Digging fossils in South Dakota

Filmed during AMNH excavations in the Big Badlands of South Dakota, 1941. This film made by Charles Coles, AMNH photographer, records the paleontological work done in the Badlands of South Dakota by AMNH paleontologists Edwin H. Colbert, Albert Thomson, and Walter Granger. (Granger is seen here for the last time and the expedition was cut short by his sudden death from a heart attack.) As the Badlands National Park allowed only rudimentary excavations, the paleontologists were restricted in their diggings for Oligocene fossils. Nevertheless, finding fossils was not difficult as many lay buried near the surface.