Paleo Club Weblog » Fossil

Epic Move

Jason Carr — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 17:32:27 +0000

Yesterday in what can only be called a Herculean effort we, the summer crew at the Museum of Geology cleared the floor of the old gym of fossils we had been staging there. in 8 short hours we toted 52 pallets of fossil and mineral specimens along with 14 cases to be used in the new building. Many thanks to Lowell from facilities who’s proficiency with a forklift made the job possible.

the last load of cases and minerals about to be taken off the gym floor

The gym looks so empty now.

Out of the old, into the new. The collections move into our brand-new state of the art facility just up the hill.

Our new electric forklift can turn on a dime and place specimens safely atop the shelves.

The official ribbon cutting is scheduled for Sept. 1 at 10:00 AM. With a special party for paleo club members and Museum staff on the 3rd. Hope to see you there!

Moving in

Jason Carr — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 14:06:39 +0000

The Museum of Geology’s new Paleontology Research Laboratory is finally complete, and now begins the task of moving over 500,000 specimens in.

unprepared specimens will be stored on the upper level, doors on the left lead to the prep. lab.

Over the past few days we have been moving the jackets seen above from an offsite storage facility. Specimens were loaded one at a time onto a flatbed truck, brought to the new building and unloaded onto shiny new galvanized steel pallets. The pallets will be loaded onto the heavy duty racks once the facility get its own forklift.

One of 2 storage units.

Thanks to Facilities for the use and operation of the forklift. It made loading the jackets much more manageable.

Professor Jim Martin oversees the loading of the jacketed specimens onto a flatbed truck for transport to the new building

When unloading heavy jackets we make use of the building's 3 ton hoist.

Going up.

It takes a few of us just to roll this big one

After 2 days of loading and unloading everything from Plesiosaurs and Sea Turtles to Dinosaurs we still aren’t done emptying the offsite storage. We’ve saved the best for last: a Camerasaurus pelvis from the Little Houston Quarry. We believe it weighs over 3 tons and is as big as a small car.

What can I say? Dinosaurs are big!

Paleontology Field Camp—week one

Jason Carr — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 16:10:40 +0000

Week one of paleo field camp at the Little Houston Quarry in Sundance Wyoming has conlcluded. The quarry has been reopened after 10 years, and we spent the majority of the week mapping out the bone bed. (getting the contextual data—where the fossil was found is just as important removing as the bone itself.)

On Friday we made a trip to Devil’s Tower National Monument, a volcanic neck that played a role in Stephen Speilberg’s sci-fi classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

We’re all excited about next week, when we hope to be able to remove a large sauropod femur.

photos are on the Museum of Geology’s facebook page here

Upcoming conference in Wyoming: Tate Fossil Preparation and Collections Symposium

Sally Shelton — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 18:05:42 +0000

I am posting this at Michelle Pinsdorf’s request. There will be several people from here going, and again we should be able to provide transportation.

From Michelle: I thought it would be great to pass the word around about the 2nd annual Fossil Preparation and Collections Symposium, being hosted at the Tate Museum in Casper this summer. The conference runs from June 5-7th, is nice and close by, offers discounts on hotel rooms, and has a sliding scale of registration fees depending on the days and activities one wants to participate in.

The website for the symposium is here: http://www.caspercollege.edu/tate/index.html
(click the “Activities” tab and then click the “Annual Summer Conference” bar), while the schedule of events and speakers is here: http://www.caspercollege.edu/tate/downloads/2009_tateconf_schedule.pdf
and the registration form is here: http://www.caspercollege.edu/tate/downloads/2009_tate_registration.pdf

I’d very much like to go, and would be happy to make plans with others to split driving, rooms, etc., so I think this might be a good thing to announce in class and/or just around the department in general, before everyone goes everywhere for the summer.

Items of Interest from the Rock & Fossil ID day

Jason Carr — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 14:36:05 +0000

At the Rock and Fossil ID day people brought in some interesting finds. Two in particular caught my attention. First was a concretion containing ammonite & clam fossils brought in by Mary Alderson of Rapid City.

Mrs. Alderson and her find

The specimen was found by Mrs. Alderson’s husband in 1961 when he was digging a post for a telephone pole. He brought it home and Mary has kept it ever since. The fossil itself dates back to the Campanian about 70-78 million years ago, when this part of North America was covered by the Western Interior Seaway.

Another interesting find brought in were these:

A geode?

Looks like a galena coconut

The man who brought these in bought them in Morocco. It turns out they’re fake. The mineral inside is obviously galena, the cubic crystal shape and shiny metallic luster are a dead giveaway. But the crystals aren’t intergrown, and those spires in the middle aren’t like anything else seen in galena. The whole thing looks as if it were coated in glue and had galena sprinkled inside like glitter.

To top it all off, the bottom “geode” (the coconut-looking one) appears to be made of a ceramic material. All in all they’re interesting, but definitely man-made.

Pictures from the Rock & Fossil ID day

Jason Carr — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 22:35:06 +0000

The Flash Player and a browser with Javascript support are needed..

Thanks to SEG for hosting this event at the Museum of Geolgy. It was a great success and I hope to do it again.

Rock and Fossil ID Day @ the Museum

Jeff Martin — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 18:43:09 +0000

The ID day was a big success! Most of the people there asked if an event like this will happen more often. I told them like I’m saying now that the museum is always open for anyone to bring in rocks, fossils or bizarre things for us there to try to identify. In fact it’s encouraged. But in terms of actual events, they do not happen all that often, but things may change over time if this is what the general public would appreciate. The museum is not just a reading and learning facility but also can be used as a service for helping the public learn about what pops out of their backyard like rocks, fossils or what have you. I believe somewhere around 80 people came just for the ID day. Other people came as well for tours, and to learn and have a great day at the museum.

It was a great day at the museum, but everyday is a great day at the museum.

Eytan showed people how paleontologists work in a lab setting: prepping the sauropod rib, Laura was helping kids make pet rocks, multiple people were identifying rocks and fossils and I ran the gift shop.

Ripped From the Headlines

Jason Carr — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 18:38:55 +0000

I found this on the Vert Paleo Listserv:

There is an interesting article in the April issue of the Smithsonian magazine Called “The Dino Wars” about the private collection and sale of fossils and it’s impact on the field of paleontology.

Researchers worry that commercial digs such as this excavation in Utah, will obliterate the scientific record. “A lot of guys out there don’t care about the site where the fossil sits,” says paleontologist Mark Norell. Because destructive haste is commonplace, he adds, “we lose the context of the site as well as the fossil itself.”