Today, we headed to The Paleon Museum in Glenrock to dig up some dinosaurs. When we arrived at the museum, we spent some time looking at the specimens to get acquainted with what we would be looking for. One thing that is unique here is that the specimens were real, not just casts of bones. We loaded up into the trucks and drove out of town to the dig site. Hats? Check. Water? Check. Sunscreen? Check. We spent some time walking around looking for bone. The paleontologists worked with on differentiating between rock and bone. One way to be sure is to taste them. Bone sticks to the tongue. We were at what they called a "microsite" where the bones were likely to be very small fragments due to it being part of a high energy water area - fast moving water that broke up the bones. (Hard to believe there was water here in hot, dry Wyoming.) When we found one, we were instructed to look uphill for a "source" meaning bone that was still in its own sedimentary layer. We mostly did surface digging, armed only with a paintbrush (we could use the handle to disturb the soft sandstone and clay.) We would ask the paleontologists if something was bone or not. Well, one time, we were informed that it was NOT bone, but poop. Boy was Greg glad he didn't try to taste that!!
The bummer of the situation was that we would not be digging up bigger bones - that was something we could do on a longer dig, but not on a one day project. I guess we need to do a multi-day dig. However, it was great to have a paleontologist and a grad student at our disposal to pick their brains.
After a couple hours on site and collecting about 70 bone fragments, we headed back to the museum to get a taste of the lab work. We spent time examining these fragments and we really didn't understand what they could tell us. With some directed questioning, Mark and Tom were able to identify a mandible of a possible small reptile, a fish vertebra, a turtle underbelly, a reptile scute and a couple dinosaur teeth (a hadrosaur and ceratopsian.) It didn't seem like much until we put all the pieces together to determine that this layer of rock was built from a wet, warm climate that had fish, reptiles and dinosaurs. - Late Cretaceous - the end of the dino era.
Mark was able to spend some more time talking with the paleontologist to learn more for his Geology merit badge, plus we did see some more of the prep lab.
We headed back to the hotel in the late afternoon and veg'ed after hiking in that heat and elevation. In the evening, just to get out of this hotel (that does NOT have a pool) we walked across the street and took in a program on the Dawn of the Space age at the local planetarium. Tomorrow, we hope to check out the local historical sites.
I hope we haven't bored you too much with the technical description of what we did, but it was very interesting to Mark and Tom and to this homeschooling mom!
The bummer of the situation was that we would not be digging up bigger bones - that was something we could do on a longer dig, but not on a one day project. I guess we need to do a multi-day dig. However, it was great to have a paleontologist and a grad student at our disposal to pick their brains.
After a couple hours on site and collecting about 70 bone fragments, we headed back to the museum to get a taste of the lab work. We spent time examining these fragments and we really didn't understand what they could tell us. With some directed questioning, Mark and Tom were able to identify a mandible of a possible small reptile, a fish vertebra, a turtle underbelly, a reptile scute and a couple dinosaur teeth (a hadrosaur and ceratopsian.) It didn't seem like much until we put all the pieces together to determine that this layer of rock was built from a wet, warm climate that had fish, reptiles and dinosaurs. - Late Cretaceous - the end of the dino era.
Mark was able to spend some more time talking with the paleontologist to learn more for his Geology merit badge, plus we did see some more of the prep lab.
We headed back to the hotel in the late afternoon and veg'ed after hiking in that heat and elevation. In the evening, just to get out of this hotel (that does NOT have a pool) we walked across the street and took in a program on the Dawn of the Space age at the local planetarium. Tomorrow, we hope to check out the local historical sites.
I hope we haven't bored you too much with the technical description of what we did, but it was very interesting to Mark and Tom and to this homeschooling mom!
No comments:
Post a Comment