Hell Creek Montana

"Given its wide range, this book should attract readers of history and lovers of the American West in addition to dinosaur junkies. " - Publishers Weekly Hell Creek, Montana, is one of the most windswept, hardscrabble locales in the American West-a quiet town of ranchers, farmers, and others who seek the beauty of the open spaces. It is also the unlikely setting of some of the most fascinating events in the history of the United States and North America. From the first-ever discovery of a Tyrannosaurus rex to Lewis and Clark's landmark expedition; from the Freeman compound standoff to Sitting Bull and Little Big Horn, Hell Creek has been a central player in the events of the last two hundred years-and the last 200 million. Now, with grace and quiet wit, renowned paleontologist and writer Lowell Dingus takes us on a tour of this desolate, beautiful, out-of-the-way place and illuminates its inhabitants, geology, paleontology, and surprising place in history. Nature lovers, dinosaur buffs, and people fascinated with the turbulent history--both ancient and modern--of the American West will find much to delight them in this journey to Hell Creek.

"The chapters represent a surge of field and laboratory research activity, illustrating the impacts of new and refined methods and tools. This volume explores geologic and biologic history preserved in the strata bounding the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary"--Provided by publisher.

The burnt-red badlands of Montana's Hell Creek are a vast graveyard of the Cretaceous dinosaurs that lived 68 million years ago. Those hills were, much later, also home to the Sioux, the Crows, and the Blackfeet, the first people to encounter the dinosaur fossils exposed by the elements. What did Native Americans make of these stone skeletons, and how did they explain the teeth and claws of gargantuan animals no one had seen alive? Did they speculate about their deaths? Did they collect fossils? Beginning in the East, with its Ice Age monsters, and ending in the West, where dinosaurs lived and died, this richly illustrated and elegantly written book examines the discoveries of enormous bones and uses of fossils for medicine, hunting magic, and spells. Well before Columbus, Native Americans observed the mysterious petrified remains of extinct creatures and sought to understand their transformation to stone. In perceptive creation stories, they visualized the remains of extinct mammoths, dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and marine creatures as Monster Bears, Giant Lizards, Thunder Birds, and Water Monsters. Their insights, some so sophisticated that they anticipate modern scientific theories, were passed down in oral histories over many centuries. Drawing on historical sources, archaeology, traditional accounts, and extensive personal interviews, Adrienne Mayor takes us from Aztec and Inca fossil tales to the traditions of the Iroquois, Navajos, Apaches, Cheyennes, and Pawnees. Fossil Legends of the First Americans represents a major step forward in our understanding of how humans made sense of fossils before evolutionary theory developed.

The book reviews and summarizes the Indian Mesozoic geological evolution in an innovative alternative perspective of sequence stratigraphy. It mainly focuses on the Jurassic interval, but also concisely discusses the preceding Triassic and Cretaceous geological records. The key to the study is primarily held in the recently developed ammonoid based high resolution scales in the Triassic and Jurassic period. The Indian Jurassic record is thus elevated to a high resolution pedestal. The large intra-Jurassic stratigraphic gap in Kachchh, with increase in duration from margin to basin, has been précised in different sections, along with radical revision of its long held interpretation from sub-aerial to sub-marine all over from Arabia to Australia. Other significant gaps are also differentiated into sub-aerial and sub-marine. The Indian Late Precambrian – Neogene record is organized into five mega-sequences. Among these, the fourth – also the most important one – includes the intra-Permian to Early Eocene interval from the origin to the closure of the Neotethys. Based on multidisciplinary integration of the Indian Mesozoic geological record and comparison with hydrocarbon producing basins on east and west of India, a highly positive scenario of the hydrocarbon source/reservoir sediment perspective is outlined in the book in sequence stratigraphic backdrop as an edifice for future elaborate evaluation.

There's a town in Montana called Hell Creek. It's not on any map, there's no post office, a census has never been taken, and the most permanent structure is a saloon. It only exists because the ramshackle settlement is next to one of the world's largest dinosaur graveyards. It's a hard place to live, and a worse place to die. Summer digs are in full swing and thirty-four-year-old graduate student Jack Templeton doesn't have time for distractions, but when prehistoric predators overrun his dig site, he becomes prey. Hunters from another age stalk the transformed iridium-rich badlands, but the real enemy waits where Jack least expects it. Who will survive the day the dig came alive?