Digging For Clams, In the Desert

A couple months ago, in August, Casey, Ralph and I set out to locate another giant clam. The “Platyceramus” clam is known for it’s large size (1 meter or 3 feet or more in width).  In the time of 85 million years ago these clams were abundant in areas of the seaway.  One such area is located near Green River, Utah.

The clams are very fragile and breakup as soon as they are uncovered by erosion and weathering.  Our challenge is to find one starting to weather out, carefully uncover it, then stabilize and jacket the shell so we can transport it back to the museum.

Casey soon found us a good candidate and we carefully began the process of removing the overburden.  The small oysters that lived with the clams were very thick at this site so we collected a few of the better specimens for the museum.  Unfortunately the top shell of the clam was missing a large area of shell.

We decided to go for the bottom shell.  

During the excavation process Ralph found the remains of a small fish.  Fish have been found inside giant clams in other areas. These fish are thought to have used the clams for protection from predators.

We also found a pectoral fin spike from a larger fish.  The spike is from a fish too large to have lived in the clam, it probably washed in at some time.  Individual fish scales and more small fish bones were also found.  

Finally the second day the bottom shell was ready to be framed, coated with plaster and removed.

The jacketed clam was just the right width to fit in the museums suburban.  With our prize safely stowed, we headed back to Price.