Wandering the Swell

The weather has been great this month. We have been out walking around the San Rafael Swell checking out areas for fossils, mainly dinosaur bone. One known area we call the gator site, (probably a fossilized crocodile) can be seen in the side of an overhang. Unfortunately, amateurs have been picking at it and it is slowly disappearing. The fossil is in a conglomerate. Next to the fossil ancient men painted in red, a series of pictographs of men with electrified looking hair. Renee Barlow, our archaeologist at the museum, identified these as Barrier Canyon style (see her blog for more details).

The leaves in the small canyon were falling from the river birch, and the area was very beautiful and pleasant. (I’ve got such a hard job).

We then headed to an area east of Castle Dale to explore new territory. We did a lot of walking but unfortunately very few fossils were found with the exception of a turtle site that I GPSed (Global Positioning System) and recorded. We also found some Tempskya. Tempskya is a tree fern that grew during the Cretaceous period. Later, we found a couple more bone sites, one with a couple fragments of crocodile scutes.

Barb Benson, a UFOP (Utah Friends of Paleontology) member, and Marvin Evans, a retired lab and field assistant of mine, was with us. We found a USGS (United States Geological Survey) marker. The wooden stake that had been propped up to make the marker easier to find had fallen down so Marvin proceeded to brace it back up with rocks from the area. As he picked up one rock, he stopped and looked at it. As he did so, I looked over at the rock he was carrying and asked him what he had in his hands. He said, “I think it is dinosaur bone” and it was. We had parked right by a bone outcrop.

After a little more survey work it was time to head home. Our couple days of wandering the Swell had come to an end for a while.

Paleo Dude Goes To Cleveland, Ohio

Tuesday, the 14th of October I along with some other paleontologists boarded a plane at the Salt Lake City airport and headed for Cleveland, Ohio. Our purpose was to participate in an international conference on paleontology. The group is called the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, SVP for short and this was our annual conference. More than 1,100 paleontologists attended the conference from many countries around the world. We enjoyed talks given on a variety of subjects, renewed old friendships and caught up on the latest discoveries

That night, we enjoyed a lecture at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and were able to look at many of the displays.

My job at the museum is preparing dinosaur bones for study. One of the symposiums Wednesday morning was for preparators and I listened to talks on new field techniques and ways to prepare delicate fossils in the lab. The fossil shown in the talk was paper thin. The bone itself, not more than 1 mm thick, was extremely delicate. The preparator stabilized the bone with material that, after a few days, would evaporate so multiple applications were needed to maintain the strength. The great advantage is the fact that the strengthening material would completely disappear after the process was complete.
The next day, Thursday, some of us found time to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame is located on the shore of Lake Eerie. This is the first time I have seen one of the Great Lakes and the view from the upper floors of the building is very nice. I was unable to get a picture from there because they do not allow cameras in the museum. The museum itself is very well laid out beginning with the early years of rock and roll and continuing through to today. My favorite sections were the 50’s and the 60’s.

Friday, I was coauthor on one of the posters presented that day and being the only author in attendance I was required to defend the poster for two hours that day. The poster was about the Yellow Cat Quarry that produced bones from the Gastonia burgei and Utahraptor ostrommaysorum. This was the first big quarry I worked on with the museum. At that time, I was only part time with the museum. I remember summers were hot sometimes reaching 116 degrees in the shade. The poster received good reviews and I had an enjoyable time talking with people.
Saturday was the last day and I enjoyed a few more talks during the day. I also walked around the area. Cleveland has a beautiful Civil War Memorial that I visited for a short time. The guide was very friendly and informative. I neglected to tell the guide that members of my family fought for the south. That evening, was the awards dinner. The food was great and I had good conversation with those at our table. The awards went well and none of the recipients were too long winded.
Sunday was the day we flew back. I had not realized that it takes one hour longer to fly from Cleveland to Salt Lake than it does to fly from Salt Lake to Cleveland. I forgot about the jet stream but I finally arrived back in Price at 10:30 that night tired but better for the experience.

Farewell To An Old Friend

The week after the Chicago crew left, Bill and I (and Sage) spent two more days at the Suarez Site. On our way into the site, one of our old friends showed himself and posed for a few more pictures. This is the same ram we saw two weeks before. He seems to be staying in the same area. I hope we will see him next year.

We’ve now recovered more than 1,200 bones from this site and we finally found three articulated vertebrae. These vertebrae are from the middle of the tail of a therizinosaur and are interlocked by the neuro spines. Everything else we have found in the quarry has been dis-articulated and mixed in with other sizes of therizinosaur and nodosaur bones so we were anxious to recover three bones that were in the same position together as they were in life.
We had several other fossil bones that were left in the quarry after the when the Chicago crew left and we wanted to remove them before closing the quarry for the winter. The weather was great, the days in the upper 70’s and the nights in the mid 50’s. The stars were beautiful and the Milky Way was clear and sharp.

In closing up the quarry, we covered the few remaining exposed bones with burlap and then dirt and a few rocks. Both Bill’s and my pack’s were a little heavy because we were trying to pack everything out in one trip and for the most part, we did it. Bill made one extra trip up the hill to grab some buckets filled with tools I left at the top of the trail.

On our way home, we made our usual side trip into Green River and enjoyed an ice cream cone from the local coffee shop.

Last Wednesday, October 1st, Bill and I (and Sage) and a couple of students from the College of Eastern Utah, went to the Price River 2 (PR2) quarry. We jacketed one of the bones left there from a previous dig and removed the remaining bones, about eight. This was the first time in fifteen years of excavating at this site we did not leave a bone exposed for the next trip.

PR2 has produced more than 1,200 bones, the majority being brachiosaur, a medium sized sauropod. Nodosaur bones from two separate species have also been recovered. One of them we have just submitted the final draft of the paper to describe and name it. Sorry I can’t tell you the name at this time. You will have to wait until the paper is published. Ken Carpenter from Denver is the lead author with Jeff Bartlett, myself, and Reese Barrick as co-authors.

Over the fifteen years we have excavated at PR2, many friends, some now gone, have helped excavate the bones. Many great experiences and fun stories have come from the activities at this site. It will be hard not to be able to dig at this site. So I say good bye to an old friend.