Fun finds

Brrr! A front is coming in, and it's become a surprisingly cold Spring Break! Many of the team had to procure extra sweatshirts in town. (Too bad they don't have Mrs. D, Mistress of Procurement, looking out for them!)

We got a lot done today, though.

A good bit of the morning was devoted to completing a layer over the bottom/now-top of the jacket. Our plaster-splattered clothes (and hair and hats and glasses and . . . ) made quite the spectacle in town at lunch!


We (well, mostly Chris) spent the afternoon at the main quarry, scooping out the muck that had eroded from above.

At first, Fluffy and I found ourselves excavating buried tools from a past dig season. Suddenly, this was an archaeological dig!

The mud revealed a real cache! A couple bottles of Vinac, super glue, a water bottle, a screw driver, a pick, a brush, a tent stake--enough to assemble a tool kit! We were excited to be finding anything in that muddy mess.

Of course, it's far more exciting to find bone . . .

Especially big, giant Texas-sized Dimetrodon bones like this one (the two pieces above fit together)! Wahoo! My find of the day!

It's a caudal (tail) vertebra that would be positioned where the pick is pointed on the Dimetrodon skeleton! Chris says he's never seen one so large.

Feel your own vertebrae. Then check out the size of this one, and just imagine how big this guy must have been!

The erosion mess was finally cleaned up,

and we were suddenly finding bone after bone. The good stuff always turns up at the end of a field day (or often at the end of the field week), and we maintained the tradition.

No one wanted to stop digging!

The bad news is that it's started to rain, and we'll have to start all over again tomorrow!

Suddenly Seymour!

We've arrived!




The field truck is loaded with pounds of plaster, ready for action.





Last season, a bulldozer operator was working on the ranch, digging a new cow "tank." We are lucky he had a good eye because he stopped when he spotted fossils. Soon, the dig team was over in the area working, and they found Trimerorhachis skulls--lots of them! The amphibian skulls and the mound of soil around them were covered in plaster. With some clever, careful work, the huge plaster jacket was moved to a safer spot on the ranch (one that wasn't about to be flooded with drinking water for cows). With so much rain this winter, the area where they were found is now under 25 feet of water!

Our big job today was to work on that huge "jacket." First, we needed to reduce its weight by removing a few layers of dirt from the bottom (which now sits on the top).




As the layers split off in neat sheets, we looked carefully to be sure we were only removing layers of dirt and not fossils!



Michele discovered something amazing!




Trimerorhachis footprints! Wow!

After the excitement (and the paleo-paparazzi) died down, we were ready to begin jacketing the footprints and the rest of the bottom of the jacket (now on top) so that those precious skulls can be safely transported.



The area is covered in foil to protect the footprints.






Next, fabric dipped in plaster and smoothed over the foil.







Shirley really gets into her work!








The sad news for the day is at the main quarry. The wet winter weather caused the soil above the site to erode under the tarp and down onto the area where the team is digging. This means more work for the team to undo the work of water and gravity--and it also means that fossils that were "in place"are no longer organized in layers. This means that clues about what was living with what and who was eating whom may be lost.

But the ranch owners have a happy surprise for us!


No indoor plumbing on the ranch, but now the team will have fancy facilities!

Into the field

Spring Break! Time to dig in the dirt!

Fortunately for me, weather forced the paleo team at the Houston Museum of Natural Science to postpone their trip out to Baylor County several times this season--meaning the actual trip coincides with my Spring Break and I finally get to join them again!

We broke up the long drive across Texas to Seymour with a few fossil-hunting stops.

Today's finds . . .

a bag full of gorgeous, gorgeous ammonites (the size of my hand and bigger!) near Ft. Worth,

along with some smaller invertebrates from a road cut.

Tomorrow, we'll be able to drive out to the main site and check out how things weathered the winter. Fingers crossed for no rain!