Many people view paleontology as the hunt for near-mythical beasts that roamed the planet long ago, this is one aspect I love about paleontology but there are much more practical applications for the work done in this field. Much of our research takes place on the prairies of North Dakota in the Hell Creek geological formation.
The hell creek is a famous fossil formation known for producing T-rex and triceratops.
These famous dinosaurs were also some of the last dinosaurs on Earth before one of the largest mass extinctions. Understanding how earth ecologies reacted to traumatic events in the past is one of our best models for predicting ecological collapse in the future, with modern technologies such as synchrotron analysis there is truly a gold mine of data to be collected.
