Paleo Club Weblog » Highway Salvage http://www.paleoclub.com/blog Paleontology at the South Dakota School of Mines Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:13:08 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Alumni update from Husker-land http://www.paleoclub.com/blog/?p=337 http://www.paleoclub.com/blog/?p=337#comments Wed, 16 Sep 2009 23:21:59 +0000 Nick http://www.paleoclub.com/blog/?p=337 Flipping a giant tortoise

Recently, I was out on a project in the southern panhandle for the Nebraska Highway Salve program. We were interviewed for an article in the Scottsbluff Star-Herald. The article can be seen at http://www.starherald.com/articles/2009/09/05/news/local_news/doc4aa1db429b5d9084523428.txt
As always the news isn’t completely accurate. The tusk in this article didn’t fall out of a bucket, but it was spotted in the bucket by Shane. The Ash bed listed has not been analyzed and it may be 6 million years old. Also, the jacket to the fossil may be between 1500 and 2000 lbs.
This article came towards the end of our time in the field (about 1 full month). We collected a series of other fossil resources on this trip, including the remains of bone-crushing dogs, camels, small carnivores, lizards, rabbits, other rodents, and of course turtles and tortoises (which we have about three species of now). It was an adventure in collecting which involved three thunderstorms, a rattle snake, and many long hours of shoveling.

]]> http://www.paleoclub.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=337 2 An Alum Update http://www.paleoclub.com/blog/?p=317 http://www.paleoclub.com/blog/?p=317#comments Sat, 25 Jul 2009 16:56:43 +0000 Nick http://www.paleoclub.com/blog/?p=317 This is an update from a SDSM Alum on the University of Nebraska State Museum’s Highway Salvage Program. We recently returned from a 2 weeks + field excursion to North Central, South Central, and the Panhandle of Nebraska checking current and previous highway construction projects. Prospecting at these projects yielded a wide assortment of megafauna fossils, [...]]]> This is an update from a SDSM Alum on the University of Nebraska State Museum’s Highway Salvage Program. We recently returned from a 2 weeks + field excursion to North Central, South Central, and the Panhandle of Nebraska checking current and previous highway construction projects. Prospecting at these projects yielded a wide assortment of megafauna fossils, as well as microfossils. As part of this expedition, we were asked to help with the Sandhills Conference in Ainsworth, NE by providing a dig for conference attendees and manning a fossil ID booth. I, as a School of Mines alum, was somewhat lost with the geology of Nebraska, but now have learned more than before. Work at the Museum in Lincoln has focused on picking concentrate from several Highway localities. It has been interesting and exciting since graduating from the School of Mines.

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