Last of Leroy for the year

OK, embedding of this Xiphactinus is done, assembly is done, now all that is ahead of us are hours upon hours of detailing. That and figuring out exactly how it's getting upright. That will be an interesting day... I don't think I want to take video of that.

On the bright side not only is the project almost done, but to preserve our sanity Jacob and I have been able to devote one hour at the end of each day to preparing other stuff. Special treat for follower Saurian, Jacob has been preparing a cervical vertebra from our BCT specimen of Daspletosaurus n. sp., out of the lower Judith River Fm. I on the other hand have a special secret non-dinosaur project, that I hope I'll be able to reveal in the first quarter of the new year. It's very exciting, trust me!

Below is a new photo of the progress made in the past week. Exciting, no?

Leroy part 2

Well, assembly is pretty much finished! Leroy is embedded and now all that lies ahead are weeks and weeks of detail work. And of course the whole how the heck are we going to get that slab upright. It's ok, I have a plan, sort of. If it doesn't work you will all know about it in a few weeks. The mount right now weighs in at about 1200 pounds. Jacob is pointing to the specimen for scale. It's hard to get it all in one shot, with the overall size of 16'x7'. We need to start finding smaller fish.

The construction of Leroy

As some of you may know, we are currently working on the construction of a plaque mounted Xiphactinus, nicknamed "Leroy", that was collected in the mid 1990s. "Leroy" is a big Xiphactinus at 15 feet, however not quite as large as "Mildred", the 18 foot long monster that we collected in the summer of 2008.

Making a plaque mount is a very time and labor intensive process, espescially when the bones are jumbled when in the ground. Each individual element must be removed and prepared, and of course prepared on the correct side. The right side of the skull was the best and prepared side, which drove our decision to have the right side of the entire fish displayed.

I'll post photos of or progress as we move forward. This is what the project looked like nearly a month ago when the major preparation was finished, and we decided to start laying out the fossil bones. Curator doing the classic TPI field pose (pointing "There it is") for scale. The size of the project is deceiving, the black rectangle is a 16 by 5 foot area of steel and 3/4" plywood. The chicken wire mesh is for strength of the material used to embed the bones. You can probably see that there are literally hundreds of individual bones (spines, fins and ribs)missing. The simple reason is that in this early stage, we don't want too much stuff floating around. You will see these elements get put in later stages of the process.

RMDRC on VOA

We were filmed for a Voice of America feature a while back, and now it is online. Judging by the length of my hair I'd assume it was during field season.

Fossil of the week: revived!

I've been slacking, I admit it. Here's the challenge of the week: The photo below is definitely a squamosal off of a chasmosaurine ceratopsian. The question is which one? Pleas guess int he comments section.

Pentanogmius now on display!

Our new specimen of Pentanogmius evolutus, RMDRC 09-015, is now on display in the marine hall. This specimen was collected from the lower Niobrara chalk in Lane Co, Kansas earlier this year. Missing only the tail, this is one of the most complete and one of the few articulated specimens ever found of this uncommon fish. It's deep body and giant sail make it over 3 feet tall, with a total length of 5-6 feet. Pentanogmius was shown in the National Geographic IMAX film Sea Monsters, along with our Dolichorhynchops and Xiphactinus specimens also on display in the marine hall. As always, our exhibits are constantly changing, so come by this holiday season and see what else we're working on.

Painting of Pentanogmius evolutus adapted from an original work (Plate 30) by Deb Bennett (1983) as published in Kansas Geology, Rex Buchanan (ed.), University of Kansas Press, 1983. Image from http://www.oceansofkansas.com

Another rare fish

The Niobrara sea was home to more than just Xiphactinus and sharks. There are dozens of other species of fish, some known very well, others from scrappy remains.

One of the rarest is the fish formerly known as Bananogmius, now Pentanogmius. The name change is sad, really, because I quite enjoy saying "Bananogmius", although not quite as much as I love getting other people to try saying it. It was a large fish with no big teeth, yet a large sail fin running the length of the animal. It had only tiny pectoral and pelvic fins.

The RMDRC has a new articulated specimen (photo above) recovered this year off of private land. The skull is to the left, with the sail fin taking most of the upper half of the large jacket. This one is much larger (over 5 feet long), more complete, and better preserved than the new Denver specimen. It has been "show prepped" to a plaque stage, and will be molded as is. This will get the fish ready for 3d reconstruction using casts of the original bones.