Collecting fossils at the Petrified Forest National Park

Christian Sidor, Burke Museum curator of vertebrate paleontology, leads a research team to do fieldwork in the Petrified Forest each summer in collaboration with Petrified Forest paleontologists.

This past summer, Burke Museum volunteer Gary Livingston discovered an osteoderm, or piece of armored plating, from the back of a prehistoric animal known as Aetosaur. The fossil contains a unique pattern allowing paleontologists to identify which species it came from, similar to a fingerprint.

Burke researchers will continue to collect fossils at the Petrified Forest get a better understanding of what life was like during the Late Triassic and better our understanding of how life evolves.