Digging with Californians

A father and son team Mehdi and Raayan arrived to go out with us June 29^th to the Swarez Site. The day was beautiful and sunny as we started out from the museum. Of course, we had to stop at Crystal Geyser near Green River, Utah. It was doing a little bubbling and teasing us with some two to three foot eruptions, but nothing more.

We reached the trailhead leading to Swarez just before lunch time so we ate an early lunch and loaded up our gear. We arrived at the site and while Bill gave a brief introduction to our California friends I commenced picking at the overburden. The overburden is about 5 feet thick over the bones and we needed to remove more overburden to continue excavating the bone bed. We each took our turn with the pick and shovels and finally we were able to uncover the bone bed, put up the shades and begin uncovering the fossil bones.

We were very successful during our two days. We found the first skull bone from the huge nodosaur we know to be deposited here. It is the right premaxillary beak. We also uncovered and collected other bones including two jaws and several pubis bones along with ungles etc. In the area Bill was working, several pieces of armor from the nodosaur were found. Unfortunately, it is imbedded in sandstone, making it difficult to remove. On our next trip, we will map the area and remove the sandstone in blocks and bring them back to the lab.

Monday and Tuesday the temperatures topped out at over 100 degrees so we were in no danger of freezing. The sunsets were beautiful as usual. The second evening Mehdi decided to hike to one of the peaks close by and enjoy the sunset.
We were fortunate that it cooled off in the evenings making it easy to sleep. We have been able to prep out some of the bones. Below is a therizinosaur jaw that we recovered.

Everyone had a great time and we hope to get together again in the future.