- Over on that far ridge
there's something very white in coloration.
(rocks crushing)
(breathing heavily)
That is a jaw bone.
Yes!
Wow!
That is an amazing find.
A legit jaw bone.
Oh, this is exciting.
- [Mark] Guys, is that a saber from a cat?
Kinda looks like it, right?
(egg cracking)
(dramatic music)
- [Coyote] Many miles out into the vast wilderness
of the Badlands, the crew and I are searching
for fossils alongside paleontologist Pete Larson.
So far at this top secret dig site
we've uncovered the remains of two ancient turtles.
And now with some fossil hunting knowledge under our belts,
we have been turned loose
to search for artifacts on our own.
- Rolling? - Rolling, action.
- Rolling? - Yeah.
- I'm rolling too. - Man, it's hot.
- It is super hot.
We have made some incredible finds thus far.
Turtles and a whole bunch of little bones and teeth.
Now, Pete has showed us the process we need to go through
to search for these fossils.
And at this point he has turned us loose
and sent us on the mission of finding
a saber-toothed cat skull.
It could happen, guys.
They do find them out here.
Now what I'm gonna do is give you
a GoPro, Mark. - Okay.
- There you go. - Got my GoPro.
- I'm also gonna give one to you, Mario.
- Oh, I see what's goin' on here.
- And I've got one right here filming me.
Now, we're gonna break down the main cameras
and use the GoPros to film ourselves
walking around, searching for fossils.
Now if you find something epic, call it out.
May the man with the best fossil win.
Good luck, guys!
Let's see what we can find.
- All right, Mario, ready?
- All right. - Let's do this.
- Which way do we go? - Any way you want.
- [Mario] All right, I'll go this way.
- All right, guys.
They have turned the bone hound loose into the Badlands.
(gentle acoustic music)
What is this here?
That is just a rock.
Oh, look at this.
That's pretty cool.
That's one I'm gonna keep for sure.
(blows)
- Piece of a turtle shell right there.
Just a fragment that's come down the wash, so it's tricky.
This is a lot of times a good place to find fragments
of fossils but if you wanna find something whole,
you really need to look on the edges
for something that just was exposed by the recent rains
that came through the area.
And that's what I think I'm gonna find
if I keep going this way.
- Check that out.
A little femur bone I'm suspecting.
That's cool, actually.
(groans)
There's the top of it.
Those are worth holding onto right there.
All right.
We're gonna cut down through this valley
and see what we can find.
- Tell you what
it's hot out here.
And finding fossils is not easy.
That's for sure.
Your eyes have to be trained
to catch any different texture in the soil or coloration.
- Look at this.
This is a huge tortoise.
(sighs)
That's a big piece of carapace right there.
Wow!
You can see where all the bones
have just crumbled down the hillside.
Now that's considered an ex-turtle,
as Pete calls them.
Nothing to be collected there but for me, still a cool find.
All right.
I'm almost to the top of this ridge
and that's where we're gonna find something cool.
(footsteps thumping)
(suspenseful music)
- [Mario] Look at this.
This is a tiny, tiny rodent jaw.
It's amazing 'cause you would think
how are you gonna find such a tiny object?
But that just stands out quite well
in this type of substrate.
- Over on that far ridge
about there, there's something very white
in coloration sticking out of the substrate.
Could just be another piece of a turtle shell
(breather heavily)
It's big enough to be a skull.
All right, I'm goin' for it.
(dramatic music)
I'm gonna have to slide down through this canyon
to get there.
And I'm just gonna go for a basic skeet slide here.
Here we go.
(crunching down rocks)
(sighs)
Now I gotta get up the other side.
A lot easier said than done.
- Oh my goodness.
Guys, is that a saber from a cat?
- Check this out.
(breathes heavily)
That is a jaw bone.
Yes!
Wow!
That is an amazing find.
A legit jaw bone right there.
Okay, I'm gonna look around,
see if there's anything more of it.
Yes!
- Get out of here.
That is awesome.
Man, I wonder if there's any more of it.
- Oh, this is exciting.
Very gently, yes.
Oh, almost lost it.
Wow!
(breathes heavily)
Stay there, knife.
That is the find of the day for me right there.
The jaw bone of...
It could be a cat.
Those look like cat teeth.
All right, I gotta investigate this area
a little bit more and see what else I can find.
Yes!
That is a huge find for me.
Man, the skull hound delivers.
(light tonal music)
- Oh!
Cool.
So, I found this fossil here.
Looks pretty big as it stands.
This is the biggest fossil I've found so far.
Everything so far I've been finding
has been tiny, like mandibles.
But this
appears
to be maybe some type of leg bone or arm bone.
I'm not sure.
But anyways, you gotta put this in the pack
and go see what else I can find.
- I have investigated the area pretty well,
and I don't see any more fragments of the skull.
I'm checking down in this canyon now
with the hopes that maybe something washed
all the way through, but...
Oh, oh, oh, more teeth, more teeth, right here.
Look at this.
This is a different animal
but that's another jaw right there.
All right, I think I'm,
more jaw, more jaw.
Hold on a second, what's this?
(light orchestral music)
This might be the back of a skull.
It is.
It's the top of a skull.
I found a skull, I found a skull.
Hold on a second.
Yes!
Man, it's a strike again.
Okay, I've got small jaw fragments right here
and what appears to be a cranium without question.
Look at that.
You can see where the brain stem connected,
it's all broken apart but that is a skull.
All right, guys.
Well, I've got a pocket full of good stuff.
I think it's time to head back and meet up with the team.
- All right, guys, well we are back from the adventure.
It was hot, it was dry, it was dusty.
But we all made it and it certainly was epic.
Now we found lots of incredible specimens.
Look at all these fossils.
On the end we have Mario's.
In the middle we have Mark's.
And right here we have Coyote's.
Now we have placed our prized fossils
out here on these pieces of wood
but we saved our best pieces for last.
And at the end, we're each gonna reveal
our most, you know, sort of celebrated relic.
- Kind of like our grand finale.
- Yeah, the grand finale.
So what I wanna do now
is first we're gonna go through Mario's stuff,
then Mark's, then mine.
And Pete, if you would be so kind
as to help us identify some of these fossils.
- Sure.
- That will help everybody out there watching
know exactly what it is we found.
- [Mark] All right.
So Mario, you're up. - Sound good?
- Okay. - All right, buddy,
what did you find?
Man, looks good.
- All right, so, I do know what this one is--
A tortoise. - Yep, that's a turtle.
Yep, very good. - Okay.
And then I kind of of get lost over here
with maybe some type of mammal?
- [Pete] So this is, this actually is also a turtle.
- Okay.
- [Pete] So that's a turtle tibia,
the distal end of a turtle tibia.
- [Mario] Gotcha.
- [Pete] Another piece of turtle here.
This is a pelvis, part of a pelvis.
You can see right where the femur would go right in there.
Anybody needs a hip replacement, contact Mario.
- [Mario] Okay.
(drum drops)
- And then we've got leptomeryx.
Leptomeryx is a relative of the antelope caprid,
the modern day pronghorn. - Oh.
- [Pete] This is actually a little paleolagus,
a little rabbit jaw. - Cool.
- [Pete] And this is a mouse.
A guy called yumeze
or as they said in the oligocene, yummies.
- All right, Mark, you want me to take over
on that camera?
- Yeah, here, do you wanna take this one?
- Sure, I'm gonna cut the GoPro here.
- All right. - I will take this.
Still rolling? - Yeah, I'm rolling.
- Okay, and get the ear buds.
Oh, yeah, all right.
Coyote's got the big camera.
- Man, you got a lot, Coyote. - I did.
- You got a lot of fossils.
I had to work hard for my stash,
but I'm feeling like my grand finale
is gonna be worth the wait.
But just before then, let's go through these.
I know what this is.
That's a turtle.
I thought that was pretty cool.
This looks like a piece of a carapace.
- [Pete] Yep, part of the turtle as well.
- [Mark] Yeah.
This I have no idea.
Pete, you're gonna have to help me out on that one.
- [Pete] That's a humerus.
That's an oreodont humerus
probably from the bigger oreodont,
merycredidon culpra sonine.
- Okay.
This is a shard of a bone but it was larger
so I picked it up.
- So a little bit harder to identify.
Possibly, it looks like probably a long bone,
probably a part of a femur from something big
like one of the rhinos.
- Oh, rhino bone. - Yeah.
- I'll take that.
And then I have a whole smorgasbord
of different looking teeth here.
I'm not sure if they're all the same species?
- You have uppers and lowers from this guy
called leptomeryx evansi
and then this little guy here
is a little tiny antelope called antelope caprid,
called Hypisodus.
So this is a pretty rare little guy here.
- Oh, cool!
- I think we found only one skull here
the whole time we've dug here.
- All right, Coyote.
- All right.
I filled almost an entire two by four with fossils.
Now, like I said, I am the bone hound.
The skull hound, and I actually found
a crushed skull out there.
Now Pete, I don't know what species this is
but it is definitely a cranium.
You can see where the back of the skull would connect--
- [Pete] There's little condials there--
- [Coyote] To the vertebrae there.
- [Pete] Yep, so that's a brain case, basically.
- Yeah.
- Judging from this and also the teeth all match
a leptomeryx, so leptomeryx evansi.
- Okay. - The antelope caprid.
Yeah, so yeah, both maxilla and there's, looks like
some of the mandible too there.
So that's very cool.
All the same beast.
- That was one of my coolest finds.
Then I found even bigger jaw pieces.
Now, I got really excited because I thought that I had found
the cat skull.
I just saw these two pieces sticking up
from the dirt and I saw these big sharp tips,
dug down, but these were the only pieces
that I managed to unearth.
Now what are those, Pete?
- And these are actually two different individuals.
You can see, they're both the left maxilla--
- Oh, wow.
- [Pete] Of the oreodont, probably merycoidodon halprinae.
- [Coyote] Okay.
- [Pete] So, sort of the middle sized oreodont.
But you can see they're exactly the same.
- Really?
'Cause I found those like both right next to each other.
- Isn't that interesting? - Wow!
- How you'd think they'd be the same
but it can't because that's repeat.
- Yeah.
- They're both left maxilla.
- Very cool.
This guy had two left feet, as they say.
- Yep, that's right.
- I have a couple of other teeth and jaw pieces here.
But then check this out.
This is some sort of a femur bone, tibia?
- It's distal femur. - Okay.
- [Pete] It's just missing this condyle here.
Probably goes back together.
Maybe missing a piece in between but--
- [Coyote] Yep.
- [Pete] Yeah, so a femur, probably oreodont again.
- Of course a neat little piece of turtle carapace.
- [Pete] Yep.
- [Coyote] I found this then bigger bone again maybe a--
- So this is actually a humerus from a turtle.
- Oh, from a turtle? - Yeah.
- Okay.
Neat, a big turtle bone.
All right, guys.
Well, it's about time to reveal our final prized fossils.
Shall we start with Mario?
- [Mark] Yeah, I say we go back down the line.
- Okay.
- [Mark] Mario, why don't you hand your camera to Coyote?
- [Mario] Here you go, it's recording.
- [Mark] Coyote, why don't you get the tight shot?
- [Coyote] Yep.
- [Mark] I heard you might need two hands for this fossil.
- Well, I saw this and it's definitely
the largest fossil that I encountered and--
- [Mark] It just made a thump, everybody.
- Yeah. (laughing)
And so it's definitely dense in weight
and I'm thinking it's some type of leg bone.
- [Mark] Whoa!
- So I found it, there is kind of the top part of it.
I'm gonna see if I could get it back in place there.
There you go.
So that's how I found it.
Just on the ground and it's pretty big!
So Tyrannosaur?
- No, it is mammal
and it's one of the biggest mammals that we have out here.
- [Mario] Oh.
- This is a rhino tibia, distal tibia.
- A rhinoceros!
- Yep, and you can tell by the shape
of where the astragalus would go what it is.
- [Mario] Whoa!
- And so this is one of the very biggest animals
that was out here, this and the giant pig.
So it's an animal called Subhyracodon,
Subhyracodon occidentalis.
- Subhyracodon. - Yep.
- Subhyracodon, a big prehistoric rhino, all right.
- [Mark] All right, Mario,
you may win big fossil of the day.
Big bone of the day goes to Mario.
- All right, who's next?
- [Mark] All right, I guess that would be me.
- [Mario] Mark's up.
- [Coyote] All right, guys.
- Now, this is one of those situations
where I think I found something pretty cool,
but I'm not 100% sure.
So I'm gonna be a little reserved in my reveal,
but if it is what I think it is
it might be the fossil of the day.
All right, you ready?
So... - You got me curious here.
- I think-- - Oh.
- I may have found the saber to a cat.
- You did, that is. - Whoa!
- [Mark] Yes, yes!
- [Coyote] Wow!
- [Pete] That's a saber from a dynexis the base of the saber
so this is all root here and there's some breaks.
Unfortunately, it's not complete
which would be really awesome.
And where's the skull that this should be in?
- I know.
It was the only piece I could find.
But I do know where I found it
so I will let you guys know so you can mark it down.
- Yeah, we'll go back and check it out.
But, oh, that's awesome.
So far you're the only one with a cat today.
- Yes!
- It's not a whole skull,
but it's the best we got so far.
That's awesome.
- Yeah, I saw the bend in it
and I was like, that feels like it could be a saber, so--
- Awesome ID. - Saber!
It's a saber!
That's what I got, guys.
Coyote, it's your turn.
- [Mario] What do you got, Coyote?
- Coyote is supposed to have
a complete saber tooth cat skull in his pocket.
- [Mario] What?
- That's what I'm expecting here.
- Well guys, I did not come back
with the saber tooth cat skull.
I saw one out there but it wasn't pristine condition
so I just kind of left it. - You just left it?
- I just left it.
I didn't think anybody wanted to see it.
- [Pete] A broken saber or something?
- No, it had a bunch of dust on it.
It just looked really aged.
No, no saber tooth cats but-- - You got something for us.
- I got something cool.
Check out that jaw piece. - Whoa!
- Nice. - Yeah, that's awesome.
- [Mark] That's a nice, nice jaw.
- Now this has a cool story to it as well,
because I did spot it from a distance.
I had to scale down into a valley
and mountain goat climb up to get to this
and filmed it all the while on the GoPro
and sure enough after I got close
I got so excited, I said,
"It's a jaw bone, oh my gosh!"
And then as soon as I grabbed it
I was like, "The skull's got to be here somewhere."
Did not find the skull
but for me, that is a pretty good find.
Now, Pete, what species is this?
- [Pete] So that's merycoidodon culbertsoni.
It's the oreodont. - Okay.
- [Pete] It's the biggest of the oreondonts
that were down here in the lower oligocene.
- [Coyote] Very cool!
- And there's something cool you may not have noticed.
See that little hole there?
- Yeah.
- That's not supposed to be there.
- [Coyote] Really?
- [Pete] So it was fed on possibly by a hyaenadon
because the hole's round not like a cat would be sort of
so that's a poke hole from a tooth.
- [Coyote] Okay, so something might have bit or chewed
on this jaw. - Yeah.
- Well that could possibly explain why
I saw it broken apart
and this is the only piece I found.
But pretty proud of this fossil.
- Very nice jaw.
- I'm gonna place it down there.
Wow!
- [Mark] Let's take a step back in the shadow--
- [Coyote] Yeah. - The final.
- That is cool.
What a layout of incredible prehistoric prizes right there.
Now we have Mario with the rhino bone.
Of course Mark, with the cat saber,
and then there's me with the oreodont jaw.
Write in the comment section below
and tell us which one of these finds was your favorite.
Now every one of these specimens is gonna be taken
back to the Black Hills Institute
where it will be used for research purposes.
And while we didn't find the saber tooth cat skull today
that just means we'll need to return to the Badlands
to find some more fossils.
Pete, thank you so much for having us out today.
We could not have done it without you.
I'm Coyote Peterson, be brave.
Stay wild.
We'll see ya on the next prehistoric adventure.
(light music)
Of the countless expeditions the crew and I've embarked upon
searching for fossils in the Badlands alongside Pete Larson
is by far one of our most memorable.
No, we didn't find the coveted saber-toothed cat skull
we were all hoping for
but that simply means we will need to one day return
to this fossil rich location.
(light music)
The art of paleontology requires
an incredible amount of patience.
And while the conditions are often harsh
with the strong will of persistence
you're almost certain to find prehistoric treasure.
Stay tuned as we return to the Black Hills Institute
where Pete teaches us how to take a fossil from the field
and perfect it into presentation status.
If you enjoyed all of these incredible fossils,
make sure to travel back in time
and watch where the adventure began
as we headed out into the Badlands.
And don't forget subscribe, so you can join me and the crew
on this season of Beyond Dinosaurs.
This is the foot of a bird.
- [Mario] So that's an avian dinosaur technically.
- This is a modern day dinosaur.
- Yes, absolutely, absolutely.
- Boom, for sure.
(animals roaring) (birds chirping)