Staff on the Beartooth Pass at sunset, 2024. Left to right: Katie Hunt, Skye Walker, Daniel Dunfee. Photo by S. Walker.

As the days stretch a little longer and the air carries the faintest warmth, we know one thing for certain: Field Season 2025 is just around the corner!

After a long Montana winter, there's a special kind of energy that comes with spring. It stirs something in all of us who work in the field — a pull to the open landscapes and mountain air, to the familiar dig sites waiting quietly beneath the remaining snow and frost.

Across Montana, spring doesn’t always arrive with fanfare. Some days, winter still hangs on, delivering one last dusting of snow. But look closely, and the signs of change are everywhere. Wildflowers begin to push up through thawing ground. Creeks run faster and stronger with snowmelt. Mountain bluebirds flash their brilliant color against a still-brown prairie. The landscape feels like it's waking up — and so are the paleontologists that explore it.

Here at Elevation Science, spring is a season of preparation and anticipation — and there’s a lot more to it than many people realize. Behind the scenes, plans are already in motion. In fact, some of the planning begins the previous year! Cabin assignments are finalized. Flights are booked, driving routes are mapped. Meetings and interviews fill the calendar as we review logistics and schedules. Permits are double-checked. We stock up on supplies and make sure everything is ready to go.

It’s also the season of welcoming. We reach out to new and returning participants, send emails packed with information and excitement, and get ready to meet a new group of interns who will soon become part of the team. Meanwhile, we’re wrapping up our final outreach programs and fossil preparation projects back home before making the long journey west to Montana.

There’s a buzz in the air — a sense of things clicking into place, even if the to-do list seems to grow by the day. Preparing for field season isn’t just about packing gear. It’s about building a whole ecosystem of people, plans, and places that make exploration possible.

And then, at last, we return to the field sites. There’s nothing quite like stepping onto the Bighorn Basin landscape again — feeling the sun, catching the scent of sage on a warm breeze, and spotting a horned lizard scuttling across the sandstone. The places we know so well have weathered yet another winter, changed in small ways, and yet they still hold the same promise: discoveries waiting just beneath the surface. Come June, we will see those changes for ourselves!

As we prepare for another season of discovery, we invite you to come along with us! We'll be sharing updates from the field, glimpses of life on the dig sites, a dash of shenanigans, and a few of the stories the rocks have been holding onto all winter long.

Here’s to the season ahead — and everything it has in store. The countdown to field season is ON!

Signs of Spring: Gearing Up for Field Season