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Thread Owner
Back in 2006 I went on a fossil hunting trip with my dad to the badlands in south Dakota. We found ALOT of fossils but on our 3rd day there we decided to go places we thought no human had ever been. I was only in sixth grade then so obviously I was pumped to go exploring. We climbed up a cliff face about 50 feet to a flat ledge about 10 feet deep and then a fairly steep hill continued up even further. After scrambling up the hill for about 50-75 feet we reached a tiny piece of flat ground and this was the top of the hill. In top there was a small mound in the dead center that was about 8 feet tall and just looked like a pile of sand and rocks, I climbed to the top where I yelled out I was king of the hillllll! Then I noticed the first bone. It was a small jaw bone about the size of my finger, then I started scraping around, the entire mound was a pile of fossilized bones, I was laying them all out but taking pictures of where they were before I moved them. There were hundreds. This was when I park ranger showed up and fined us for hiking off the trails, confiscated the bones, roped it off as a protective sight and asked if he could have the disposable camera to help them document where the fossilized bones were that I had moved. I was livid, especially since my dad complied without any argument to all of it. The law is the law though so there wasn't much we could do. When we got home a week later I had this letter in the mail, my only reminder that I had found $1000's in bones. And the jaw that I "turned in" was actually just the first thing the ranger saw. And The marker I left was so that me and my dad could find it the next day, we never returned though. Thanks for reading.
