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Rosebud County - 3-5 Exploring Ancient Life and Its Connection to Energy

Background Info/ Historical Story:

Though the dinosaur “Dinny” is not real, the description of his ancient habitat is. “A grandson of one of Rosebud County's earliest settlers has the "Footprint from the Sands of Time." While working a field located on a tributary of Rosebud creek, the morning sun made a shadow on a huge lump of sandstone that Jim Snider had farmed around many times before. An amateur Geologist, he interrupted his work to look at the rock more closely. Later, a Paleontologist from the University of Utah studied the footprint. He reported it to be that of a not full-grown Tyrannosaurus rex, the largest and most feared reptile known to have lived on Earth. The track measuring five inches deep and seventeen inches across was of a kind of dinosaur that inhabited our world over sixty million years ago. The creature, named for his serreted-blade teeth, is the one so feared by "Dinny", the dinosaur in the comic-strip "Alley Oop". Full grown he stood eighteen feet high, almost fifty feet long, and weighed between eight and ten tons. The tropical forests which bordered a shallow inland sea he knew as home. The forest and marshland decay was the origin of the sub-bituminous coal so highly prized today. North of the swampland lay the bed of the inland sea which extended to the Gulf of Alaska. Part of the Country south of Yellowstone and much of that north of the river was covered by the sea. In later aeons the sea gave way to glaciers as much as 2000 feet in depth. While the sea spawned countless pre-historic fish the glaciers compacted and preserved the forms and skeletons found yet today. To the glaciers we owe the origin of the agate stone found along the Yellowstone and north of it for about ten miles.”- History of Rosebud County By Patty Kluver, They Came and They Stayed, Rosebud County Book


“In 1921, south of the Yellowstone, the Northern Pacific Railroad was investigating the possibility of

opening a coal mine to use in their steam locomotives. By 1923 the project had become a fact when a spur line was built from just west of Forsyth to the site. In 1925 the first pit was opened, and coal was stripmined there until after the 2nd World War, when the railroad changed to Diesel engines. Montana Power Company leased and then bought the townsite of Colstrip. The May 14th, 1964, headline in the Forsyth Independent read, "Colstrip lignite coal deposits will figure in Montana's industrial development planning," and so it has, but that history is current.”- They Came and They Stayed, Rosebud County Book

Collections Spotlight:

Ampelopsis acerifolia is a type of climbing vine and their fossils can be found in Rosebud County

Photos, Maps, etc:

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