Medora Frequently Asked Questions

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For Full Days or Half-Day Mornings, we will be meeting in the Life Skills Center at 7:45am. For Half-Day Afternoons, we will meet outside the Life Skills Center at 12:45pm.  You are welcome to eat breakfast or lunch at the buffet, or before you come. 

Please do! We would love if you would be willing to share them with us as well. We enjoy social media posts, and can be tagged @NDGSpaleo (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram).

We lovingly call Medora our frou-frou dig. We drive nearly up to the site, with very little hiking. This is a quarry site, meaning we return year after year to the same location to sit and dig. No prospecting (wandering the hillsides) needed. You may be asked to do a little shovel or pickaxe work, but not a lot.

We do indeed have a shade tent, and chairs. There is not shade on site for multiple reasons: as the sun shifts, we would need to shift the shade; in order to anchor the shade, we would risk damaging fossils still under ground.

Please bring more water than you think you will need – it tends to get hot, and we don’t want people becoming dehydrated. You will also need to pack your own lunch. We ask that you not bring a giant cooler along, since there will not be a lot of extra room in the passenger van.  Hat, sunglasses, and of course a camera. We will provide all the tools you will be using throughout the day. We pack out what we pack in, so please take all garbage back with you. No littering!

No - you will need to eat breakfast / lunch before you come, or pack a lunch.  We do this to help keep the costs low.  As everyone will be bringing food, please do not pack a large cooler.

Medora was a very swamp-like environment 55 million years ago. We find anything from crocodile bones, fish, salamanders, turtles, champsosaurs, bald cypress branches and cones, snails, clams, mammals, and birds.

While it’s possible to find a whole animal, most of what we are finding are parts and pieces. Imagine creatures dying in a swamp, sinking down, being eaten, walked by, disturbed - we find lots of single elements. A crocodile tooth here. A gar-pike jaw there. A rib from a turtle.

No – all fossils found will return to the State Fossil Collection in Bismarck, ND.

Most of the land we search on is State, Federal, or Foundation land (US Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Teddy Roosevelt Medora Foundation, etc.), and the NDGS curates whatever is found. Feel free to take photos of whatever you find however!

Yes! Our Medora site has a port-a-potty.

Yes, there is good signal in the area, but we ask that as courtesy to the other diggers, if you are going to use your phone to chat, please head back to where we park the vehicles. It tends to get very distracting.

Yes, but just like the cell phone use, as courtesy to the other diggers, we ask that you smoke back where we park the vehicles. Please take your cigarette butts with you as well – we want to make sure we keep the area clean.

There are numerous places in Medora. Some of them include:

  • Campground
  • Roughrider Hotel
  • Red Trail RV campground
  • AmericInn
  • Bunkhouse

There are numerous places in Medora to eat. Some of them include:

  • Boots Bar & Grill
  • Elkhorn Café
  • Cowboy Café
  • Roughrider
  • Missouri River Saloon & Dining Room