Imagine an arid landscape dotted with sagebrush and distinguished by sandstone hoodoos, caprocks, and plateaus. If the picture in your mind includes a T. Rex or Triceratops, even better. You’ve just imagined the “classroom” where 24 Montana Bible College students began their fall semester—minus any live dinosaurs, of course!
The week-long, 3-credit paleontology intensive included instruction from creation-based paleontologists who work with the Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum and hands-on lab time at a live dig site. Through coursework before, during, and after the dig, students pushed into geology, paleontology, and Biblical truth to “shore up” the first 11 chapters of Genesis and make them a foundation for their Christian faith and worldview. Showing students that God’s creation and his interaction with his creation is true can often prevent their faith from ending up on the chopping block later in life.
“They all came away with a more robust understanding and faith about those things the scriptures say we can believe,” MBC Vice President of Student Affairs Joe King said. “They can believe it for themselves because they were able to see, to touch, and literally even to taste.”
(One method paleontologists use to distinguish rock from fossil is lightly touching the specimen to their tongue. Fossils will “stick” to the tongue; rocks will not.)
Following class time, students went to a nearby dig site. They carefully dug into the Hell Creek Formation near Glendive revealing bone fragments and teeth from a variety of dinosaurs and other historic creatures. By the end of three days of prospecting and digging, each student had extracted a fossil—a rib, a hip bone, part of a skull.
Bill Ham, a retired Forest Service professional land surveyor and Montana Institute of the Bible alumni, took a flight from Oregon to Montana to participate as a student in the dig. For Ham, the class fulfilled a lifelong dream—and further strengthened his faith.
“It helped me to shed any of those last vestiges of trying to match up evolution with creation, because they don’t match,” Ham said. “This class gave me something more to talk about, and it gave me greater faith in my faith.”
Ham found a palm fruit (petrified seed), a vertebra from a duck-billed dinosaur, and a molar from a crocodile. While he was thrilled to simply find them, he felt like the proverbial kid in a candy store when he was told he could take them home.
Since the dig, Ham has shared his fossils and his experience with the kids he teaches at AWANA and Trail Life—and his co-ministers in the Gideons—in hopes that he can spread the same assurance of Biblical truth that he experienced.
The final day of the Dino Dig found students in the Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum laboratory cleaning, glueing, and sealing the fossils they had discovered. The museum kept a few specimens for their own collection, but many MBC students now have their own dinosaur fossils decorating their dorm room or apartment.
In addition to being a memorable educational experience, the Dino Dig became a foundation for student unity as they bonded over pre-dig breakfast at 6 AM and post-dig games at nearby Eastern Montana Bible Camp where they stayed. The week had all the best parts of a retreat with the academic rigor of a 3-credit class combined, making it an ideal situation for creating a vibrant student culture.
“While we’re looking for pieces of actual tissue that had been broken throughout time in these dinosaur fossils, there was tissue being created at the same time between students,” King said. “That was really cool.”
This year’s Dino Dig was led by Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum Director Robert Canen and Foundation Advancing Creation Truth Vice President and field paleontologist Tommy Lohman. MBC plans to make Dino Dig an annual educational experience for its students.
