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!

Progress on the  new paleontology lab here at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology is moving along quite quickly. Earlier this week the concrete for the 2nd floor of the was poured. The official completion date is August of 2010, but at the rate things are going it could be as early as May.

here are some photos I took this morning of the progress:

we’re all excited and can hardly wait for it to be finished.