Friday 5 August 2011

Getting plastered with dinosaurs!

The last few days have been a tad frantic...plaster not setting, bones keep appearing, bugs keep biting, rain stops play...too many variables trying to thwart our teams dino-bone-extraction hopes. The team have worked very hard, but it seems we now have to work even harder...it will be a 5:30am start for some of us tomorrow, in the hope we can get thoroughly plastered...well, at least finish the plaster field jackets for the extraction of a large fibula and rib from our hadrosaur site.
Cathy, Marco and Brandon plaster the end of a VERY large femur.

The plants and amber are also still coming and getting bigger and better preserved with every layer of Late Cretaceous pond that we pick from he Hell Creek sediments. We are keen to search for a feather in the pond deposit...as I KNOW one has to be lurking in there somewhere.
Hell Creek Formation leaf fossils...spot the insect-chewed one at the top!

We even managed to add another dinosaur to our haul today...maybe an Ankylosaur! Only a tooth left behind, but with a root...so maybe more to follow! These armor-plated beasties from the Cretaceous include some of my favorite dinosaurs.
Ankylosaur? tooth :-) 
Tonight...I will be dreaming of extracting a rather long, thin bone from its 65 million year tomb...and hoping we get the jacket to hold this great piece of hadrosaur together....
Hadrosaur fibula...and yes, thats a 10cm scale bar!
...I'll also be hoping we do not find another bone underneath the fibula, as I want to close this site to move onto our main site...our next excavation fun will entail a skull!

1 comment:

  1. Hi Phil,
    I´m Ignacio (Ina) from La Rioja (Spain). I just find you blog and it is amazing. Congratulations. It is the best way for following your travels (lol).

    I link your blog in mine.

    I hope see you soon.

    Ina

    ReplyDelete