Pioneer Trails Regional Museum

10/14/2026

We're so excited for this new discovery that included fossils from North Dakota recently made by our colleagues at NDGS Paleontology and Dickinson Museum Center! Congrats on the newly described therapod "fire chicken!"🦖🔥🐔

Dinosaurs coexisted with flowering plants, but it’s unclear whether they ate them. The study presents a new small theropod dinosaur with remarkable jaw adaptations for eating fruit, providing one of the strongest evidence of dinosaur-angiosperm interaction.

10/14/2026

Happy ! Come make a fossil with us outside the museum until 2pm! And don't forget to let us know if you find one of Dr. Emily's crocheted prehistoric critters during !

10/12/2026

Our paleontologist is partnering with Bowman Regional Public Library for ,since it landed on ! Let us know if you find one of her crocheted "prehistoric pals" on Wednesday. They'll be hiding all around downtown Bowman. Clues drop at 10 am.

Then, stop by the museum. We'll be making fossil casts for you to take home🦖🐊🦕

10/06/2026

is coming up! On October 14th, we'll be set up for visitor's to make a copy of a fossil to take home.

If you did this at Messtival, we've been working on increasing the variety of fossils that you can make. Come make something new (even if it is ancient)!

09/30/2026

It seems like summer really flew by, but it's time for the museum to switch to winter hours. Starting October 1, PTRM will be open Monday - Friday from 10 am to 4 pm.

09/25/2026

Happy ! Last weekend, Dr. Kata McCarville and one of her students from Minot State University joined us to help us finish up our excavation for the year. We rejacketed a large piece of a hadrosaur from an old excavation that we're working on salvaging, and brought out two smaller jackets from the hadrosaur that we'll work on preparing this winter.

Pictured: Dr. Emily and Minot State student Bryce digging under a hadrosaur fossil to support it before covering it with a plaster jacket to flip it.

09/25/2026

The Director and Paleontology Curator are excited to be part of Discovery Day at the Fort Buford State Historic Site/Missouri Yellowstone Interpretive Center! They'll be helping participants make fossil casts, so be sure to stop by and check out all the fun activities and presentations throughout the day!

Confluence Discovery Day is almost here!

Join us Saturday, September 26, from 10:00 AM–4:00 PM CT at the Missouri-Yellowstone Confluence Interpretive Center and Fort Buford State Historic Site for a FREE, family-friendly day of history, science, nature, culture, and hands-on discovery!

There’s something to discover around every corner! Spend the day trying your hand at interactive activities, watching live demonstrations, meeting historians, and exploring the science, nature, cultures, and history of the Missouri-Yellowstone Confluence. With activities happening throughout both Fort Buford and the Missouri-Yellowstone Confluence Interpretive Center, and food vendors on site, there will be plenty to see, do, and discover. Come curious, get hands-on, and plan to make a day of it!

And don’t forget our scheduled presentations:
MYCIC
11:00 AM — Tipi Demonstration — Jon Eagle Sr. — Zone 2
12:00 PM — Indigenous Relationships — Marvin Dawes — Community Room
1:00 PM — Tipi Demonstration — Jon Eagle Sr. — Zone 2
1:00 PM — Hunkpapa Chiefs Gall and Black Moon— Calvin First — Community Room
2:00 PM — Indigenous Relationships — Marvin Dawes — Community Room
3:00 PM — Tipi Demonstration — Jon Eagle Sr. — Zone 2

FORT BUFORD — Barracks Mess Hall
11:00 AM— Cavalry Presentation — Chris Floyd
1:00 PM — John Ryan: Custer’s First Sergeant— First-Person Program — Chris Floyd

There’s something for just about every age and interest. Come for an hour or spend the whole day exploring both sites! We can’t wait to see everyone at Confluence Discovery Day!

09/21/2026

Come see our new rotating art exhibit! First up, we wanted to show off the field notebooks of our paleontology students from last summer. Many of them had never been to North Dakota before, so their drawings and writings reflect their excitement as they explored our region's prehistory. Science Camps+

Are you a local artist or artist that has used our region as inspiration? Want to show it off? Reach out to us about being a future exhibitor.

09/09/2026

Congrats to our colleagues at the Denver Museum on a remarkable discovery in our area!

09/08/2026

Did you help us paint fossil jackets at Messtival? We've added your art to our exhibits! Come see!

Fossil jackets are used to get fossils back to the museum from the field in one piece, but once those fossils have been moved over to nice, new, stable housing in our collections, we don't normally keep the plaster jackets that we put them in in the field. Using them as a Messtival project gives them extra life as "art" instead of them going in the trash right away.

Regional Public Library