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.

A little photographic update: Xiphactinus Mildred

Jacob and Lisa keep plugging along on the gigantic mount of the huge 18 1/2 foot long Xiphactinus audax "Mildred". Basic assembly except for the fins are now finished, hopefully soon we will be able to rotate the mount to its upright position, working on a 5 foot high table is not exactly fun.

Infected tails do it better

Sometimes you work on a fossil and just think "oooh, that had to hurt". This tail from a pretty large Clidastes from the upper Niobrara chalk is fairly boring when viewed from afar. Up close though something just doesn't look right.

Yep, pretty boring

Of the 45 bones, 23 are pathological, with 17 of them fused at the centrum in 5 separate masses. All of these bones lack transverse processes, so they come from the lower lobe of Clidastes' bifurcated tail fin: a bit of dangling flesh that might make for a tasty morsel for a predator.

I think this mass used to be 8 separate vertebrae, based on the number of chevrons

The bones, though mostly healed, show bone growth consistent with a long infection. As the tail was the primary means of locomotion/propulsion for mosasaurs, this injury must have been very painful for a very long time for this mosasaur.

3 verts become one

Fused verts, and centra with vertical scars

Xiphactinus project update

Yep, it's still ongoing.

We have assembled the skull, vertebrae and caudal fin into the mount, and stuck on the first layer of our fake matrix. We remove all matrix from the specimen and make our own for one very good reason: natural chalk is very soft, and is prone to breaking and cracking. It usually offers no meaningful support for the specimen, so it is better for us and the fossil to remove it completely and install our own.

Jacob hard at work filling gaps between vertebrae with epoxy putty

Next up on the docket is to lay out the sets of ribs and pectoral fins, and fasten them to the mount. That process should take about a week, so check back on the next update for progress!

Xiphactinus mounting: The beginning

One of the "nearest forest fires" in the lab lately is getting the world's largest Xiphactinus audax skeleton, RMDRC 08-004 "Mildred" prepared and mounted. These fish are traditionally done as a panel mount, since usually they are a bit flattened, especially with articulated skull material. Single-pieces are preferred since mating up seams on a big flat panel is just kinda ugly. Unfortunately, when dealing with a mount of the biggest of anything, that usually means a BIG mount.

The underside of the skull. We put a support material on this side to stabilize the bones

In this case, the panel is sized to 7 feet tall and 21 feet long, the appropriate size for an 18 1/2 foot long fish. It's going to be heavy no matter what we do, but our goal is to end up with a contraption weighing in at about half a ton or so when we're finished. One can dream.

Just a small fabrication project

We've already finished preparation of Mildred's bones, as well as the needed parts of the "donor" parts fish that would be used to fill in pieces lost to erosion or scavenging sharks. On the 3 fish, we've recovered well over a dozen shed Squalicorax falcatus teeth that were lost when the carcasses were getting scavenged.

Jacob and Lisa bolting the plywood to the frame

The next step is to position the bones on the panel and affix them to the background material. We use some cast parts, as well as the complete skull, vertebral column and tail to get an idea of the size, pose, and margins of the fish. It's always good to figure this out before we start attaching stuff with adhesive. On the downside, it doesn't look very pretty yet, but it gives us a glimpse of how the final product will look.

As of this morning, with the body outline sketched on

 There's still a lot of work to do, but we're confident we can make the deadline now.