Bones below the surface

Last week's fast-forward erosion revealed some interesting finds that our scientists were interested in investigating further.  Today, we strapped on our vertebrate paleontologist hats (Oh, yes!  There are hats!), and got busy.








shark coprolite

When I am working with the paleontology dig team in Seymour, we almost always spend some time prospecting. Basically, this means we wander around in 120+ degree Fahrenheit temps in areas we haven't yet found fossils, looking at the ground and hoping to find evidence of a new site.  If someone spies something (a bone, a footprint, a tooth, coprolites sprinkled everywhere, an entire dimetrodon vertebral column just lying there in the dirt), 
Dr. Bakker shouts, "Find more!" and the rest of us congregate and start crawling around on the ground.  If a site proves fruitful, we spend more time there, carefully excavating the fossils, documenting as we go.

Dr. Robert Bakker

Today, my own team of diggers modeled (in climate-controlled comfort) the process we use in the field.  After fossils were discovered, the team selected a name for the site.  The fossils were separated from the surrounding matrix, with great care not to cause damage in the process.  Very specialized tools such as dollar store makeup brushes and Subway straws are used for this task.

brushing sediment from the bone



brushing off Willi

using a straw to blow sediment away from the bone

The fossil is measured in place.



To preserve the evidence, clear plastic
is placed over the bones to create a map.
A compass is used to identify North on the map.

Each bone is traced to document the bones' position
in relationship to one another before the fossils are removed
 and the evidence is destroyed.





The children apply their knowledge
of skeletal anatomy to identify
the bones of their mystery animal.





Bones are removed from their surrounding matrix
and pieced together, like a puzzle, if possible.

The surrounding matrix is screened
to check for tiny bones, such as toes and teeth,
that may have been missed
as the larger bones were removed.

While deposition covers dead organisms and allows them to fossilize, it is erosion that reveals them, allowing us access to layers of rock containing evidence of life from millions of years ago.  In Seymour, Texas it is life from the Permian Period of the late Paleozoic Era (about 280 million years ago, millions of years before the dinosaurs!) that is now exposed on or near the surface.  In Bryan, Texas, the exposed layers are from a time much more recent--the Eocene Epoch, the second portion of the Paleogene Period in the Cenozoic Era (about 45 million years ago).  River banks, where water has worn away layers of time, are excellent places for fossil hunting.  So are areas where people have scraped away the earth, such as road cuts, construction sites, and even a spot intended as a dump.

 

There's a Book for That!

Barnum's Bones: How Barnum Brown Discovered the Most Famous Dinosaur in the World by Tracey Fern

Finding the First T. Rex by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld

If You Are a Hunter of Fossils by Byrd Baylor

From Lava to Life by Jennifer Morgan

In My Own Backyard by Julie Kurjian

Fossils Tell of Long Ago by Aliki

Digging Up Dinosaurs by Aliki

Mary Anning: Fossil Hunter by Sally M. Walker