This year’s public digs have been scaled back to four from five in 2016, because of budget cuts. The Bismarck area dig (July 24 to 28) is the only one that focuses exclusively on dinosaurs. At Pembina Gorge (Aug. 8 to 12), volunteers can dig up sea life from 80 million years ago, like giant squid and mosasaurs (marine reptiles). The Medora dig (July 13 to 16), near Theodore Roosevelt National Park, uncovers swamp creatures from 55 to 60 million years ago. The Dickinson dig (June 26 to 30) has the youngest mammal fossils, at 30 million to 40 million years old. Volunteers can join for one day or stay the entire five days.

At 7:30 on the morning of the Dickinson dig, I met up with the paleontologists in the parking lot of the Heritage Center and State Museum in Bismarck, off a highway dotted with large chain stores and hotels. A group email had informed volunteers about what to wear (closed-toe shoes, long pants, a brimmed hat), what to bring (plenty of water), what not to bring (iPods and headphones) and what to watch for (rattlesnakes, prickly pear cactus). Our car convoy headed west on Interstate 94 following their truck, which stood out from the sea of other trucks on the highway thanks to its trailer hauling a black fat-wheeled utility task vehicle.

The landscape changed as soon as the sprawl of big box chain stores and Bismarck highways disappeared in the rearview mirror. The nearly 100-mile drive dispelled any myth that North Dakota is flat. As I followed the convoy in my rental car, we passed rolling hills with emerald green grass, farmhouses dotting acres of fields and wild, rocky landscapes. Tall signs advertising the Medora Musical, a popular western cabaret show, and the Enchanted Highway, a scenic route dotted with large sculptures, punctuated a big sky with swift-moving clouds. The convoy — eight adults including a mother with an adolescent boy — turned off the highway and ventured into farmland, kicking up rocks and dust on unmarked roads before parking in a green field that slanted upward. We outfitted ourselves with picks, brushes, awls, trowels and collection vials.

We hiked 15 minutes through prairie pastures before arriving at our test site, a flat and dry former pond, where the paleontologists could observe our techniques as we scoured the ground inch by inch in search of tiny fossils, which initially appeared similar to rocks. The paleontologists held unabashedly nerdy debates over whether dinosaurs had feathers between effortless explanations of terminology and time periods for the beginners in the group. Their well of patience and enthusiasm seemed endless, examining countless pieces of rock the volunteers mistakenly presented as fossils.