Study - Standing Rock Reservation, Dakotas - 6" x 8"

We had the privilege of spending a few days with the staff of the Standing Rock Institute of Natural History in Fort Yates, ND during the filming of our PBS series in 2019. The morning of our visit, we - our crew and the museum folks both - were shocked to learn the news that the Museum to would be closing abruptly and permanently within a few weeks. I’d need a whole other documentary to discuss the complexities of that information and its context, but the biggest takeaway is that the closure was, and continues to be, a major heartbreaking loss for many reasons.

Geographically, the Standing Rock Reservation spans parts of both North and South Dakota, occupying some of the most remote parts of the United States. As a condition of our request to film fossils on the Reservation, we were not allowed to be aware of our own location arriving to or leaving the site. I’m not even sure which state we were in. The day before the field shoot - where our partner for the segment, Ben Eagle, would take us to the most mind-blowing fossil site of the entire series - we camped overnight at an abandoned farm nearby. I woke up at dawn and wandered in a cloud of mosquitoes towards the sun to take this reference photo.

You can watch the segment of this fossil excursion on Prehistoric Road Trip here.