you can find dinosaurs, where you could find marine reptiles and seashells and things like that.

(soft music) So that's, like, being a Montanan from way way back.

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