Dinosaurs in Ekalaka, Carter County

Ekalaka, (population 436) is the closest town from the ranch for Betz & Mr. Studly. Ekalaka, pronounce Eee-ka-lack-a, was named after a Sioux girl and wife of David Russel Harrison, a scout and covers an area equivalent of one square mile. It's in Carter County, the Home of the Bulldogs. There is no grocery store except for one tiny little convenience store. There is one church in town and they hope to visit it when harvesting is done and there is a chance they have a Sunday off. Betz goes to Miles City for her groceries - the same town she'll be doing her nursing in.

I stood on mainstreet just outside the Carter County Museum in Ekalaka and snapped this photo....

...walked a little further up the street, turned around and took this one.




Just down the road and on the outskirts of town is the funeral home.

And a little further down the road is the rancher's main home where his wife has her vet practice. This photo was taken from the back of their 'settlement' as we were coming down from a drive 'up the cliffs'.

Back to Main street and the museum. The museum is small but packed with interesting things: Native American tools and artifacts, geological finds, all manner of fossilized marine life, historical photos and items from settlers and on and on. It is one of 15 Dino Museums in Montana.

Montana's first county museum, its paleontological finds include a mounted skeleton of Anatotitan copei (one of only a few nearly complete skeletons of this species found in the world to date), as well as complete skulls of Triceratops horridus (three horns), Pachycepalosaurus wyomingensisi (dome head) and Nannotyrannys lancesis (tiny Tyrannosaur) – all collected from the nearby Hell Creek Formation.

The rare Anatotitan copie.

This partially exposed skull embedded in rock of a Triceratops horridus (three horns) was discovered approximately 20 miles northwest of Baker, Montana, in the 1930's by Coleman Krokker, Baker, Montana.

There was a section with samples of the surrounding animal life - wild and on the ranch. This poor critter had some messed up DNA going on - one too many snow snakes, I'm thinkin'.

I didn't as many pictures as I should have - I was too interested in the oodles of things that they've found 'in the middle of nowhere'.

For a small town museum they sure were packin' with fascination.