Heat, Thunder and Rain

Our excursion to Price River 2 started out hot and muggy and buggy. Our purpose was to prepare the sauropod bones for removal. This would let us excavate further and hopefully find some nodosaur. The ischium had been jacketed on our previous trip and we removed it first thing. This opened up the area around the larger jacket and we trenched deeper and was able to complete that jacket also. Bronson, meanwhile, was working on the lower layer and uncovered a cervical vertebrae and a radius from the large nodosaur.



It was very hot and the humidity was higher than usual for Utah desert. Fortunately we brought our shade with us and had set it up before we began excavations. This didn’t help the mugginess however. Around lunch time a slight breeze began to blow. This helped a little and after lunch we mapped and recorded the two nodosaur bones and were able to remove them from the dig site. Black clouds had been gathering and we began to see lightening and hear thunder. The breeze had now turned cool so we received a little relief from the heat.


Knowing how quickly summer thunderstorms can strike, we began cleaning up and gathering our tools and equipment. We had almost everything loaded when the storm hit.
Summer thunderstorms are wonderful to watch.



We were in the safety of our suburban. The lightening was flashing, the rain came down in torrents, the wind was whipping the rain, small riverlets of water began forming and flowing around us and through the quarry area.

Our stainless steel mixing bowl had been left out to fend for itself and was washed down a little ways. After the storm was over, we rescued it.

Everything seems so nice after a storm. The plants look greener and the colors in the soil more vibrant. The air is cooler and seems fresher.
The storm brought mud and debris down into the quarry and working was impossible. We did what we could to cover the site and left to come back another day.

It’s Alive! Paleo Dude in the LAbOratory - AKA Reconstructing new dino skull

Our PR2 nodosaur has been waiting for his head for a couple of years now. We found skull bones piled up in one area of the quarry. They were broken apart but in one group. The bones consisted mainly of the back or interior end of the skull. One piece of maxilla was found. This contained a tooth from which we were able to sculpt and cast teeth for the reconstruction. We later found the premaxilla about a meter away. Unfortunately, the maxilla was not there so we had to guess at the length of his snout by comparing the size of the bones recovered from the quarry. We also used other skulls from related dinosaurs to determine the length of the snout.

I molded cast all of the skull bones and used the replicas to recreate the skull. This preserved the original bone and by using the replicas I was able to uncrush some of the bones that had been crushed by natural means in the quarry.

I consulted with Ken Carpenter from Denver, one of the foremost experts on armored dinosaurs and he advised me to shorten the snout a little more and that’s what I have been doing this week. We recovered only part of the lower jaw and that will be my project in the next couple weeks, to complete the skull.

It seems that it is quite tricky business creating monsters!



Original tooth in maxilla


Hand full of replicated teeth


Starting the skull


Side view


Working the clay

Getting Plastered Paleo Style

Price River 2 has been waiting patiently for our attention this year, and we finally made it out to excavate some more bones from this long-time site. The PR2 site is multi-layered. The top layer produces mostly brachiosaur bones of which we have identified 7 individuals so far and the lower layer has a mixture of brachiosaur and nodosaur. The nodosaur, an armored dinosaur is my favorite. He is like a 30 foot long horned toad.

This week we were concentrating our efforts on the upper layer where the brachiosaur is. Tuesday, Craig Royce and Bill and I were able to trench around some of the bones and apply a plaster jacket.

The jackets consist of strips of burlap soaked in plaster and then wrapped around the pedestal bones to hold them together for the journey back to the lab. We first apply either toilet paper or paper towels as a separator to keep the plaster from sticking to the bones. The trenching process to pedestal the bones can be tedious because usually during this process we find more bones and sometimes pedestaling one bone is like trying to pedestal one noodle of spaghetti in a massive pasta plate.

Wednesday a small crew of naive high school students accompanied us into the field. First thing we did was loosen one of the finished jackets we had made the day before and turned it over and removed it from the quarry. This opened up a previously inaccessible side of two other bones we had partially jacketed and a third bone, an ischium, we were trenching around to jacket. The heat of the day was taking its toll on everyone but especially on our high school volunteers.
Bill and one of our volunteers were able to jacket the ischium after which we broke for lunch. Everyone had Gatorade and plenty of water but three out of our four students were done in and were having lack of energy issues after lunch.

We packed up a little early and headed back to town. The air conditioning in the vehicles helped, and the thought of a dip in the wave pool in Price energized them and they began perking up. And that’s how it is when you get plastered in the field.

Bugs, Heat and Dust

The dig program for the museum has been put on hold for a short time while we interviewed for the Director of Education position. However we did squeeze one day in. We went out to the Price River Two PR2 quarries, one of our old standbys. We had been excavating at this quarry since 1993 and it has yielded seven brachiosaurs and three armored dinosaurs plus some material we haven’t been able to identify yet.

Wednesday, we had a crew of five and began uncovering the quarry. The overburden around the quarry is quite high and weathers down over the site and quite a bit of weathering had happened since our last visit, but we had a good crew and we were able to get down to the bones. The surface material was powder dry but about a foot under the surface we ran into some mud. The bones are in good condition, as far as PR2 is concerned. We soon ran out of time and we covered the bones back up for protection and headed back to Price and hoped to be able to return next week. This particular quarry has been continuing to produce, it seems that some things are worth putting up with bugs, heat and dust for.