All at once, we noticed the teeth — a whole row of them, big, gray and pointed. During several days of hiking at Badlands National Park, our girls had been determined to spot a fossil, stopping to scan the ground constantly. They were looking for any differences in texture, trying to spot smooth bones as we walked along an outcropping of the park’s striking rock formations.
The wind and rain erode the rocks of the Badlands at a rate of about 1 inch per year, constantly exposing fossils from tens of millions of years ago. By that point, my husband and I were a little tired of urging our kids, 7 and 10, to keep moving. So we weren’t expecting much when the younger, Emilia, shouted that the two of them had found something just off the trail.
Her sister, Elise, had noticed a small, white bone fragment near where they had stopped for a water break. Emilia took a closer look and realized that a much bigger piece was embedded in the cracked, crumbly ground. Once we saw those teeth, we realized that they had discovered the jaw and maybe even the whole head of something ancient.
The whole family was excited to tell park rangers about the find. In reporting the girls’ discovery, we took part in the South Dakota park’s Fossil Finder program, a citizen science project. The experience was a highlight of our stay in the otherworldly landscape of the Badlands, where we also enjoyed stargazing, bison spotting and hikes such as the Notch Trail, with its log-ladder climb.
We later le.