Back to the Hell Creek

We're headed back out to excavate a few of the Triceratops sites that we discovered during our last expedition. We didn't waste any time in the lab though, and did a little bit of work on some of the specimens we brought back from or first trip.

Jacob's femur dig site

Jacob discovered a Triceratops femur in a channel lag deposit, directly downwind of a recently deceased cow carcass. It's now being fully prepared (and as it turns out, is only a partial specimen) as a touch bone for a museum opening soon.

Lots of bone chunks on either end, but the main portion is nice

The turtle that I found the first day of the trip has now been identified as Stygiochelys estesi, with a distinctive scallop on the rear end of the carapace.

That's a nice turtle

On the last day of the last trip I discovered the left brow horn and a few other bones of a large Triceratops prorsus.Preliminary preparation of the horn revealed two large and mostly parallel gouges near the distal end. These grooves have bone surface on the bottom and could be interpreted as healed bite marks from an attacking Tyrannosaurus rex. They definitely are not due to crushing or postmortem damage. Exciting stuff!

Triceratops horn site

The show-prepped horn

Grooves outlined for clarity, they do not photograph well

I will update our progress again when we get back from our next trip. Hopefully we will be low on plaster and packed to the gills with fossils!