This summer, Southeast Missouri State University students traded the classroom for the rugged badlands of Jordan, Montana—digging, unearthing, and protecting fossils in a once-in-a-lifetime field experience they’ll never forget. Their discoveries, including a T. rex bone, were shared with SEMO’s Board of Governors during its September 19 meeting by instructor Pamela Mills.
Mills, who has taught geoscience at SEMO for 12 years, has led the trip annually since 2019 to give students an immersive, hands-on learning opportunity.
“Students actually get to be paleontologists for a week,” Mills said. “They’re taught proper field techniques—how to prospect, identify fossils, use GPS coordinates, excavate, tag and jacket fossils for travel. The experience for the students is priceless.”
This year’s expedition included two faculty and 14 students from majors ranging from wildlife biology to anthropology and historic preservation to actuarial science, GIS and aviation. Participants can earn course credit and gain firsthand experience in discovery, excavation and fossil preparation.
For senior environmental science major Megan Buchheit, the highlight was uncovering a T. rex bone.
“I saw a little piece of something sticking out of the ground,” she said. “I was elated already, but when the paleontologists identified it as T. rex bone—I can hardly explain it. I was nearly in tears. Knowing I was the first human to lay eyes on this and contributing to what we know about the dinosaurs was so, so cool.”
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Wildlife biology senior Iris Mohesky said the trip brought her coursework to life.
“You learn about it in the classroom, but actually touching the extinction event or holding a bone is the most exciting and cool thing,” Mohesky said. “You can see the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary in the rock layers. There’s actual soot from the extinction event. When you’re out there, you’re looking for float, these little pieces of bone that lead you to the bigger fossil. Learning how to pedestal and jacket fossils, the same way paleontologists do, was fascinating. It’s hard work, but it showed me how much I enjoy being in the field and getting hands-on experience.”
The fossils returned to SEMO are used in geology courses taught on campus, however, they are also used for educational outreach such as those you listed but not limited to. Mills presents the fossils students uncover with more than 1,000 people per year including at schools, Scouts, the McNair Scholars program, public libraries, conferences, University events and now SEMO’s Board of Governors. But she says the most meaningful moments come in the field.
“I have had students say, ‘You don’t know what this means to me,’” Mills said. “That right there is why I come out. The look on their face makes it all worth it.”
SEMO is currently the only university with a Paleo X Adventure 360 partnership that allows for transporting fossils from Montana to campus—giving students extended, hands-on experience beyond the field and college credit for working on dinosaur fossils in the geoscience lab.
Want to be part of the next discovery? Students interested in joining the upcoming fossil dig can contact Mills at pamills@semo.edu or learn more at semo.edu.