Badlands National Park: Eroding an Inch a Year, Revealing 30 Million Years of Fossils

America's National Parks, One at a Time · Oct 28, 2026 · 4m

Badlands National Park in South Dakota erodes at about one inch per year and could vanish within 500,000 years, but its jagged buttes and spires have given up one of the richest fossil beds on Earth. In this episode we cover the Oligocene-epoch fossil record spanning 23 to 35 million years, the 1994 reintroduction of the endangered black-footed ferret, and the 1963 return of bison to the park's grasslands. Part of America's National Parks, One at a Time, a daily 5-minute deep dive into one U.S. National Park unit.

This episode was written and voiced with AI tools and reviewed by a human…