Bosco's RockPile

Where to Dig Dinosaurs — Real Digs You Can Join

“Where can I dig dinosaurs?” is the question I’ve been asked more than any other, and a page by this name has been part of Bosco’s RockPile since the 1990s. This is its current edition: every program below was checked in October 2026 — who runs it, what rock you’ll be in, when it runs, what it costs, how old you have to be, and the question most listings dodge: who keeps the fossils.

I came to the quarries the same way you might: I answered an open call for volunteers. That led to summers at Shell, Wyoming, where our crew uncovered a Stegosaurus now displayed in London and a Camarasaurus now mounted in Japan — and before that, field seasons at Como Bluff with Dr. Robert Bakker. Public digs are how ordinary people get into real paleontology, and plenty of significant fossils have come out of volunteer hands.

What to expect — honestly

  • It’s work. Sun, wind, and hours of patient scraping for every dramatic moment. As I told a reporter at the Camarasaurus dig: it’s not glamorous, but sticking a knife in the ground and hitting bone makes it worthwhile.
  • The fossils stay with the science — on a museum dig. What you uncover is recorded, jacketed, and goes into a collection, not home in your pocket. That’s what separates paleontology from souvenir hunting. A few programs below are commercial and let you keep common finds; I list them, and I label them, so you can choose with your eyes open.
  • Book early. Seasons are short (mostly June–August), the state-run digs sell out in minutes, and the museum expeditions fill by spring. Prices and dates below are the ones published for 2026 or 2027; confirm with the program before you travel.
  • Minimum ages vary from three to sixteen. Under-18s need a parent along almost everywhere.

Wyoming

Wyoming Dinosaur Center — Thermopolis. Non-profit museum. The long-running Dig for a Day on the museum’s Jurassic sites outside town — Camarasaurus, Diplodocus and Apatosaurus are the common finds. Runs seven days a week, late May to early September; $150 a person in 2026, with a separate Kids’ Dig for ages 6–13 and a multi-day Dino Expedition. Minimum age 3 with a parent. Museum collection. wyomingdinosaurcenter.org

Tate Geological Museum, Casper College — Casper. College museum. Multi-day digs with lodging, meals and transport from Casper; $1,350 a person (double room) in 2026, and the 2026 digs sold out. Minimum age 16. caspercollege.edu

Elevation Science Institute (formerly the Bighorn Basin Paleontological Institute) — field sites in the Bighorn Basin, based in Red Lodge, Montana. Non-profit. Full-week crew expeditions in the Morrison Formation — the same Late Jurassic rock as my Shell digs — camping at a research station, late June to mid-August; $2,600 a person for the week in 2026, with single-day dig trips from Red Lodge at $200. Minimum age 12 for the week, younger with a parent on day trips. Museum collection. elevationscience.org

The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis “Jurassic Mile” — near Lovell. Museum partnership with the Natural History Museum, London. Family day digs on a Morrison Formation site, with transport, lunch and tools from Lovell; around $1,100–1,375 a person, children 8 and up. Yes — the same London museum that holds Sophie. childrensmuseum.org

Montana

Great Plains Dinosaur Museum — Malta. Non-profit museum. Three- and five-day digs with a staff paleontologist in Late Cretaceous rock, $750 and $1,200 in 2026, minimum age 12; a one-day Junior program (ages 5–12, $125) pairs a morning dig with an afternoon in the lab. One of the original links on this page’s first edition, still running. Museum collection. greatplainsdinosaurs.org

The Montana Dinosaur Center (formerly Two Medicine Dinosaur Center) — Bynum. Non-profit museum. Half-day site tours, one-day field digs and multi-day expeditions in the Two Medicine Formation — Egg Mountain country. June to Labor Day; day programs from about $125. No stated minimum age; under-18s with a parent. Finds go straight into the museum’s collections room. tmdinosaur.org

Baisch’s Dinosaur Digs — Glendive. Commercial, family ranch. Guided full- and half-day fossil hunts on a working ranch in Hell Creek country beside Makoshika State Park; $120 full day, $80 half day in 2025, children 12 and under free with an adult. You generally keep what you find. Closed for the 2027 season for the ranch’s own excavations — check before planning. dailydinosaurdigs.com

North and South Dakota

North Dakota Geological Survey public fossil digs — Bismarck, Dickinson and the Pembina Gorge. State survey. The best value anywhere: full days at $50–75 and family half-days at $30–45 (2026), minimum age 15 for a full day and 10 for the family sessions. Bismarck-area digs are Hell Creek, Late Cretaceous; the Pembina Gorge is Cretaceous sea floor — mosasaurs and fish. Registration opens on a January morning and the 2026 season sold out in eleven minutes, so set an alarm. State collection. dmr.nd.gov · registration through ndpaleofriends.org

Badlands Dinosaur Museum — Dickinson. City museum. A real volunteer expedition, two-week minimum, free of charge — one of the last. The 2026 season worked a Judith River Formation bonebed and an ankylosaur in northern Montana, June through August; applications open in January. Aimed at students, open to all ages, with plenty of retirees on the crew. Museum collection. dickinsongov.com

PaleoAdventures — Belle Fourche, SD. Commercial. Day digs on private Hell Creek ranchland, about $200 a person a day; reservations open at Christmas and fill by early spring. Minimum age 12, with separate kids’ digs for 10–12. Common finds — hadrosaur and Triceratops teeth, turtle shell, crocodile teeth — can be kept; scientifically significant material is retained for museums. paleoadventures.com

Marmarth Research Foundation — Marmarth, ND. Non-profit. Week-long Hell Creek volunteer expeditions were a fixture here for years, but no public season has been announced since 2019. Write before you plan around it. mrfdigs.com

Colorado and Utah

Museums of Western Colorado, Dinosaur Journey — Fruita. Museum, on public land under BLM permit. Full-day ($175 in 2026) and half-day digs at the Mygatt-Moore Quarry in Rabbit Valley — Morrison Formation, Apatosaurus and Allosaurus — plus a two-day Paleo Lab & Dino Dig. June to mid-September. Minimum age 7 for a full day, 10 for the two-day program. Museum collection. museumofwesternco.com

Burpee Museum of Natural History — expeditions in Hanksville, Utah and Ekalaka, Montana. Museum. Week-long Sunday-to-Friday expeditions with lodging and meals: the Utah season works the museum’s own Morrison Formation quarry (May–June; $300 a day with a three-day minimum, or $1,500 a week in 2026, plus an application fee), and the Montana season is Hell Creek. Burpee also gives free public tours of the Hanksville quarry during the field season. Museum collection. burpee.org

New Mexico

Mesalands Community College Dinosaur Museum — Tucumcari. College museum. Five-day summer field classes in Late Triassic rock — the age before the big dinosaurs — with everything found donated to the museum. The last published schedule is from 2022; the museum is open and worth the stop, but call before you count on a dig. mesalands.edu

Canada

Dinosaur Provincial Park — Alberta. Alberta Parks with the Royal Tyrrell Museum. A UNESCO World Heritage Site and some of the richest badlands on Earth. The park’s guided excavation is not running in 2026 — the Bonebed 30 dig is finished and a new site is being prepared — so the program to book is the one-day Fossil Prospecting course ($125, ages 16+): you find and record fossils with a technician rather than dig. Watch for the excavation to return. albertaparks.ca

Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre — Morden, Manitoba. Non-profit museum. Full-day dig tours, weekdays June to September, about $210 CAD in 2026 with transport from the museum. The rock is Cretaceous sea floor — mosasaurs and plesiosaurs, not dinosaurs — and no less exciting in the ground. Children 12 and under with a paying adult. Museum collection. discoverfossils.com

Royal Tyrrell Museum — Drumheller, Alberta. The Dig Experience here is a simulated quarry — a 75-minute, $17 program for ages 7 and up — not a real excavation. Fine for a family afternoon; it isn’t a dig. The museum’s guided badlands hike into Dinosaur Provincial Park (ages 16+) is real prospecting. tyrrellmuseum.com

See dinosaurs in the ground without digging

Dinosaur National Monument (Utah/Colorado) keeps about 1,500 bones exposed in the Quarry Exhibit Hall wall exactly where they lie — the best single place to understand what a bonebed looks like before you ever pick up an awl. Open year-round; a free shuttle runs from the visitor center in summer and you drive yourself the rest of the year. Fossils turned up during the 2025 parking-lot work are now on display inside.

What a season looks like from the inside

If you want to know what actually happens on a dig — from first bone to plaster jacket to museum mount — the expedition pages here document it first-hand: the Stegosaurus that went to London, the Camarasaurus that went to Japan, and Como Bluff with Dr. Bakker.

Programs, prices and dates verified October 2026 from each organization’s own listings. If one has changed, tell me and I’ll fix it.