Bighorn Basin Dinosaur Project

The New Jersey State Museum’s activities in the Bighorn Basin of northern Wyoming and southern Montana continues a long tradition of paleontological research in the region by some of the science's founding fathers in North America, including many with ties to Princeton University.

W. B. Scott's student and successor, William J. Sinclair, first teamed with American Museum of Natural History paleontologist Walter W. Granger in 1910 which resulted in numerous, far more successful expeditions to the region.

Sinclair continued his expeditions into the region through the 1920s with additional Princeton students, including Glenn Jepsen, who dedicated the remainder of his professional career to the study of Paleocene mammals of the Bighorn Basin.

David Parris has continued the tradition, spending much of his nearly 50-year career studying the fossil ecosystems of the northern Bighorn Basin, almost entirely as a paleontologist in the Bureau of Natural History at the New Jersey State Museum.

[3] As the Curator of Natural History at the NJSM, David Parris began leading students, colleagues, and volunteers to the region on paleontological expeditions to the Bighorn Basin annually from 2001 through 2010.