It's hard to dig for dinosaurs.
Here's what I learned:
*Dinosaurs died in places that are now
FREAKING HOT!!!
(duck-billed hadrosaur teeth)
Our dig site was located in the Lance Creek formation,
a division of late Cretaceous (69-66 ma),
in Weston County, Wy, known for being short on people and shade.
YES, I drank plenty of water!
And wore a hat and lots of sunscreen
and I still ended up imagining my brain was boiling in my skull.
*There's a lot of money involved in dinosaur bones.
This means the process of digging for them is
INCREDIBLY SLOW!!!
That little divot in the dirt behind me is a full day's digging.
Consequently, much of the work can be done Roman style: in a reclining position.
Shelly demonstrates.
I feel the Mixed Nuts container is somehow apropos in conjunction with this hobby.
(triceratops tail vertebra)
*You really gotta want it.
Gary moved his life from his home state of Montana to South Dakota
in order to be closer to good dinosaur hunting grounds.
(local pride)
*Every bone counts.
(tiny fish teeth and possible raptor tooth)
After we finished with our ham-fisted fossil digging,
Gary said he would go back through our discard pile and carefully screen
for all the little flakes and fragments we missed.
(small alligator teeth)
I was very selective about what I kept. Most of the bone fragments didn't look like much but I found a triceratops vertebra, a hadrosaur vertebra, and some nice chunks of triceratops frill. I also kept all the teeth since enamel wears beautifully, even after 60 million years or so.
(triceratops teeth)
*Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in awhile.
It took two days of micro-digging in the scalding Wyoming sun
but I actually found a T-rex tooth.
At 1.25" long, it's not the biggest T-rex tooth
but to me,
it is the ultimate in dinosaur glamour.
Dinosaur digging: checked off my Life List. :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment