Back in the Field Again

Wow, the weather’s finally turning great and of course I have got cabin fever along with several of the museum volunteers and staff so we headed out in the field last Tuesday and Wednesday to check up on some of our old sites and see if we could find some new ones. At one of the turtle sites we found last year, I was showing some of the crew turtle shell and how to recognize it when Clark Warren, asked if I was interested in finding teeth at which point he picks up a 4 centimeter long crock tooth in great condition! He just likes to show off some times.

We were surveying in the Cedar Mountain Formation and found a lot of tempskya. I always enjoy finding tempskya but since it was so plentiful in that area, I only recorded the larger concentrations.

Clark, however, found a petrified wood site. This is different from tempskya in that we could see growth rings in the fossil pieces. This type of wood is scarce, so we recorded the site and collected some of the wood for thin sections and identification.

The next day, Wednesday, we visited the site of a petrified log that was found last year. The log is heavily fractured however we are going to try to jacket part of it and remove it to the lab. We want to see a cross section of the whole log. Its growth pattern is different from anything we at the museum are familiar with. We continued surveying north of the log. Bill and Jeff located a site that we recorded. During the recording process we found egg shell along with the dinosaur bone fragments.

Jeff had been sitting on the area with the egg shell so this site was dubbed Jeff’s Hatchery.

Ray Jones had been shown a new site by one of his friends and he in turn, showed us. The site is located in the bottom of a wash uncovered by water action and has been worn away by consequent rainstorms. The bone is in hard sandstone. Some has been weathered out but three bones are visible. This would be a difficult site to excavate but it is fun to see bones the way they have been naturally preserved.

Thursday I was back at the lab. We had a visiting paleontologist, Dr. Jim Kirkland, the Utah Paleontologist. He has been involved with the research on therizinosaurs and was interested in what we have uncovered at the Swarez Site. He also believes that we have a troodon mixed in with our therizinosaur. Unfortunately, troodon and therizinosaur are similar in size and the preservation of some of the Swarez bones is not always good making the distinction between the two difficult. It’s always fun to look over collections and get a fresh opinion on what’s what. Dr. Kirkland has a great wealth of knowledge and I enjoy talking with him and learning from him. http://geology.utah.gov/utahgeo/dinofossil/falcarius/index.htm

On the fun side, it’s pinewood derby time again and my grandson Tyler and I have been working on our pinewood derby cars.