Shell is a census-designated place (CDP) in Big Horn County, Wyoming, United States. The population was 83 at the 2010 Census. The community is named for the abundance of fossil shells located in the area. Nearby exposed formations such as the Cloverly Formation and the

Morrison Formation The Morrison Formation is a distinctive sequence of Late Jurassic, Upper Jurassic sedimentary rock found in the western United States which has been the most fertile source of dinosaur fossils in North America. It is composed of mudstone, sandsto ...

have yielded numerous fossils of dinosaurs and other animals. Located to the west of the town is the

Red Gulch Dinosaur Tracksite Red Gulch Dinosaur Tracksite is an assemblage of fossil dinosaur footprints on public land near Shell, in Big Horn County, Wyoming. They were discovered in 1997 by Erik P. Kvale, a research geologist from the Indiana Geological Survey. The site ...

, a rare collection of dinosaur tracks from the Jurassic period. Shell is home to the Iowa State University geology field station.

Geography

According to the United States Census Bureau, in 2010 the CDP has a total area of 1.1 square miles (2.96 km), all land. Shell is located at the base of the Big Horn Mountains, at the mouth of

Shell Canyon Shell may refer to: Architecture and design * Shell (structure), a thin structure ** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses ** Thin-shell structure Science Biology * Seashell, a hard ou ...

. Nearby

Shell Creek Shell Creek is a tributary of the Bighorn River, approximately long, in Wyoming in the United States. Lying entirely within Big Horn County, Shell Creek begins above the Shell Lakes in the Bighorn Mountains. Starting at an elevation of over , ...

rises in the Big Horn Mountains and joins the

Big Horn River The Bighorn River is a tributary of the Yellowstone, approximately long, in the states of Wyoming and Montana in the western United States. The river was named in 1805 by fur trader François Larocque for the bighorn sheep he saw along its ban ...

just north of Greybull.

Climate

According to the Köppen Climate Classification system, Shell has a cold semi-arid climate, abbreviated "BSk" on climate maps. The hottest temperature recorded in Shell was on July 14, 2002 and June 14, 2021, while the coldest temperature recorded was on December 21, 1983.

References

Census-designated places in Big Horn County, Wyoming Census-designated places in Wyoming {{Wyoming-geo-stub