Fall Xiphactinus Surprise

Let's go to Kansas they said. We'll find some marine reptiles they said. It'll be fun they said. Boy, were they wrong!

October is tarantula migration season

Doing fieldwork in Kansas at the end of October is pretty rare for us, but we lucked out with the weather and spent a few days hitting outcrops we hadn't been on in a few years. It's important for them to go through an erosive "refresh cycle" so that we can find new stuff on the same ground. In just the first day we found the remains of a partial Pteranodon sternbergi and a few cool small fish. Mike and Jacob were working on excavating Pteranodon #6 of the year and I was finishing up jacketing a nice Ichthyodectes ctenodon specimen and had a little time to kill, so I wandered off to the south a little bit to scout for some cool treasures. I had been over the area just a few yeas before, so I was expecting something small.

The chin

Curator at digsite for scale

That's when I accidentally found the biggest fish of my career laying on its left side. I nicknamed it "Nia". She's a Xiphactinus audax over 17 feet long when whole, with pectoral fins each 2 feet long.

There was a serious lack of overburden at first

Luckily overburden wasn't a big problem at first, with an average of about 4 inches (100mm) of chalk over the specimen. Digging in though, the articulated strand of ribs, spines and vertebrae were pointed straight into the outcrop wall.

Expanding the digsite

The Niobrara sea was chock full of predators ready and willing to scavenge a dead animal, and they didn't pay Nia any respect either. We discovered a half dozen shed Squalicorax falcatus teeth in the head area, lost while taking chunks of meat off the carcass. Unfortunately (or mercifully, depending on how you see it) the body was bitten off about 5 feet from the start of the dig.

Jacob driving a chalk-splitting chisel under the big jacket

How the specimen flipped in the field

Jacketing was a bit tough and we anticipated some problems with a huge flat jacket in soft weathered chalk. We feared a collapse (like that one other Xiphactinus I found a few years back that I nicknamed "Bea Arthur") so we did everything possible to try to get the specimen out safely. It still fell out, but to our amazement, almost all the bones remained in place in the jacket!

Show prepped main jacket

The rest of the jaws will go back in place later

Show prepping took a long time because of how soft the bones were. I got it into the "pretty enough" stage and now Nia is in storage, waiting for her turn to be turned into a spectacular panel mount.

Well, I was told to find a Pteranodon

So I did. Jacob and I were scouting a few weeks back in some nasty hard more vertical than not yellow chalk between Marker Units 5 and 7. We were finding a whole lot of nothing except for blown out Cimolichthys bodies and some random Xiphactinus/Ichthyodectes parts. Not even a shark tooth to be seen. We were getting frustrated and I was busy entertaining myself picking up Martinichthys coprolites.

We had shifted into "Don't look where you don't want to collect" mode in the really steep stuff to avoid having to excavate 7-12 feet of chalk overburden like when I found the Platecarpus "Cap'n Chuck". Walking up a narrow gully it expanded and flattened out a bit, and I mustered the gumption to check out the outcrops closely. Nothing... Nothing... Martinichthys poop... weathered Cretoxyrhina tooth... Oooh Pterosaur wingtip!

Mmmm bones

I checked out the face of the outcrop and saw bones poking out on a single horizon for 4 1/2 feet. It was definitely a dig. Unfortunately it was a dig in the hard vertical yellow chalk, with 6 feet of overburden, located about 200 feet away from the nearest place we could pack in heavy tools and equipment.

Looks crunchy, but the bone is in beautiful condition

Jacob and I decided if we wanted to get this out of the ground sometime this year, we'd have to get the handy-dandy electric jackhammer down to the site. We set the generator up near the truck and daisy chained every single extension cord we could find together. Stretching them all out, we made it to the dig site, with only about 6 feet to spare.

A whole lot of topography

We used the power equipment to dig down to within 2 inches of the bone horizon. There was no splitting layer at the fossil so we had to carefully explore the perimeter of the excavation with chipper hammers and xacto knives. We found fingers and toes, legs and wings, and even some hints of super delicate skull material. We jacketed the slab and spent the better part of an hour climbing and hauling the 200 pound jacket out of the badlands.

Slabbed!

After prep. Lower jaw running l to r under humerus. Lower unprepared area is full of metatarsals/toes

Back at the lab I began preparing the critter.Everything came out well, and it turns out we have about 50% of the skeleton, including a mostly complete lower jaw. The humerus measures 19cm, putting the total wingspan at 4.56m, or 15 feet. This size puts it in the range of a medium sized male of Pteranodon sternbergi. No giant, but still an exciting fossil

Quickie bone map of what is present

I decided to give it the nickname "Val" after my wife, since she pretty much made it clear I had to. A pretty hellish dig and packout, but the specimen is well worth it.

Small projects

Yep we all have them. In addition to the decades of prep backlog of big, complete and interesting specimens there is always that nagging pile of individual bones and small specimens that gets collected then sits as priority number 12 on the shelf. Sometimes it's a good organizational effort (and therapy) to get these things knocked off the to-do list. Plus it frees up a bit of space for the next season's collecting efforts (which should begin any week now, hopefully.

You ever get the feeling you're being watched?

This past summer during beer week in Montana I found a small shard of tyrannosaur tooth sticking out of a lag deposit. I suggested to one of our guests, Terri, that she could spend some time excavating it. Turns out she discovered that the tooth was still connected to a chunk of jaw. Unfortunately digging it out was a bit of a chore since the sandstone got really hard really quickly. It did clean up nicely though, and will be going on display sometime today.

Tyrannosaur maxilla and tooth

Some progress is being made on Pete III, our challenging Daspletosaurus torosus, also from Montana. This huge 70 pound monstrosity of a jacket contained just one spindly rib. That and lots of sandstone. Whatever, it's off the shelf now and nearly in the clean room.

There's the rib!

We're not all about preparing partial dinosaur bones though. This Pteranodon sternbergi metacarpal was pulled from the lower chalk in western Kansas a few years back. Should have been prepared years ago.

Isolated bones are so pretty

Holly is done!

The Pteranodon sternbergi specimen (RMDRC 09-007) I discovered this spring was about 70% complete. The restored elements (mostly parts of the left wing and the lower jaw) are casts of CMNFV 41358, AKA "The Triebold Specimen". It is embedded in an artificial matrix simply because squashed flat bones are not useful for 3d specimen mounts. I am so happy this project is finally finished.

Fossil of the week 5/14/09

In honor of this week's late update, I present to you "Holly" RMDRC 09-007, a pterosaur from the lower Niobrara Chalk of western Kansas. It's only fitting, since the excavation of this specimen is the reason this week's update was so late. confirmation of the genus waits on further prep work, though we have a pretty good idea what it is.

I discovered this specimen Monday morning while scouting on a private ranch. Excavation took about a day, and the entire specimen (including the rarely preserved skull) is back in our lab now. The blocks contain most of the body and wings as well as the rear portion of the lower jaws. Preparation will commence as soon as I get back from a small spurt of paleo conferences over the next few weeks.

Pterosaur remains are not uncommon  in the Niobrara, even though our dig sites are several hundred miles away from the nearest shore. Pterosaurs were strong flyers, and appeared to spend quite a lot of time hunting over the open ocean. The males had elaborate crests, most likely to attract females, just like their very distant cousins today!