Project Kevin Part 1: Field and Lab Work

The astute social media observers among you may have noticed our new ceratopsian whose skull restoration was just finished in time for its debut at Tucson. Here's how we got it there in 2 parts. Today: the hot and nasty work.

Yep, that's hot

The site was originally discovered in the summer of 2017 by one of our landowners, rancher buddies and all around good guy Larry in the upper Judith River Formation of central Montana. We located a partial humerus, a lot of ribs and several vertebrae exposed on the erosional surface right away. The entire deposit was constricted to about 15cm (6 inches) of highly concreted sandstone, and from the exposed highly eroded elements we could tell it was from an ornithischian of some flavor. Odds were it was probably an incomplete scattered duckbill in fairly difficult to work matrix, so we decided to keep scouting and come back later.

The site is very remote but also gorgeous

That later turned out to be the summer of 2018. It was hot. Really hot. Continued scouting in that area turned up some pretty neat lag deposits but not a whole lot of good skeletal material. It was time to bite the bullet and see what the old duckbill site was going to give us. Who knows, there might be a skull in there.

Digging begins. We love our shade tents.

Sometimes we get visitors to the site

With 4 people digging we made some good progress on the first day of the dig. Around lunchtime I had moseyed on up to the top of a nearby bluff to get cell signal to call home to the boss and give him an update on how we weren't finding anything great out there and might relocate our scouting locality to somewhere closer to camp. Coming back to the site I ran into Jacob who was looking for me to let me know we had "the weirdest duckbill he's ever seen" in the quarry.

That ain't no duckbill horn.

Grace had found a brow horn.

Lainie demonstrates proper air hammer technique.

So, not a duckbill (though to be fair we did find some scattered hadrosaur material at the site). We dug more that week finding much more skull material, but had to come home for resupply and other projects. We got smart during trip #2 and brought out some diesel powered earth moving equipment as the overburden went from practically zero to nearly 3 meters very quickly. Again more skull material was found. There was some postcrania too but we all know that ceratopsian postcrania is pretty much worthless, right?

Bobcat good, getting hit by 2 dust devils in a row bad for shade tents

After the 3rd trip, the bone was very sparse along all edges of the excavation and we were pretty confident to call the dig finished.

Headed home with a load of jackets. Rock Chalk!

Lab work began right away. There were a few tricky bits getting the nasty concretion off the bones but for the most part they came out looking pretty good. Once cleaned up we got a much better idea of what parts of the skull we had (field identifications are always tentative). It also became pretty obvious the skeleton was trampled by other very inconsiderate dinosaurs way back in the cretaceous, as we had many broken bones with no parts to go back with them.

Right brow horn, missing some parts, but we can fix that.

Bone quality was pretty good and we ended up with most of the skull, quite a bit of the neck, some dorsal vertebrae and ribs, and curiously a random chunk of pubis.

Detail of jugal edge. Beautiful bone texture.

Stay tuned for the next installment where we show how we went from a pile of bones to a completed skull restoration in 100 easy steps!

The little Thescelosaurus that could

The Hell Creek Formation is so much more than just Triceratops and Edmontosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex. There, I said it. I head out there to swelter and dig nearly every summer, and it's truly not the big famous dinosaurs I'm interested in. This is where Jonathan comes in. This specimen, RMDRC 06-007, was collected over a decade ago and sat in our collections partially prepared for most of that time. Coincidentally it's a specimen of Thescelosaurus neglectus, the "neglected marvelous lizard" and the name sure fits. 

Partly prepared in the jacket, tail and right leg in other places

In the spring of 2017 we decided we needed to do something with the specimen. Jonathan was mostly articulated in a large heavy field jacket. The first step was to get all the parts into a state where we could mold them, so lots of careful preparation, and lots of consolidant was required. Jonathan was a large (by Thescelosaurus standards) and old animal, but the bones were still preserved with the insides like coffee grounds, ready to pour out in a pile of disappointment if the bones were even looked at the wrong way.

Right foot after prep and restoration

Any damage was stabilized and repaired as we worked. Missing parts were scanned with an Artec Spider structured light unit and we printed them out using our Form2 SLA printer and the usual PLA filament scribblebots. Molding was quick and straightforward for the most part, though the chest cavity posed a special problem for us. The chest cavity preserved a series of calcified intercostal plates between the ribs, which only start to solidify when the animal hits a ripe old age. These super delicate features prevented us from molding a set of ribs that could be immediately used on the cast, so instead we molded them all as a whole unit, cast them, then modified the casts to fit on the mount, then remolded them. Straightforward, right?

Posterior dorsal vertebrae

Assembly was pretty easy as well, though at nearly 14 feet long we were always remarking on how surprisingly big this animal was. It's huge clod-stomper feet came out very well, and since we had calcified cartilage with the specimen, we thought it would be dumb not to include it on the finished mount. In the end we came up with what I think is the very best and most scientifically accurate reconstruction of this poor neglected animal ever attempted. I hope you all like it as much as I do.

Finished mount, Grace for scale

An unusual view highlighting the cartilage

He just looks so dang HAPPY!

Digging the middle half of a Triceratops

We've finished the Triceratops dig that I announced in my last blog post. We got pretty much everything from the rear of the neck to the back of the hips, minus the limbs. It looks like the specimen was well laid out in order, unfortunately with the head end going off the edge of the cliff. Just a couple thousand years too late, but oh well. There was an unconformity at the top of the site that destroyed the higher bones, including shearing the bottom 4/5 of the femur away. Sometimes nature isn't nice to us. Enjoy the pics!

Scary bobcat driving to get rid of overburden

Mike not finding anything, Jacob on the hips

Naptime in the shade while employees roast

Hips isolated

Cap jacket on hips and attempting to recover a whole rib

Big jacket done after a seriously long day

Prep on the main hips block is going slowly, but we hope to have this monster chunk of bone out on display later this week.

Progress on the jacket but still lots to go

Hell Creek: What I found on my summer "vacation"

We've just returned to the lab from a 2 week expedition to the Hell Creek Formation in South Dakota. The weather was very hot, the bugs were out in force, and I had a grand total of one shower during our stint in the wilds. Here's a bit of what we found.

Thescelosaurus claw

Theropod tibia

partial triceratops skull before excavation

Finds were a bit sparse in week one. Lots of hiking and lots of incredibly bare outcrops. Occasionally I founds some Champsosaurus bones or gar scales, but for the most part it was just a bit depressing. Then I made my big "find" of the first half of the trip: a Pachycephalosaurus dome!

Not a pretty dome

but they're so rare

Just when things were starting to look bleak, I found 2 Triceratops sites a few days apart. The first so far is just a pile of ribs (we will expand the dig later to see if more is present) but was in a great location where we could drive the truck to, no overburden, really ideal.

We can always use more parts

The second one, in true Anthony fashion, I found by tracing a bone fragment to the top of a 50-60 foot cliff that had bones sticking out of it. I knocked out a very small excavation the first day and kept running into more bones. Jacob and I returned for a few more very hot (120 degree plus) excavation days and found over 20 bones so far. A few were recovered, and we will return to the site in a few weeks with a bobcat to move some serious dirt and continue the excavation. So far it's mostly really big vertebrae, ribs, and girdle elements, though there is some skull and rooted teeth too. Fingers crossed for a complete-ish specimen!

Looking down from the site. Part of the humerus can be seen poking out

Looks like quite a climb up to the site

Dorsal vertebra awaiting excavation

Field season in full swing

Sorry for the lack of updates lately. We've been in South Dakota and Montana working the Hell Creek and Judith River Formations respectively.

Jacob for scale before we open a Triceratops site

South Dakota had seen its fair share of rain, where we got rained out more in two weeks there than in my entire previous decade of Hell Creek digging combined. We pulled a few Triceratops bones and finished evaluating a few sites before moving on north.

Nanotyrannus teeth collected from a single lag deposit

In Montana, our main focus has been opening the Avaceratops dig again and pulling out more of the animal. Lots of bobcat work The back wall of the quarry is nearing 10 feet tall now. Hopefully we're ending the dig soon so we can explore... Enjoy the photos!

Huge fault in the Hell Creek. Jacob somewhere to the left

It's the greenest I've ever seen in July for Montana in the JRF

I cut the steep part of the bobcat road. It's pretty scary to use. 

Duckbill butt I found a few years ago. Finally excavated this year.

After excavation and pedestaling

Part of the Avaceratops braincase

Ava site a few weeks back, before Bobcat work to push the wall back

Sometimes you get the Trike, sometimes it gets you

Jacob and I are back from a second trip to the Hell Creek, working on some sites we discovered on the first trip. We spent the majority of our efforts on the site that produced the left brow horn form the first trip.

Beginning of the dig. Chunky bone fragments circled in orange paint.

We expanded the excavation to the north by about 8 feet, tracing a few bone fragments. The overburden was low, and digging relatively easy, but the bone exposed were rounded isolated small chunks. Not especially promising.

Braincase with distinctive ball of the occipital condyle

As we worked back closer to where the brow horn was found, we started encountering more recognizable bones. Unfortunately, the skull was all that was present, and even then it was partial. In the end we recovered a squamosal, predentary, braincase and maxilla, along with some fragile fragments that will be worked on in the lab.

First batch of bones jacketed, waiting for plaster to cure

End of the dig. The generator and electric jackhammer was a real back-saver!

Headed back out in a few weeks, hopefully more luck then!

Light at the end of the Triceratops tunnel

We're back from another great Denver Gem and Mineral show. I even got Bob Dietrich to sign my copy of "Boneheads" by Richard Polsky. Dr. Bakker had some good input about javelinas, and we got our Bacculites jaws back from being prepared by Neal Larson.

Captain Jacob on the SS Pointyface

We're now back in our final push to get this giant Triceratops skull built and out of our workspace. We figure less than 3 weeks to go. All assembly is finished, save for installing the missing maxillary teeth. Steel work is also done (I incinerated 3 t-shirts during that process), all that it really left is details details details. Also painting. Today I should hopefully be finished hollowing out the ironstone from the orbits in the last bit of preparation.

A month's worth of work. Also I made the table.

We've got a space picked out in the museum and will let all of our readers know when it goes on display, so you can come visit it in person. Sad thing is, I don't think this Triceratops has a name yet...

Triceratops project update # whatever

8 feet long and 5 feet wide, about the same size as my bathroom

Ok the assembly process is almost done! We've assembled almost all of the frill, a process that took me a week and a half and 100 pounds of steel. I only severely burned myself 4 or 5 times, including a big melty blob that rolled down my shoulder and back. Ouch.

7 days of constant custom steel fabrication, and still not yet done.

Now it is time for the tedious texturing of the filler that went into areas where we were missing bone. We're leaving the busted part of the parietal off while we work around it. Also note in the photos the fancy stage that I built in an effort to save our backs while detailing. A bit of epoxy putty, some epoccipitals, and some paint will get us to the finish line, now hopefully around Halloween, if not sooner. It's painstaking work, send beer,

Fossil of the Week 4/20/09

Back on the dinosaur side of things, we're working on a very large Triceratops skull. This unnamed skull was discovered in 1999 by Mike Triebold in Harding County, SD, and has been taking up a lot of room in storage ever since. We opened the jacket at the end of March and have been working at it in small increments ever since. There is a large area of ironstone concretion on this, the down side, making preparation difficult and time consuming. Once cleaned and stabilized, we'll rotate the jacket upright and work on the other side, hoping to have a 3d skull mounted in a few months. As you can see, it is missing its beak, lower jaws and a portion of frill. These items will be restored later with plastic and epoxy putty.

The interesting things about this skull is the morphology preserved. It has a relatively large nasal horn, yet short and fat browhorns. There is a high degree of variation known in Triceratops, primarily because there are more skulls known than skeletons. In fact, Triceratops skulls are among the most common dinosaur fossils discovered in the Hell Creek Formation. This is the exact opposite of how we find other dinosaurs.