Great Plains Dinosaur Museum and Field Station

In 2000, in the badlands of Phillips County, crews uncovered a young Brachylophosaurus, a crested duck-billed plant-eater, that had been fossilized in extraordinary condition. Rather than just bones, much of the animal came out of the ground with its skin still fossilized in place, draped over the body, along with soft-tissue detail that fossils almost never preserve.

That preservation made Leonardo a scientific sensation. Researchers put the specimen through medical and industrial scanning to study its insides without destroying it, and in its stomach they found preserved plant material, a direct record of what it had eaten before it died. Guinness recognizes Leonardo as the best-preserved dinosaur mummy of its kind found to date, and the museum interprets what it has taught paleontologists.

The reason Malta has a world-class dinosaur museum is the rock beneath it. The surrounding country exposes the Judith River Formation, layers laid down when this was a coastal plain along an inland sea near the end of the age of dinosaurs. Those layers are especially rich in Brachylophosaurus, which seem to have lived here in vast herds, and the best specimens of the animal in the world come from this ground.

The museum grew out of that fossil wealth, founded to keep local discoveries in the community and to interpret them for visitors. Its exhibits move from the marine world of the ancient seaway to the dinosaurs of the coastal plain, all drawn from the badlands within reach of town.

This is not only a place to look at bones behind glass; it is a working field station. In summer the museum runs programs that let visitors take part in real paleontology, from prospecting for fossils in the badlands to working in the prep lab where specimens are cleaned and studied. For families and dinosaur-loving kids, it is a chance to do the actual work, not just watch.

That hands-on side is what earns the field station part of the name. It ties the museum to the ongoing science happening in the surrounding hills, where new discoveries still come out of the ground each season.

Malta sits on Montana's Hi-Line, the northern tier of ranch towns strung along the old Great Northern Railway and Highway 2. It is remote, big-sky country, where the prairie runs to the horizon and the pace is slow. The nearby Bowdoin National Wildlife Refuge draws pelicans, grebes, and huge numbers of migrating birds to its shallow lakes.

The museum is a keystone of the Montana Dinosaur Trail, a route linking fossil museums across the state, and it pairs naturally with the Fort Peck Interpretive Center to the south. Summer is the practical season for a visit, when programs run and the Hi-Line is at its most welcoming.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.