When will the heat end?

Over 110 degrees on the outcrop. Ouch.

We are back, finishing our Hell Creek Formation field season and starting our Judith River Formation work in South Dakota and Montana. The fires are pretty bad out there due tot he drought, and silly high temperatures are the norm for now.

Not quite a dinosaur

We located a few specimens including a juvenile ceratopsian in a pretty tough sandstone, and we will be returning in a few weeks to collect the rest. Enjoy the photos!

Oh look! A Pachycephalosaurus!

Heat makes Jacob feel kinda stabby

Just south of the Canadian border

I will replace my Estwing with a jackhammer next trip

Ceratopsian squamosal

Rib, ungual, and scapula/coracoid of the ceratopsian

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!

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!

Post wildfire fieldwork update

First the good news: Ute pass is now open and so is the museum. Please stop by and visit!

The bad news: The fire was pretty bad. 18,000 acres burned and 350 homes lost, along with 2 deaths. The fire impacted me personally by coming down the mountain and burning within just a few blocks of my home. I was certain for a while that the house was lost but the firefighters saved it in the end. I'm just back from a week evacuated out of the state.

I'll need some help identifying this turtle once it is prepared

Previous to that, however, Jacob and I (and for a little while Mike too) were in South Dakota scouting for new dinosaur skeletons on a 2-week trip. We left most of the material in the ground for now, however we will probably recover many of the 7 dinosaurs that we located at a later date. A smattering of photos below for your enjoyment!

Big old pile of Triceratops bones

Jacob working on a Triceratops on top of a butte

Articulated scales on a mostly articulated gar

Triceratops site discovered on our last day. Jacket is one brow horn.

Helping with museum renovations

I'm a little late to the party, but I wanted to share this link: http://uwgeomuseumrenovations.blogspot.com/2012/05/updates-on-renovations-happening-at-uw.html

A few years back, a crew from TPI took down the Apatosaurus skeleton from the University of Wyoming Geological Museum, reprepared and stabilized the bones, then remounted the skeleton in a more modern (non tail-dragging) pose. Recently the museum has been slated for renovations/asbestos abatement so I was sent up to help Dr. Kelli Trujillo and Bill Turner remove the tail (and a Pteranodon cast, and also an Allosaurus, at least in part) from display so work on the museum could commence.

The tail will be back on display later this year, just in case anyone is concerned. It should be viewed as a minor miracle that I actually made it that far up on a scissor lift. I don't do heights well. You can see a complete cast of this Apatosaurus on display at the RMDRC.

Come on down!

We've finished installing new specimens in the RMDRC's display hall just in time for the holiday weekend. Come by and see the new Appalaciosaurus skeleton, the dromaeosaurus, or maybe even the orca or dugong!

The long-armed tyrannosaur

Packing for scouting

I get a lot of questions about what I bring out with me when I do fieldwork (which hopefully will be starting in a week). It's hard to tell people precisely, so I just decided to get my pack ready for a typical day of scouting in the Kansas chalk.

This is all the equipment I haul around in my pack. It weighs in at 15 pounds, without fossils. I also don't count any of the other gear I am wearing or carrying (such as our "walking shovels").  The Swedish Fish are for luck, the Sour Patch Kids are just tasty. The only thing I forgot to put in the photo is also one of the most important: a pre-flattened roll of toilet paper (flat so yo don't have to chase it downhill with your pants around your ankles when bearcaving). Nobody wants to see that.