In Fall 2022, I participated in a wonderful nature writing workshop hosted by the Montana Natural History Center. The final project resulted in a short essay about our summer home territory of the Bighorn Basin - a scarcely known and rarely visited corner of the state, even among many life-long Montanans. The kind MNHC folks asked me to expand on my experiences in this corner of the state for the cover article of their bi-annual magazine, which was published just last week. Enjoy!

Jason P. Schein

In a place like Montana, where nature abounds and surrounds among every peak and prairie and around every bend in the endless country roads, a journey of any distance or duration will inevitably bring with it extraordinary experiences with nature. Cross-country road trips to Montana as a kid play an outsized role in my “origin story” as a lifelong lover of and devotee to nature in all forms. In college, my journey to a life of and for nature took a path toward the history side of “natural history.” As with the best road trips, though, there are no wrong turns; just new adventures.

My studies in geology taught me a great deal about the history of the planet, how it formed and changed over the last 4.6 billion years, and how, much more recently, the landforms we are so familiar with today came to be. Geology taught me to think about time and change in vastly larger scales. Armed with that new perspective, my interests veered back toward the evolution of life and ecosystems on Earth. I still study nature in all its glory, but I focus on the nature that flourished in the ancient past. Paleontology, I’ve discovered, is an excellent route for a scientist and lover of nature: one that first traverses deep time. And there is no better place to embark on that journey than southern Montana’s Bighorn Basin: one of the greatest natural laboratories on the planet.

For the last half billion years, the region we now call the Bighorn Basin was covered by deep oceans, shallow seas, and vast river systems: productive ecosystems that deposited layer upon countless more layers of sediment. Those sedimentary beds eventually, over the course of immense amounts of time and pressure, solidified into layers of stone, thousands of feet thick. Each layer is a priceless time capsule, recording innumerable details about the ecosystems that existed there, including the fossilized remains of its inhabitants. Around 70 million years ago, as North America slid slowly and inexorably toward the west, our continent collided with other tectonic plates in Earth’s crust, creating a mountain-building event geologists call the Laramide Orogeny. Many of the mountain ranges found throughout the West are the progeny of this slow-motion collision, in which great quantities of Earth’s deep crust were thrust up through the overlying sedimentary rocks. But the forces that bend and buckle rocks toward the heavens will also flex the rocks in between the mountains downward, into great bowls, or basins. In southern Carbon County and north central Wyoming, all of those previously flat sedimentary layers were squeezed and buckled into an enormous valley, roughly the size of New Jersey, while the edges were broken and dragged upwards by, and alongside, the burgeoning mountains. The result is that now, portions of every one of those sedimentary layers—even the oldest rocks buried deep within the earth for the last 500 million years—are now exposed at the earth’s surface. From a paleontologist’s perspective, this is what makes the Bighorn Basin such a special place. This great natural laboratory records, and makes accessible, a nearly complete record of the evolution of the region’s ecosystems, climates, and life, back nearly to the beginning of complex life itself!

The Basin is far more than just what lies beneath, though, and it turns out that excavating the fossilized remains of enormous 80-ton dinosaurs all summer provides a lot of time to admire, and even fall in love with, my surroundings. This rugged, parched ecosystem and landscape is far more reminiscent of the Desert Southwest than any other place in Montana, or even anywhere else in the region. It is hot, dry, and seemingly inhospitable, and yet it is home to dozens of species of plants and animals well adapted to the extremes of desert life. Grizzly bears and wolves are clawing their way back here, rightfully rejoining sage grouse, mountain bluebirds, and even horned toads, all of which thrive among vertical, vermillion-hued cliffs, gray and black gumbo-ridden hillsides, and sandy sagebrush steppes. It is a peaceful place, perfect for quiet contemplation while taking a break from our work, but somehow also a place never without a distinct and discernable tension, borne of relentless sun, austere landscapes, and an unequivocal sense of sheer, pitiless power. To be here long enough is to understand that this landscape merely tolerates your presence, rather than embracing it. It is not openly hostile, but it demands respect, and deserves it in equal measure. This landscape may not be for everyone, but that may be what I love most about it.

Moreover, the Bighorn Basin is nothing if not a master class in contrast. The Basin’s desert lowlands are never more than a few miles from their surrounding topographic antagonists: six separate, ever-present, and often snow-covered mountain ranges, hovering regally above. Nowhere is this contradiction more evident than in our corner of the Basin, where we labor in the shadow of the Beartooth Mountains—the highest range in the state.

The Beartooths tower more than two miles above sea level, exposing granites more than four billion years old—some of the oldest rocks on Earth’s surface. Sculpted into the range are endless vistas of vertical, thousand-foot sheer cliffs, deep glacially carved valleys, snow-filled cirques, glaciers, crystal-clear lakes, and waterfalls. Occupying the highground of the eastern Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the Beartooths are crowned by some of the only true alpine plateaus in the lower 48 and are adorned by countless species of wildflowers and a menagerie of animals, including pika, wolves, and North America’s largest population of grizzlies south of Alaska. For many, the cold, high-elevation climate here is a last refuge in a warming world. The Beartooths are what all mountain ranges must aspire to be. They don’t just defy gravity, but also description. Surely, these are akin to the “purple mountain majesty” that inspire bards and commoners alike.

As a lover of nature, there may be no better profession or journey than through paleontology. More than just “digging up bones,” paleontology requires us to study nature and ecosystems as they exist and interact today to best understand how they did so in the distant past. Likewise, there may be no better path to paleontology than through the Bighorn Basin: a rugged landscape filled with rocks and fossils spanning a vast amount of geologic time, surrounded by an astounding variety of ecosystems. My personal path to both the natural and the history has taken as many twists and turns as the Beartooth Highway climbing from the Basin to the alpine plateaus, but how fortunate am I that my journey led me through both.

If you would like to learn more about the Bighorn Basin, the Beartooth Mountains, and the incredible ecosystem that lie within and around this incredible landscape, join our Master Naturalist course!

The Bighorn Basin: A Master Class In Contrast Taught Through Mountains, Fossils, and Time