Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for March 13, 2021

Yay! Long live the systematic.

First rule of paleontology: look for sedimentary rock formations. Only the fiercest dinosaurs left fossils in igneous rock.

And yet he never has the time to do his homework.

Archeology for dummies.

Our yard looks a bit like that every once in awhile when the gopher population explodes…

A man watches as the first worker comes along and digs a hole. When he’s finished digging he moves along and starts digging another hole. When he’s finished that one he moves along and starts a third hole. And then another. Then along cones a second worker and fills in each hole. Finally the man is overcome by curiosity and asks the worker filling in the holes what’s going on. The worker replies " Normally there are three of us. Joe digs the holes, Bob plants the trees and I follow along and fill in around the tree. Today Bob is sick but that’s not going to stop Joe and me from working"

If Calvin doesn’t find anything, he can always plant more saplings.

I think it is strange that dinosaur bones are so rare and hard to find considering the dinosaurs lived for some 200 million years. You find people’s graveyards and burial sites practically everywhere you turn, even though humans have been around for less than a million years. Why, I just read that they found a burial site surrounding Stonehenge!

After seeing the mess this kid makes maybe they’ll dig a hole for him!!!!

It’s called systemic…..excavation.

Reminds me of the day my parents went off and left the 3 youngest kids alone in the house. My brother decided to dig a foxhole. In the front yard. By the time they got back it was chest deep to an 8 year old boy. Fireworks ensued, and I don’t mean the celebratory kind!

Mum and Dad will be very happy!!

Well, at least the yard’s ready this year’s crop.

Mom is going to go crazy when she sees this!

Better move that sapling farrrrrrr away before dad cuts a switch off it.

Actually, pretty accurate for an exploratory dig.

I hope he remembered to call the gas company before he started digging!

The Badlands are in South Dakota, not Montana. No wonder he can’t find any fossils.

Oh, The Apple tree !

The father wants to plant a garden and told Calvin there might be dinosaur bones in that area….

Diggin’ a Hole by Big Sugar would be an appropriate song for this kind of activity.

Someone is getting ready for a trip to Camp Green Lake.

I live in an area built up with landfill from an old sand mine. I have hundreds of marine fossils I retrieved from the back alley when it was dug up to lay new water lines.

Calvin, you better run or your Mom and Dad are going to kill you

“Holy backyard, Batman!”

Calvin going to outer space again

When I was kid, there was a 12-year-old neighbor who would dig up holes in the back yard at night, then tell us next day that it was where a flying saucer landed. We would actually see him digging the holes. Don’t know what that was about. Probably grew up to be a cult leader or something. :)

Blame it on gophers!

Reminds me of the movie Holes. A kid is wrongly convicted of theft. He’s sent to a boys’ detention camp. The warden has the boys dig in a dried up lake bed.

When I was about his age I dug a big hole in the garden trying to reach China. Mom and Dad were not amused.

Diggy diggy hole

Everything is going smoothly until Mom or Dad steps in a hole, then THE END of Calvin.

Calvin is going to be featured in a future issue of National Geographic… posthumously,of course

Bottom line guys and gals, if Calvin were well behaved or overly supervised this would not be a funny comic strip.

I’ve read some papers that say the arrangement of some of the fossils found up in places like Montana and the Dakotas suggest they were placed there by the tsunami that originated down in the Gulf of Mexico, estimated to be a mile high.

Once, my childhood friends and I dug our way to China.

you have to keep digging through the bedrock level, if you give up before getting through the soil all you’ll find are a bunch of roots and bugs

You dig up that sapling and mom or dad can use it to tan your hide

“It looks as though all the moles in England had been let loose in it. I have seen something of the sort on the side of a hill near Ballarat, where the prospectors had been at work.”

Dr. John Watson, “The Sign of Four”

With that many freshly dug holes, he police will have no idea where to dig to look for Calvin’s body.

A systematic starting is the first thing in any endeavours. By the time you grow up, you are sure to find some fossil someday. BTW Going deeper would be better bet than shallow pattern.

You have to work with what you’ve got…

If only he was willing to work this hard doing homework.

There are *good*lands in Montana?