Dinosaur's can be lickable.....

Forgive my absence from the blog these past few weeks, but a move back from the USA to the UK, an earthquake, a hurricane, two tropical storms and a conference have kept me busy! I would never have guessed that Philadelphia could yield so many natural disasters in such little time...a mere two week period! However, it is fair to say that I miss Philly. A fine city, but am nervous that a plague of locusts might have descended if I stayed a week longer!

A couple of blogs ago I posted an image or two of a spectacular pair of dinosaurs from the Hell Creek Formation. Many have since contacted me after salivating over the couple of beauties locked in immortal combat since the late Cretaceous. I cannot say too much about their affinities...as this has to be done properly...and I know a rather nice chap in South Dakota who is the right man to do it. So, here is a few more images of the said 'Dulling Dinosaurs'...enjoy...first the theropod!

Gorgeous gastralia.....

Moving along....

Clear not an 'armless' theropod....

Up the body cavity towards the skull....

Bent double, kissing its.........goodbye!

But now the skull.....

.....woof!

Enough for one night....more to follow!

Synchrotron, dinosaurs and Hell

Waiting for a grant is painful. It's hard to second guess the slings and arrows of peer-review. However yesterday, I got some great news...a grant was awarded for two more years work on the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Light source (SSRL). This will mean that the University of Manchester Palaeontology Research group can continue our work on elementally mapping beasties from the past.

SLAC facility....so, so big!

The next fun step in this work, is raising funds to ship-in the team of 8-10 folks for each beam run. The 24 hour experimental runs can be brutal in terms of sleep depravation, so a large rotating team is a must. The experimental station is manned 24 hours a day and their is always prep-work of some variety in play prior to and after every experiment. Funding the transport, food, accommodation and vast quantities of coffee for such are large team is not cheap. Raising the funds to support such a beam team is often the hardest part of undertaking synchrotron research. Out of the last ten or so beam runs, only two of the 'expenses' bills have been picked-up by external funders (thank you to those external funders!). The remaining beam runs, each team member has had to pay expenses from their own pockets. To date we have papers in PNAS, Science and the Royal Society...with several in review or preparation. So, it really is worth it. We all love the science we are working upon. Even with this regular financial headache, we each and everyone look forward to beam time at SSRL. The correlation coefficient between financial support and high-ranking papers is not as high as we would hope, but maybe this will change in the future. We just need to keep pushing out the science and showing folks the relevance of palaeontology to  everyday 21st Century issues (see my prior post on 'A pigment of our imagination').

A 'holy' leaf...shows evidence of leaf-mining predator, Hell Creek Formation, South Dakota.

You may recall some of the beautiful Hell Creek fossils we plucked from the ground this field season. They too, I hope, will come under the quantitative x-ray gaze of the synchrotron. The opportunity to unlock the elemental inventory of plant and animal fossils from the last gasp of the Cretaceous has interested me for some time. I wonder what environmental or biological secrets are locked in the samples from Hell........Creek?

Just like a dinosaur fossil....only better!

Even after a good nights sleep....the dueling dinosaurs are still amazing. To say they are not the most impressive dinosaurs I have ever seen, would be the understatement of the century. When Pete Larson explained that these were his favorite dinosaur fossils....ever...I knew they would be good. However, nothing could have prepared me for the site that met my eyes yesterday in Montana. The preservation of the theropod dinosaurs bone is akin to black porcelain and the ceratopsian it choose an immortal embrace with, is a stunning dusk brown. These timeless beauties will someday be the centre-piece of a VERY lucky museum. I am grateful to have seen these beautiful fossils in transition between their 65 million year old tomb and their future resting place.

Woof......stunning, gorgeous, amazing....just one part of an incredible find!

The rancher who dug-up the specimens and the couple who have lovingly prepped the bones have only added to what is an amazing specimen. Folks who devote their lives to such endeavors have my heartfelt respect and special thanks for showing me their special find. Since I picked-up my first fossil as a 7 year old and asked the simple question, 'What is this?'...I have dreamt of seeing such a fossil (ideally finding it myself, but hey...I'm not choosy). Even when we were digging-up the dinosaur mummy ('Dakota') in 2006, I joked that the only thing that could make the fossil better, was a T. rex holding the tip of Dakota's tail between its teeth. Little did I know, that such a fossil was literally being excavated as I said those words....a fossil that pretty much fulfills my optimistic statement. 

Aladdin's Cave.....more than any palaeontologist could wish for!

If you are within a 1000 miles of this specimen, it's worth the drive to see it.

Gob-smackingly gorgeous dinosaur!

Forgive this short post, but it's late in deepest South Dakota....Today, the remainder of our field team drove 'just around the corner' to northern Montana...a mere 800+ mile round trip, to see a VERY special fossil.

Some of you may be familiar with the 'fighting pair' that consists a greyhound sized Velociraptor locked in 'immortal' combat with Protoceratops....the fossil we saw today was even more impressive than this pair!

I shall try and find time to upload some pictures of the 'dueling dino's' in the next day or so. This unique pair of fossils, one a Hell Creek theropod and the other a ceratopsian dinosaur, appear to have exchanged blows some 65 million years ago and come to rest in sediments that are now in northern Montana.

Their fatal embrace seems to be one of the most impressive dinosaur fossils on the planet....I promise you that this is no exaggeration from a travel-worn paleontologist. The last time I was gob-smacked by a dinosaur, was the hadrosaur mummy that we excavated with Tyler Lyson nearly five years ago....today, once again, I was totally and utterly...gob-smacked!

Rattle snakes and Go Go Arnau!

What can I say. Today was the last day of our field season at Site 1. After tidying-up and finishing off the last few plaster field jackets, we decided to scout a new area, as the said plaster dried.


This past 24 hours I have been slower than a narcoleptic tortoise, after putting my back-out whilst digging a trench to collect sediment samples for analyses in Manchester. All I could manage today was my backpack...which is more than yesterday!


We split into two teams (always in contact via walkie talkies) and agreed to meet behind a large butte that was west of our main site. We had not explored this area yet, as Site 1 and 2 had kept us so busy the past two weeks. Brandon (one of my graduate students from UPenn) found a Rattlesnake. He screamed loudly, his girlfriend calmly led Brandon away from the said snake. Cathy was brought up on a ranch and is used to dealing with squealing townies....and slithering snakes...often easily confused.

Brandon in a less squeamish moment...

The relatively mild winter and wet summer has made a great year for rattlesnakes. The weather and plentiful supply of food had allowed many more to survive and breed. The hemotoxic venom they are capable of delivering makes them potential field problems for all crews. However, the distinctive rattle, a series of modified scales at the tip of the tail, usually gives plenty of warning. I am always more worried about the very young snakes, which do not have a rattle and cannot gauge how much venom to pump into their prey, often delivering too much. Small snake does not always equal less venom! The availability of anti-venom has reduced the fatality rate of rattler bites to a mere 4 percent. I was glad that Brandon did not add to the statistics today!

One of the team from Catalonia (Spain) shouted over that he had struck bone. Arnau Bolet, a micro-vertebrate expert, spotted the tell-tale line of bone weathering from a sandstone ledge high on the slope of the butte. I was already marking another trackway horizon across the butte from Arnau and soon found a partial ceratopsian skull whilst walking towards him. However, I would have dragged myself over far quicker, had a known what he had found.

Bernat's leg (left), then Judit, Arnau, Albert, Brandon and Cathy...all admiring 'Arnau's Ledge'

He beamed a smile at me, pointing at a beautiful collection of bones. Sat on the ledge was a pile of limb, backbone and even skull elements from a sub-adult ornithischian dinosaur. Stunning! There is little doubt that this is at least a partial skeleton, the most complete found this field season, but of course...we did not have the time to dig the said beastie. All we could do was make safe the site and hope that the South Dakotan weather does not relocate this pile of bones between now and next year...when we will come back and excavate another part of the Hell Creek jig-saw puzzle. My back-pain was forgotten for a while as we tweaked our way through the toe bones of a dainty little dinosaur.

Bone, bone, bone, bone and bone :-)

As we walked back to the field vehicles, I let the team walk ahead of me, until they disappeared over the ridge to where we had parked. I stood one more time on a high butte that overlooked the whole site. All I could hear was the wind blowing through the sage-brush. Shadows of clouds gently dipped the site in and out of shade. It had been a productive, hard, sometimes wet, but thoroughly enjoyable field season.


A very peaceful place.

48 Hours to go in the field.....then the work really starts!

It is coming to the end of this summers field season. Only a few more days in the field, before I fly back to Philadelphia. Several members of the team have already started their way back to their respective corners of the globe, leaving eight of us in the field.

We all toasted an anonymous donor again, known only to me as the 'Leprechaun' from Philadelphia...this kind person provided funds for two full dinners for the field team. Top of the day to you sir/madam, as you have a very grateful and well-fed group of palaeontologists.

Tomorrow we will close the main site, in so far that we will hoover-up any surface bone and remove any sign of our being in this beautiful wilderness. Whilst we love to dig, scarpe and excavate...we also like to leave as small an environmental footprint as possible.

We have bagged a decent part of a Torosaurus skull, several hadrosaur post-cranial elements (from a very large beastie), not to mention several bones from the infamous T. rex. To top it all, the micro-vertebrate finds have provided us with evidence for many other non-dinosaurian organisms that thrived in the shadow of the mightiest of all archosauria....my beloved dinosaurs. Teeth of several species hail their presence, but accompanying bones still allude us....for the time being.

The fossils plants, insects and amber will hopefully yield information on the late Cretaceous Hell Creek environment, but this will take many months of sifting through samples accompanied by many experiments. Some of the samples will undoubtedly end-up under the quantitative x-ray gaze of the Stanford synchrotron.

The LiDAR survey scans will soon be aligned and linked, so we can revisit our site in a virtual environment, placing samples we have collected within a 3D framework. The initial previews of our 3D site survey are looking good...but again, more time must be spent on this data. The digital outcrop models will be updated every year to map changes to the site and the relative position of bones as we uncover them.

The samples collected from the sedimentary succession below, within and above our hadrosaur site will be diced and sliced and made into polished thin-sections of rock at the University of Manchester. These will then be analysed at both at the University of Manchester and at the Stanford Synchrotron (at SSRL).

The tridactyl Hell Creek footprint(s) will need describing, but not given a name. I baulk at naming tracks of dinosaurs...unless the hapless maker of the track is found literally dead in its tracks (a termination trackway...one of my favourite terms). We also now seem to have at least one more track horizon and at least two trackways...so much work here.

All-in-all, fieldwork is great fun, but the real work starts when your sifting through and interpreting the vast piles of data and samples collected in a field season. It will be this data that forms the backbone of next years field season and many years research. This years finds allow us time to construct preliminary hypotheses that we can then test and validate using corroborating data from other studies and sites relavent to our own. It also allows us to strategically plan next years BIG excavation. Our three weeks in the field this summer, might translate into 2 months next year. The future logistical and financial nightmare is already yielding a few sleepless nights.

Before I close the curtain on this years field season....our team still has another 48 hours to nail another spectacular find. As I recall from last year...our best finds were made in the last 48 hours!

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!

Rain stopped play....but we soon slipped into fossil action!

Last night it rained. It rained so hard, it sounded like the Dutch clog dancing team were choreographing a new routine in the roof of the motel. Rain in the Badlands is not much fun, as it equates to mud, not just any mud...the sort that stocks to every and any surface that comes into contact with it. As I feared, as soon as we touched foot from prairie to 'solid' geology...it was suddenly not so solid after all. As one of the BLM Officers with us commented, 'Slippery as snake-spit'....something I do not wish to validate.

Threatening skies over the Badlands....taken on the road, during a hasty retreat the day before!

We headed down to one of our two dig-sites and were all soon skating through the slippiest landscape I have trodden in many years. Soon our walking boots resembled giant clods of mud...and became heavier with every step. We ended-up tracking along sandy river-beds (that were thankfully not flowing) up to our first dig site. On arrival at the site, we all realized it was pointless trying to start excavating...it was a mud-bath. To add insult to injury, our first site was facing to the west, with a tall cliff above us...so no sun for us until after mid-day.

We decided to trek the mile or so across the Badlands to our second site...we can see each site across the prairie,  but as soon as we dip into the channels and valleys of the Badlands, almost all landmarks (bar the tallest buttes) disappear.  Luckily the twisting canyons and river beds are becoming more familiar, so we soon wound our way to the other site. I'm pleased that we did!

As soon as we hit the base of the butte for the other site, we found tracks. Not deer, antelope or fox, but of the dinosaurian variety. Dinosaur tracks in the Hell Creek Formation are relatively rare...so we were all a tad pleased. Many photographs and measurements were taken...as this will be a publication, we hope, in the near future. All I will say now, the track maker had three large toes.

After a quick scan of the bones at the second site, we sat and had lunch in the shade of some channel-laid sandstones, that were deposited over 65 million years ago. It was the same sandstone units that housed the dinosaur tracks at their upper surface. After a swift lunch of water trail mix and beef jerky, we headed back to our slippy site, in the hope that the mid-day sun had dried-out our site a little.

Hadrosaur caudal (tail!) vertebra

Thankfully, our site was quite sandy, so much of the water had either evaporated or drained away by 2pm. We set-to on excavating a femur, fibula, several vertebrae and a rib from a VERY large hadrosaur dinosaur. Our youngest team member, an undergraduate from UPenn named Emma, spent the afternoon hunting for the beautiful fossil leaves and amber that was rapidly becoming the highlight of the whole site. The leaves are simply beautiful and the amber has much research potential. This is Emma's first time into the field and she has made a name for herself by helping collect some gorgeous plant fossils (see below).

65 Million year old fossil leaves from the Hell Creek Formation....gorgeous!

We worked until 6pm, at which time drinking water was running low, it was time to head back to civilization...here endith another day at the office!

Hot, hot, hot....bug, snakes and bones!

My apologies for a slow update...there is simply too much to say! We have been busier than a team of ants pushing water up-hill.

The team have been fantastic and so too have the finds. One and all have been worked into an overheated ball of dribbling energy every day...in the field at least 10 hours every day. With temperatures reaching 110 Fahrenheit in the shade, its hotter than Habanero chili sauce in the eye....plus, we're seeing plenty of wildlife....rattle snake, scorpions, ants, birds, bugs and beasties.

The bones just keep coming, as does the beautiful plant fossils, amber and all manner of late Cretaceous beasties...including some stunning mammal fossils. We are happy....this is an understatement!

In fact, some of us will be staying in the field a little longer, to eek a few more prehistoric morsels from our two productive excavation sites.

We even managed to LiDAR scan both field sites....stunning!

My apologies....I will try and find time to write more when I am not dribbling with tiredness.

I'll stick some pictures up later....when I have time!

Weather...

The weather in the Chicago and Denver regions is doing its best to delay and/or prevent field team members getting to South Dakota. Having only been delayed an hour myself, I feel lucky...some of my colleagues were sat between 5-10 hours waiting for 'weather' to get out of the way of their respective areas.

I'm sat typing this blog, waiting for Bill Sellers. He too has suffered the slings and arrows of weather delays at Denver, but thankfully only one hour. Hopefully he will not be too trashed after his 18 hour ordeal from Manchester to South Dakota.

Tomorrow morning, its a 7am breakfast, followed by a test run of the Leica LiDAR....I was checking the charge of batteries today, in reparation for the mornings dino-surveying session. We have a rather stunning...or was that stunted...T. rex to squeeze into digital format...a NEW specimen. Quite wonderful.

Once we are happy we have mastered the loaned Leica LiDAR unit, we will set off into the field.

Juggling planes, theses and automobiles!

Waking-up at 7am today I was greeted by a cool outside temperature of 87 F….yes that’s over 30 Celsius., with a mere humidity of 40%. This is the coolest its been in the last few days….cool?

I was dropped off at Philadelphia Airport by a colleague, who will be joining the field-team next week. As we drove to the airport, traffic reports from the prior day recounted tales of roads ‘peeling’ in the heat…'imagine what that does to your body’ a overheated Philadelphian recounted in the same news report. Too true.

Even the usual freezing wall of aircon that smacks you in the chops when you enter the airport, was struggling to keep pace with the now 98 Fahrenheit (36.5 Celsius) temperatures outside…its not even 10am. It's going to be a hot day in the city today.

I don’t need to complain to you all about flying again, but yes…I still hate flying. Thankfully a quick hop to Chicago and then Rapid City is all I have to endure today. Looking at the weather, it’s going to be bumpy…thunderheads on the horizon. Great L

My reading for the flights and also for the next few days (we can’t dig fossils at night!), is a PhD thesis I am reviewing.  Thankfully its great work, so not too much of a chore.  

I think it will be cooler at my field site...I hope! Here begins my Hell Creek fieldwork season for 2011.

Twaz the night before fieldwork.......and all was hot and frantic!

Those of you who are not in the USA at the moment, might not have heard that its rather warm over here. In fact, I sit writing this post in a puddle of perspiration, with an aircon unit optimistically puffing air in my direction, shifting the 85 F (~29 C) air around my office. I can't complain, as it is 105 F (~40+C) outside. With temperatures soaring into these dizzying height, it must time to do some fieldwork!

Dealing with both high humidity and temperatures in the City of Philadelphia is bad enough, but when this is combined with the splendid isolation of the Badlands...keeping cool and hydrated is a matter of life or death (This is just a subtle/gentle reminder to all my field crew who might read this post tonight!). The heaviest thing we haul into the field, bar our own bulks, are gallons of water to drink. The heat in South Dakota is wonderfully dry, so evaporation from your skin is rapid, and you don't even know your loosing pints of water an hour. One of the most important things to remember, is to simply drink. This is why my spanking new hydration pack can take two gallons of water at a time...and is insulated...there is nothing more amazing than a cool slurp of water, when the ambient temperature is above that of your body. I will drink between 2-3 gallons of water per day when working in the field, and not gain an ounce by the close of play each day!

On a more challenging and practical note. I'm sat looking at a pile of impossibly full bags. One for clothing, the rest... field gear....lots of field gear...and there's more to pick-up at our destination. I shall even be dragging my MacBookPro into the field, as I have coaxed it into talking 'PC' via Parallels (a crafty piece of software), that will allow me to run the Leica software that stitches together the digital data from the LiDAR scans. Whilst we still take brushes, spades, trenching tools, dental picks and plaster into the field, the array of digital and electronic equipment is now quite staggering....and heavy.

The bags look full, but I have that nagging doubt...I must have forgotten something?

Dinosaurs, lasers and portable x-rays!

Excitement is mounting....a few days from now, and it's South Dakota bound!

This field season, we get to use a top of the range Leica LiDAR unit (a C10 laser scanner)....it even comes with it's very own, branded, rain jacket! I love this kit. It's the attention to detail that Leica does with all its equipment that makes it so damn functional in the field. The new LiDAR unit will allow us to spatially map in 3D and in glorious colour, the whole of our field site to sub-millimeter resolution. Woof! This means that any samples we collect, which will mostly be rock and sediment this year, can then be later placed into a 3D framework. This literally provides a 3D virtual field map of our entire site, so we can re-visit the location again and again, but from the comfort of our office... where there are fewer mosquitoes, snakes and less sunburn.

We are also testing a portable x-ray fluorescence unit in the field for the first time. This wonderful piece of technology provides us with valuable elemental data from in-situ sediment samples, as well as information on our beloved fossils. The sensitivity of the unit allows us the luxury of pre-screening the elemental inventory of fossils....before we have to drag them all the way to Stanford (SSRL) to be scanned at the Synchrotron. This will hopefully save us both time and research money (which is always scarce!). The great thing about the unit...it looks like a large hair-dryer....so, we will look quite mad to anyone who comes across us, in the middle of no-where, styling the dirt of an outcrop!

We have also just gotten our supply of USGS 1:24,000 maps that cover the new field site. I love maps...precious things that are works of art in their own right. I have just spent the last few hours pouring over the maps and checking boundaries, access, etc. Nothing can be left to chance. The downside of my beautiful maps...by the end of the field season, they will be torn, tattered, scribbled upon and throughly used...but, totally invaluable.

As with last year, I will endeavor to write something every day about our fun and games in the field. Stay-tuned over the next few weeks to share the highs, lows, frustrations, excitement and hard work that is fieldwork with dinosaurs in the Late Cretaceous.

Heavy workload, then fieldwork....

I am sat working my way through dozens of papers, in the the vain hope I will have time to draft a paper with colleagues before I head-off into the field. Plus, I'm still coordinating folks from four different countries to converge in the same place to play, 'map this site'.  A fun game of lasers, heat, sunburn, bites and bone! Its going to be a busy few weeks. Sometimes, only sometimes, it feels like a large cliff is on top of you....

....no idea where I get that feeling from?

How to use dinosaurs: Jurassic CSI

Jurassic CSI is transmitted for the first time in the USA tonight on the National Geographic Channel. This is one of six episodes that follows my team and I around the globe, doing things to dinosaurs....well, at least their fossil remains. UPenn's Pennsylvania Gazette has already ran a fun story on the whole series...but I am hopeful the series is well-received by as wide an audience as possible....when it is completely aired later in August.

Laser-scanned dinosaur bones are fun, but nothing beats a bit of flesh...but where do you start?

Dinosaurs are often hailed as a scientific communication breakthrough, but is this really the case? Does the ‘and finally’ news story, usually based upon a recent publication, give credit to the years of painstaking work from discovery to final interpretation? The same can be said for many areas of science, where the object of the science becomes the story but not the science itself. This, in part, is the fault of both media and the scientists, given we must be more aware of how our science is translated into digestible chunks that can be understood by non-specialist audiences. Dinosaurs, however, are in a unique position. Apart from the fact that they are all dead (bar their descendants the birds) these animals have the potential to unlock many new areas of research to the public, given they provide a unique vehicle to deliver often complex science. 

Adding flesh to this sauropod dinosaur, but with a twist of 'giraffe' in the mix!

Whether it be particle physicists blasting fossils with high energy X-rays at a synchrotron (see earlier blog) or computational biologists making dinosaurs run in virtual environments (yes, we really do try!), it is clear these extinct giants have a role to play in engaging the public with more than just old fossil bones. 

The intense touch of synchrotron light reveals some of the secrets from Archaeopteryx 'In Living Color'

In the past ten years the science of palaeontology has been reinventing itself, looking to new disciplines to help solve very old questions. Now that palaeontology is such a diverse, interdisciplinary research area, it has successfully facilitated in the communication of multiple fields of science.  Interdisciplinary work with engineers, physiologists, geneticists, computational scientists, chemists (even paleontologists!) and many other disciplines provides avenues that might excite interest in what might be considered discrete or obscure areas of research.  Indeed, computational palaeontology is a splendid example of how the digitisation of specimens and subsequent computational analyses are both eye-catching and easy to distribute though modern media. The new series for National Geographic, Dinosaur CSI, was our take on this rapidly evolving field of science. I just hope that you all agree..... 

Computer graphics bring Archaeopteryx back to life in Jurassic CSI...albeit in a virtual world.

A Pigment of our Imagination?

Trace metals as biomarkers for eumelanin pigment in the fossil record.
Today we publish our most recent research in Science Express (the online arm of the journal Science). Our team has been able to show a remarkable relationship between copper and pigment within exceptionally preserved fossils of feathers and other soft tissues.

Fig. 1. False color chemical image (left) of an approximately 120 million year old fossil of Confuciusornis sanctus, the oldest documented avian species to display a derived beak, with superimposed model of a eumelanin-copper chelate complex. The image was produced using synchrotron rapid scanning X-ray fluorescence. In this image red corresponds to copper and the distribution of this metal shows the patterns of original eumelanin pigments in this extinct species, thus allowing a reconstruction of pigment shading. Blue corresponds to calcium in the fossil bone, and green is zinc within the sedimentary matrix. 

The results include important species such as the oldest beaked bird yet found, the 120 million year old Confuciusornis sanctus, and also the 110 million year old Gansus yumenensis, which looks similar to the modern Grebe and represents the oldest example of modern birds.

Pigment is a critical component of colour. Our team can map the presence of pigments over whole fossils, revealing original colour patterns (but through a monochrome filter). Our findings indicate that pigment chemistry holds the future key to the ultimate goal of discovering the full colour palette of past life, from dodos to dinosaurs and beyond.

Colour has played a key role in the processes of evolution by natural selection that have steered all life on Earth for hundreds of millions of years. Whether this be sexual selection or camouflage, colour and patterning plays an important role in the struggle to pass one's genes to the next generation....else many top clothing brands would be bankrupt, given our own species desire to look gorgeous!



Fig. 2. Synchrotron rapid scanning x-ray fluorescence image of the calcium distribution in a fossil specimen of Confuciusornis sanctus, an ~120 million year old avian species, the oldest documented to display a fully derived beak. Calcium is high in the bones as shown by the bright white areas, but calcium is also high in the areas corresponding to residue of downy feathers in the neck region. This is interpreted to be due to the distribution of calcium being controlled by eumelanin chelates in the neck feathers, indicating that these soft tissues were originally darkly pigmented.


This unique scientific breakthrough can allow paleontologists and biologists to reconstruct pigment patterns in extinct and living animals respectively, as well as provide an understanding of the way in which biological compounds are preserved in specific environments through geological time.

This could provide a far greater understanding of the feeding habits and environments occupied by extinct creatures, as well as shedding light on the evolution of colour pigments in modern species. Here the data from living species was so crucial to deciphering the chemical code locked in deep time.

Roy Wogelius

Fig. 3 (Left) Collage of images. Top, optical images of: blue jay feather, squid, and fossil fish with feather. Bottom: x-ray images showing the distribution of copper (red) in the same organisms. Copper in the dark parts of the feathers, the fish eye, and the squid ink sack indicates the presence of eumelanin pigmentation and in combination with other elements can be used to map pigment distributions in fossils and existing organisms. 


The X-ray team, led by Dr Roy Wogelius, Dr Uwe Bergmann and yours truly (‘Dr Phil’), took the unique approach of using the super-bright x-ray light of a synchrotron to analyse the soft tissue regions of fossil organisms. The application of X-ray physics to palaeontology has shed new light on this tangled tale of prehistoric pigments in deep time and how to map and recognise specific chemistry in fossils that are hundreds of millions years old. Roy Wogelius, lead author on the paper and University of Manchester geochemist, said: “Every once in a while we are lucky enough to discover something new, something that nobody has ever seen before. For me, learning that copper can be mapped to reveal astonishing details about colour in animals that are over 100 million years old is simply amazing. But even more amazing is to realize that such biological pigments, which we still manufacture within our own bodies, can now be studied throughout the fossil record, probably back much further than the 120 million years we show in this publication.”

To unlock the stunning colour patterns, the Manchester researchers teamed up with scientists at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (USA) and used the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource to bathe fossils in intense synchrotron X-rays. Also working on the synchrotron team were Pete Larson, Holly Barden, Nick Edwards, Bill Sellers and not forgetting SLAC's Sam Webb. As I have mentioned before, this type of experiment runs 24 hours a day for a week…so is the ultimate sleep deprivation study. Without a large support team of colleagues, we could not undertake such exciting research. Several other team members made major contributions to the acquisition of material and its analysis back in Manchester.

Phil Manning (left) and Uwe Bergmann (right)

The key to their work was identifying and imaging trace metals incorporated by ancient and living organisms into their soft tissues, in the same way that all living species do today, including humans. Eumelanin pigment has a copper atom at its structural heart, allowing us to map its presence, via its distinctive signal. Eumelanin is possibly the most important pigment in living species and our study clearly identified this pigments presence and distribution in several extinct species. We can now use this copper-coordinated molecule to help unlock the pigment palette of man other extinct species.

Without essential trace metals, key biological processes in life would fail and animals either become sick or die. It is these essential trace metals that the team has pinned down for the first time.



Fig. 4. (above) Shown here is an artist’s conception of the pigmentation patterns in Confuciusornis sanctus, an ~120 million year old species, the oldest documented to display a fully derived avian beak. Patterns are based on chemical maps of copper and other trace metals in several fossils of this organism. Trace metals, copper especially, are found to exhibit patterns which reveal eumelanin pigment distribution in the living organism. In the background is a picture of one of the fossils used to derive the artist’s drawing. Drawing of C. sanctus is by Richard Hartley, University of Manchester.


It is fair to say that the fossils we excavate have even more potential to unlock secrets on an organism’s life, death and subsequent events impacting its preservation before and after burial. To unpick this complicated chemical archive that fossils represent, can only be achieved through the hard work of multidisciplinary teams that can bring in to focus many areas of science. In doing this, we can unlock much more than just palaeontological information; we now have a chemical roadmap to track similar pigments in all life.

Our results clearly show that chemical remnants of pigments may survive even after the melanosome (biological paint pots) containing pigment has been destroyed. Some of the samples they publish clearly preserve a chemical fossil, where almost all structure has been lost in the sands of time. The chemical residue can be mapped to reveal details of the distribution of dark pigment (eumelanin), probably the most important pigment in the animal kingdom.

Bill Sellers (left), Holly Barden (centre) and Uwe Bergman (right) check alignment of specimen on stage.

This pigment gives dark shading to human hair, reptile skin, and bird feathers. Using rapid scan X-ray fluorescence imaging, a technique recently developed at SLAC, our team was able to map the residue of dark pigment over the entire surface of a large fossil, for the first time giving clear information about fundamental colour patterning in extinct animals. It turns out that the presence of copper and other metals derived from the original pigment gives a non-biodegradeable record of colour that can last over deep geological time.

Nick Edwards (left), Roy Wogelius (centre) and Holly
Barden (right) glove-up for action!

Uwe Bergmann, SLAC physicist and co-author on the paper said: “Synchrotron radiation has been successfully applied for many years to many problems. It is very exciting to see that it is now starting to have an impact in palaeontology, in a way that may have important implications in many other disciplines. To work in a team of such diverse experts is a privilege and incredibly stimulating. This is what science is all about.”

Using this novel method to accurately and non-destructively measure the accumulation of trace metals in soft tissues and bone, the team also studied the chemistry of living species, including birds. Roy Wogelius added: “This advance in chemical mapping will help us to understand modern animals as well as fossils. We may also be able to use this research to improve our ability to sequester toxic materials such as radioactive waste and to devise new strategies for stabilizing man-made organic compounds”.

The synchrotron at SSRL has been used for many years to probe the innermost workings of molecules to an almost impossibly small scale. The team from the University of Manchester and SSRL has shown it is possible to retain the sensitivity and probing ability of the synchrotron, whilst working at a much larger scale (these fossils are giants in terms of synchrotron samples). The information gleaned from the current study is way beyond anything we could have dreamed of a few years ago.

Pete Larson (left) and Uwe Bergmann (right) prepare
another fossil run in the beam line station.

The potential for this technique to gently un-pick the chemistry of long extinct species is quite breathtaking. The possibility of mapping biosynthetic pathways, enzymatic reactions and mass-transfer of elements between organic and inorganic systems through deep time...offers many areas of science, not just palaeontology, cracking insight to the past. More importantly, the hindsight that the fossil record provides will undoubtedly have benefits for understanding Earth processes, both today and in the future. Advances in one field are often the function of a curve ball from another.


Take a look at our podcast on the Science web site, just click HERE to link to Roy and I talking about this research.


A final reminder that 'In Living Colour' will be transmitted on the National Geographic Channel in the USA at 10pm EST on Thursday July 7th. You can watch Uwe, Roy and I...along with many other folks in our team, take a close look at colour in the fossil record.

Once more into the field......

It's June. The mosquito larvae have transformed into the adult bloodsucking fiends....so it must be nearly time to go back into the field. The mosquitoes must be hungry for the blood of an Englishmen.....again. Last year I must have single-handedly boosted the Culicid population for the whole of South Dakota....I am sure this year will be no different. Whilst my colleagues work unaffected by the beasties that bite and suck, I am like a walking target and blood donor rolled into one.

Bleak but beautiful, the Badlands of the Hell Creek Formation

We will have a smaller team in the field this year, around 6-9 folks. We hope to survey and record our new site that we discovered last field season. This will entail laser-scanning the whole outcrop....using a fancy new laser surveying device, called a LiDAR, short for Light Detection And Range. This one is being loaned to me, so we have to look after it... especially as replacing it might cost $80,000....yikes.

Using a LiDAR laser scanning unit in Fumanya (Spain) to track dinosaurs.

We have already used LiDAR before to map track sites and even to 'weigh' dinosaurs, or at least measure their volume from mounted skeletons and then calculate their body mass with a simple bit of arithmetic. This technology has multiple uses in the field this year, but its primary function is to provide a 3-dimensional digital outcrop model that we can plan all the major excavation, environmental impact and site remediation with for next year. We can also place all the data we collect this year, into a fancy 3D model, providing us with a chunk of virtual Hell Creek Formation to visit from the comfort of our office's in UPenn and Manchester....where there are NO mosquitoes.

Dinosaur!......What Dinosaur?

As with last year, I will endeavor to keep a daily fieldwork diary for one and all to experience the heat, bugs, exhaustion and sheer delight of plucking beasties from the Earth.

'Life in Color' or 'Life in Colour'?

National Geographic have kindly brought one of the shows from the 'Jurassic CSI' series forward in transmission to July 7th on the NG main channel. It will be the first of the six shows to be aired in the USA, the rest following from mid-August through September 2011. It's strange seeing something on the box that was filmed nearly two years ago, in some cases. However, it will hopefully provide an injection to the growing number of documentaries about palaeontology that show 21st Century technology being applied to this broadening field of science.

The 'In Living Color' (spelt minus the 'u' for the US market) will explore some of the latest research that has been undertaken between the University of Manchester and the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Light-source (SSRL). You will see Roy Wogelius, Bill Sellers, Uwe Bergmann and myself applying our disparate (that's not desperate!) skills to precious fossils from around the world. Worth a watch if your in the USA.

I feel remiss that I did not mention a couple of weeks ago, I finally managed to see the horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus) making 'whoopy' on the Delaware shore...in their usual vast numbers! A remarkable mass mate/spawning that occurs every year on this long section of the Atlantic Coast of the USA. On both full and new moons through May and June, this incredible spectacle can be seen almost anywhere along the Delaware and New Jersey shore. These wonderful beasties drag themselves up onto the beaches in their millions, dumping BILLIONS of eggs, to ensure the next generation. I will endeavor to sort my images from this wonder of nature and tell you more about this enigmatic creature, whose ancestry long pre-dates dinosaurs.

Blogging with Dinosaurs

Time disappears a little too quickly when your very busy, but still having fun! Fifty Seven blogs later and a year has passed and I am stilling finding time to write about the wee timorous beasties (such as Archaeopteryx below)...not all were so 'wee' I suppose.

The bulk of my time these past few months spent organising this year's field season and writing-up research. I will soon have teams of palaeontologists, biologists and geologists coming from the UK, Spain and the USA to help dig a site that we have in the Hell Creek Formation. This will keep my field team and I up to our armpits in dirt, a happy place, while the Jurassic CSI series is transmitted in the USA.

Planning for the excavation has several hoops that needed to be jumped through...all very necessary. Earlier this year I had to complete formalities with the suitable authorities to arrange access to the said dig site. This has been done and we are now waiting for the final say on the excavation paperwork.

Funding such excavations is not much fun. The economy is hardly booming and this impacts directly on many areas of research, especially in the UK. Last year I had to use my own savings to keep some of my field team in South Dakota. I should say, it is not uncommon for palaeontologists to dip into their own pockets to fund digs. I am still hunting for funds from various places to see if I can keep the 18 folks on my field team in a mosquito populated, arid, windy, sunburnt, dirt-shifting 'heaven' for a month.

For those of you who have been following the blog from last May, a big Thank You! In the past year you will have read how palaeontology can comfortably hold its head high, when it comes to the relevance of our research to everyday life. The information that we are now able to glean from the fossil record is influencing many fields, including; climate research, the burial of waste, long-term storage of radioactive waste and the impact of oil spills and suchlike on living species and many other crucial areas.

Whilst our research is firmly anchored in the past, we set our sights on its application to the future.

Seeley, dinosaurs and divisions...

Harry Govier Seeley gave us something that neither Huxley, Cope nor the infamous Marsh could (but this was not from a want of trying). In 1887 H.G. Seeley gave us the lasting major division within Richard Owen's tribe of beasties, giving us the saurischian and ornithischian dinosaurs. You have already met the tooth and claw of the saurischia ('lizard-hipped') that ultimately gave rise to all birds today. Now this is the rub, the ornithischian ('bird-hipped') dinosaurs have nothing to do with birds, other than being the sister group to the saurischia that did...confused? When folks say, 'Whats in a name', maybe here hindsight would have made Seeley chuckle. His division is robust, but the names often confusing, given each groups evolutionary products...sadly zero for the ornithischian dinosaurs post-Cretaceous. One thing about this group, if you visit the AMNH in New York, you'll get to see some of the most important ornithischian fossils from north America. Here is a brief tour of the said gallery.

Triceratops with its distinct horned face and solid frill has been having a rough ride with its contemporary Torosaurus... identifiable from its larger perforated frill. Jack Horner and colleagues have recently suggested the latter is an adult of the former...'slaying' a species with a stroke...or should I say 'stage' of ontogeny (growth).  This is not a new approach to slaying dinosaur species, as Peter Dodson did the same back in 1975 with his analysis of hadrosaur skulls...reducing nine to three species in a stroke. However, folks must have been more careful when naming species since Peter's work back in 1975...or have they? Other palaeontologists have urged caution, such as Mike Benton at Bristol, who also suggests that ~50% of dinosaur species might not be valid! Something to think about when we explore museums, their collections and the barren Badlands when hunting 'new' species...or maybe just another growth stage. Lets just say, we must be careful when naming new species of dinosaurs.

However, my favourite fossil in this gallery is not something horny from the Cretaceous, but wrinkled hadrosaur (Edmontosaurus) that looks like it overstayed its welcome at a sun-bathing contest. This 'beautiful' fossil was dug-up by the royal-family of palaeontology collectors, the Sternberg's...as this was a family of fossil hunters extraordinaire!

When you stand above this remarkable dinosaur, with its arms and legs wide open and its chest caved in...it looks almost too incredible to be 65 million years old, but that is exactly what it is, incredible and 65 million years old! What is most amazing for me, Charles Sternberg and his two sons prepared the fossil, as you see it today, while still in the Badlands of Wyoming.

When dinosaurs are not fully grown, they really can fool us...this skeleton has been given several names in the past, but now most agree it is either a juvenile Lambeosaurus or Corythosaurus! This is possibly why our research group has concentrated on understanding more about the preservation, biomechanics and anatomy of these enigmatic beasties. I shall add some more on my visit to the AMNH ornithischian gallery soon!