Richard and Lisa sit in the front seat of a car as they drive down a road.

Richard: But you never know what you’re gonna find when you check out these little road cuts. So it’s always good to take a look at them.

Standing on the side of the road, Lisa traces around a fossilized ankylosaur footprint with her finger.

Richard: And if you find something, don’t move it, take pictures, get GPS coordinates if you can, or at least distance and direction from the nearest town and report it to a paleontologist.

Lisa takes a picture of a fossilized bone. Richard holds a GPS as he writes in a yellow note book.

Lisa: Put something for scale in the photos, not your hand, because hands are all different shapes and sizes, not your foot, because same idea.

A blue fossilized bone sits next to a ruler. A four-toed ankylosaur footprint is pictured with a scale bar placed next to it.

Richard: Or a coin.

A three-toed theropod footprint is pictured with a scale bar placed next to it.

Lisa: A coin works. Ensure that you get a nice straight-down head on shot of the specimen. A couple of angle photos are okay but really want to see the details. You want the specimen or the fossil and you think you found center in the photograph.

A bony fish fossil is darker in colour than the grey rock it is embedded in. A fossilized spinal column and ribs of a marine reptile are lighter in colour than the grey rock it is embedded in.

Richard: Yeah, so the reason is, it’s when you remove the fossil from an area you’ve removed most of the scientific value of the fossil which is its context.

A brown mountain slope covered with loose rocky debris from erosion.

Richard: If we have location, we can tell what formation it’s from, and even where within the formation it’s from.

A river flows through a valley next to a tree-covered mountain.