First day in the field. Monday, June 22, 2009

It's Christmas morning for me all over again. Each year it is the same experience: the night before we go into the field feels like Christmas Eve, and the next morning I wake up really early because I am excitedly anticipating the treasures I will find! A whole week of Christmas Eves and Christmas mornings. It is reminiscent of the film Groundhog Day, though once the day gets started, each turns out in its own unique way.

This year is quite different since there is a group of students from Gainesville College who are here to help excavate the fossil fish site in North Dakota. So, though the group is very large, we are divided into two groups for much of the week. Starting today, the students are taking a 3 day survival course as part of their two week field course. Those of us who are here with Paleo Prospectors went into the field today for personal collecting.

Laurel and I were well prepared for the warming temperatures as we wore our cooling vests and super cool neck ties. We were certainly glad we had them, because even wearing those specially designed "accessories", we were mighty tired at the end of our first day. In fact everyone was more tired than I remember from previous years. I'm certain tomorrow will be better.

The first day is always a bit tricky. Everyone is super enthusiastic and anxious to get out there and find their "fantasy" fossil. Some want to find a Triceratops brow horn, others want to find a claw or tooth from a Tyrannosaurus rex. When you are finally out on this huge ranch that is literally thousands of acres, you realize the chances of finding your dream fossil will most likely, remain a dream. But, it usually takes a few hours for this reality check to hit you, and when it does, you look to other aspects of the adventure to inspire you.

Today was no exception. Visions of sugar plums, I mean vertebrae, danced in my head as we drove out to the site. I hoped I would be able to differentiate the fossils from the rocks quickly. Sometimes it takes awhile to train your eye to latch onto a fossil that is shyly sitting amongst some similarly colored rocks. If you don't find one right away you begin to question your proficiency and you can get discouraged. It wasn't too long before I found a tiny scrap of turtle shell. My eyes were aclimated to the task at hand, I just needed the site to cooperate and present some fossils.

The day was gorgeous. Big blue sky that went on forever. Clouds built up in the early afternoon to provide us a wonderful show during our lunch break. The breeze was pretty steady most of the day, which was most welcome to help keep our bodies a little cooler. I have included one photo from one of the outcroppings I climbed. No fossils to be found up there, but the vistas were amazing! Even if the fossils are few and far between, there is much beauty in this land to appreciate. Flowers of many colors are blooming, the grass is lush and green, black and white birds dart around us, and today, no snakes!

After lunch we drove to another area and hiked into a location for the afternoon session. I found plenty of scrap fossil bone which, when it is small, I call "kibbles and bits". I had promised myself I wouldn't bother to pick this stuff up, but because of a lack of more significant fossil material, I was desperate to pick up something. Even the little stuff adds up though, and by the end of the afternoon, my back pack was pretty heavy.

I found two bones that were so weathered they were unidentifiable (to me anyway) and must have been in a hundred pieces about the size of linguine. I could not imagine trying to glue those pieces together. Near one of these, my eye was caught by what looked like yet another scrap of fossil about the size of a lima bean. It was very weathered and of little consequence. But I couldn't resist, and I pushed my Swiss Army knife into the soil next to it to dislodge it from the very hard clay (almost like concrete). The knife would not go in because it hit something harder than the clay. I retrieved my pick axe and placed it in the ground farther from the visible fossil. The tool went into the clay and I could work it down and around the fossil to dislodge it. To my surprise, it was about the size of my fist! I didn't have any idea what it was. The part of the fossil that had been covered in clay was nothing like the exposed part.

I set it aside and continued to search in the area for more fossils. A short time later, Rob, one of our fabulous paleontology guides, came over and asked me what I had found. I handed him the fossil admitting that I wasn't sure if it really was fossil bone. He asked me if I knew what I had, with a tone in his voice that sent a little ripple of cautious excitement down my spine. I said I had no idea. He informed me that only one creature had such large spaces where the bone marrow would have been.....Tyrannosaurus rex!!! That was the fossil highlight of my day. Not a museum piece, not even a bone that anyone would particularly recognize as bone, but it is 65 million years old and I am the first human being to hold it in my hands.

Though I appreciate the nice pieces of turtle shell and other assorted bone scrap that are here in my room waiting to be washed, that one find made the day a success for me. I will clean it tomorrow and look at it with the loupe, so that I can learn more about the structure of T. rex bone.

Laurel found a nice champsosaur vertebra and jaw fragment. She found them adjacent to each other so perhaps they were from the same animal. She searched the area for more fossils of that critter, but that was all she could find. Those were the highlights of her day's finds. We both enjoyed being in this amazing land and look forward to what tomorrow will bring.

All my housmates are asleep, and at 10:15 I had better wrap this up. We are off to a pretty good start. Our fingers are crossed for more luck tomorrow as we search for our fantasy fossils.

Cheers.