Earlier this summer, author Michele Torrey got down and dirty (literally) in preparation for her new book, The Case of the Terrible T. Rex, which joins her Doyle and Fossey: Science Detectives series and is due out from Sterling this month. She joined the paleontologists of the PaleoWorld Foundation in the Hell Creek Basin of the Montana Badlands for a week-long dinosaur dig.

I’ll be honest. I wasn’t sure whether I’d like squatting in the dirt all day under a hot Montana sun, chipping away at a rock wall with my dino-hammer. I have a bad back. A tender tush. I’m no spring chicken, and I don’t bend like I used to. The PaleoWorld Research Foundation warned me when I signed up: “...make no mistake; this program is NOT a tour.”

When I first began research for The Case of the Terrible T. rex, digging for dinosaur bones wasn’t on my radar. I pretty much planned to sit at my desk and surround myself with all books paleontological, my most perilous adventure perhaps being a trip to the library or to Starbucks for a latte. But one day, the unexpected struck. I was ensconced in my office, coffee cup in hand. Rain pattered against the window. And as I worked on the backmatter, compiling a list of museums of natural history and out-of-the-way places where kids could go on summer dinosaur digs, a spirit of adventure swept through me. I thought, I want to do that.

A few weeks later found me driving across Washington, Idaho, and most of Montana, until I veered northeast toward the Badlands and the Hell Creek Formation. Just the name itself gave me pause. What am I getting myself into?

I was soon to find out. Every morning for seven days straight I packed sunglasses, sun block, water bottle, TP, rain gear, camera, and video equipment, and headed off with a team of paleontologists, students, and amateur bone diggers like myself.

In good spirits, we bumped our way along rutted tracks into the far north of Hell Creek Basin, home to some of the most amazing dinosaur fossils, including the first Tyrannosaurus rex ever discovered in the world. With picks in hand, we went to work.

Some amateur bone diggers didn’t tolerate it too well; after five minutes they’d toss their hammers aside, sit back and yak with their neighbor, snooze in the shade, or check their watches to see if it was lunchtime yet. Not me. Turns out that fossil-hunter blood flows through my veins. It’s remarkable what one can endure when the anticipation of discovery dangles before one’s eyes like the proverbial carrot. Heat, bugs, dirt, mud, thunderstorms, sore thighs, hammering until my arm fell off.... I loved it all.

For my first five days, discoveries were modest: fish scales, crocodile teeth, pieces of Triceratops frill, Hadrosaur teeth, and the like. But then came the day when I spotted a bone sticking out of a hillside and sounded the dinosaur call.

Jessica hurried over to the spot and, while clinging to the hillside, announced that it was, indeed, a fossilized rib bone! Like a surgeon faced with an emergency appendectomy, Jessica called for her tools.

The excitement was palpable. Would the bone continue into the hill, or was it just a fragment embedded in the surface, temporarily mired as it washed toward the bottom? Jessica chipped away while I stood alongside. At 10 inches the bone was still going strong. At 14 inches, still going. Finally, at a whopping 20 inches, the rib bone came to its natural end.

Anticipating a soon-to-be-completely-exposed dinosaur, we named our discovery Judy. We celebrated with big smiles, woo-hoos, and hearty slaps on the back.

On my final day, we precariously dove back into the hillside with our picks, officially creating the fourth dig site for PaleoWorld. Seven of us chipped away until the opening was so large we could stand in it. Through the course of the day we uncovered a perfectly preserved tooth belonging to a large carnivore. Possibly and hopefully, from the same prehistoric beast as the rib bone.

It was a thrilling end to what began as ho-hum armchair research. I not only experienced the excitement of a dinosaur dig, but I amassed photos, videos, tales to tell, plus show-and-tell, all perfect for wowing children at school and library visits for my new book.