Grand Ridge student unearths triceratops fossil in Montana

Living in the past generally is not a good thing, unless you have a passion for paleontology like Lucille Alexander.

In her case, it has worked out much better than expected.

The 13-year-old Grand Ridge Grade School seventh grader was on a dig with her parents, David and Natalie, in the Badlands near Jordan, Montana over the summer.

I’ve always liked dinosaurs. I’ve always found them interesting, the evolution and the steps that have taken place to get to the reptiles and birds we have around us today.

—  Lucille Alexander, Grand Ridge seventh grader

There she made the find of her young life: a portion of frill, or head-attached neck plate, of a triceratops that is estimated to be in the neighborhood of 67 million years old years old.

“It’s exciting,” Alexander said of the fragile, 18-inch-by-6-inch, eight-pound fossil. “The first time I went, I wanted to find a tooth or a claw and I think I did, but this year I hoped I’d find something big and I did.

“I’ve always liked dinosaurs. I’ve always found them interesting, the evolution and the steps that have taken place to get to the reptiles and birds we have around us today. And now we get to study it right here at home.”

Alexander has always held a fascination with dinosaurs, even at preschool age, so much so that her parents tried to take a vacation through Adventures 360 and Paleo X, the latter a site for amateur diggers and families.

“She’s only wanted to be a paleontologist, since she was like, 3, when she could first say the word,” Natalie said. “When she was 5 she asked for dinosaur books, but not baby books. We bought encyclopedias and at night we’d read to her and we’d end up say, ‘OK, we have time for three more dinosaurs.’ … I worked with a guy whose daughter also loved dinosaurs and he told me about Paleo X, so we knew we had to go.”

“We had to see if she would really like it, was she good at it or would she be miserable trying to do it,” David said. “Turned out, she has a real knack for it … and doing this now gives her good field experience for when she studies it in college.”

The Alexanders did make their first trip, a two-day dig, in 2019. After two COVID years, Alexander and her brother went for a five-day dig in 2022. To that point, she had helped uncover a triceratops femur and found petrified wood, a small jawbone, a few teeth and some gar scales.

On July 3 of this year, Alexander and her parents were doing some “prospecting” (roaming around the dig sites) in what was named the “Casino” area of the dig when she noticed something of a lighter color peeking out from the gray earth.

She started scraping the sandstone and mudstone, brushing around the edges to reveal her fossil, not a run-of-the-mill leg bone or vertebrae but easily recognizable as the frill unique to the triceratops.

“The fossils make a specific hollow sound when you tap it with the knives we had,” Alexander said. “It’s hard to describe. It sounds sharper than if you just tap a rock, but it’s hard to tell apart from sandstone.

“It took us three days to get it out and put the jacket (a plaster cast) on it, but we got it.”

Alexander, who would like to study paleontology like her idol and friend, Ottawa native and world-renowned scientist and author Stephen Brusatte, was allowed to name the find.

It and all of the pieces subsequently found from that specific animal have been dubbed “Silver Dragon” after a character in one of her favorite games, Dungeons and Dragons.

Though the find is the property of the Bureau of Land Management, it was sent to the Grand Ridge school for use in Clark Brown’s science classes. Because the find is of somewhat common nature – Alexander said the triceratops are known as “the cows of the Cretaceous period” – there is no timetable for its return and may remain at the local school for some time.

Unfortunately, during shipment, the fossil broke into many pieces, but that doesn’t lessen the value for the students’ lessons.

“I’m excited that we were able to get it to Grand Ridge,” Alexander said. “I’m kind of upset that it broke in being shipped here, but I’m so happy we’re able to work on it and study it … The rest of the class may not have the same fascination with dinosaurs that I do, but they’re excited, too.”