Back in April of this year
Paleotech Jacob
Jett discovered a small
mosasaur in the upper
Niobrara Chalk of Logan County, Kansas. This critter, a
Platecarpus (
RMDRC 10-007) consisted of a skull and 5 cervical vertebrae. Part of the upper jaws were exposed at the surface, and there was extensive calcite
Above, Jacob works on preliminary excavation immediately after locating the specimen. Luckily there was little present in the way of overburden.
A few hours later, Jacob has found the perimeter of the specimen (he
finally discovered something, so I went to search other areas of the outcrop, finding the big
Clidastes Tony II RMDRC 10-008). The entire exposed area will be covered with a plaster and burlap jacket to transport back to the lab. Unfortunately, after the jacket was made, the area was hit with torrential rains (6 inches in 24 hours) and we were not able to get back to the jacket to bring it home. It had to sit out exposed to the elements for 2 weeks.
The jacket was "show prepped" (prepared to expose what is present) once it returned to the lab. As you can see, most of the skull is there, missing only parts of the left maxilla and for some strange reason, the
braincase! I am currently in the process of getting these heavily concreted bones separated so that Dillon can be reassembled as a 3d skull and neck mount. As you can guess, it is a time-consuming and delicate process, and the results will be shown in the next blog update.
