New Sites and Sights

Friday 13 July, 2012

Ron let us know that along with a dinner invitation for Friday night at the ranch house of Fred and Karen (manage the Tinker Ranch), Fred offered to take us to an area that has not been collected. Our ears perked up and we eagerly accepted. Brian once again joined us for this expedition and we met Fred on the gravel road near the entrance to the Tinker T. rex excavation site. We followed him to the new location and he seemed as eager as us to get out there and find dinosaurs.

This optimistic foursome set out to hunt for fossils and try our luck. Brian likes to focus on micro fossils, specifically teeth and claws. Well, who wouldn't want teeth and claws. Laurel has a preference for the large, dining table center-piece size fossils, I am game for anything and Fred seems to fall in my camp. None of us found much as we searched the lower exposures. There was iron siderite aplenty, but no indication of fossil material.

Climbing higher we found fossilized botanical material, and we did a little probing to see if there might be fossils nearby. Laurel found two pieces of very nice brown hollow bone. When glued together they will equal the length of a pencil. Laurel also tried her luck a little higher on the bluff when she climbed up with Fred. She had a scary moment when her knees became weak and she had to get herself as far away from the edge as possible. Fred looked down over the side and agreed they were up pretty high. She was shaky for awhile but recovered well enough to later find a partial rib bone in a mud wall. (Fred was in on the find as well, but generously allowed Laurel to keep it since they saw them at the same time.)

The rib section and a smaller bone fragment were trapped in the mud matrix together. I assisted Laurel in the excavation process. We are becoming a pretty good team working with knives, brushes and stabilizer. During this time Fred and Brian were above us checking out the botanical area in hopes of finding fossils. We finished wrapping the extracted bones in foil and packed everything up to walk back to the vehicles for a quick lunch and discuss the afternoon plans.

A very large exposure beckoned Brian who had collected on the area last year. He had fond memories of his experience and really wanted a second opportunity. There were two major obstacles: Laurel and I were afraid that the afternoon heat would really be too much for us for the long return walk; Fred was reluctant to take a vehicle any closer because in the current drought conditions when the tires of a vehicle roll down the grasses, they usually die. Since this is cattle grazing country and Fred is responsible for healthy well fed cows, we decided to leave this exposure for a morning expedition, and try the original Tinker site area.

Since Brian is keen on micro sites, and Fred knew of an area that Rob had located, we headed in that direction. The two of them hiked up and down like billy goats and Laurel and I stayed in our comfort zone on flatter landscape. We did find some micro site fossils: Gar fish scales and tiny bits of bone, but the heat was getting the better of us and we decided to revisit her tibia and fibula site from last year. As we were leaving this area I glanced down to pick up what I hoped would be a large Triceratops tooth. Once in my hand, and on closer inspection, I knew it was not a tooth. Darn. After a two hour cleaning job that night and an identification session with Rob, I found out it is the cervical vertebra of a crocodile. Cool.

Seeing the Tinker site again brought back lots of memories. If you are interested in learning more about that excavation and the current status of the bones, I recommend the website: www.tinkerthetrex.com. It is well done and has great photographs of the work over the two summer sessions.

We walked over to Laurel's leg bone site and thought it might be worthwhile to probe around. There was lots of spill bone and we could not recall if all of it was leftover from her fossils. Laurel has a gift for putting her bayonet into the ground at exactly the right spot. Sure enough, she found another bone, quite possibly from the same animal.

The unfortunate aspect of this discovery is that as we cleared away the matrix material and before we could coat it with stabilizer, the bone split into many pieces. It was so dry and crumbly just inside the outer bone coating, that all we could do was wrap the pieces in foil and consider it another puzzle project. It really is fabulous that she has another bone from that site. We consulted an anatomy book and decided the bone is a coracoid (shoulder bone ) of a Triceratops. Laurel is excited and I imagine looks forward to another crack at that location.

Update: Rob looked at the pieces of bone and corrected our identification. It is the calcaneum which is a bone in the ankle that articulates with the fibula bone. This makes more sense due to its close proximity to the tibia and fibula she found last year. Learning this, I think we are even more convinced there could be more Triceratop bones in that site. Next year's plans are forming.....

Brian met us to see the spot where Laurel had found the fossils and then we all returned to the car for the trip back into town. Brian did find a little micro fossil material, but is still hoping for teeth and claws. We all have our fossil wishes and dreams.

Karen and Fred are wonderful hosts, and all of us were very appreciative of the dinner. This is the third year they have hosted all the students, guides, prospectors and others to the ranch house for a meal and a chance to ride their many horses. We arrived early and had a chance to chat with Karen and help her finish the deviled eggs. She seems very adept at feeding crowds which comes with hosting cowboys who help at brandings and roundups, and other large social gatherings. She told us there was a recent wedding reception in a nearby town (60 miles away), at which everyone in Harding County was invited: 1000 guests! Now that is a party.

We stayed long enough to talk to Ron and Mitch who had just returned from Wyoming and arrived late for dinner. Knowing we had a longish drive back to the house we left after Ron and Mitch had finished eating and extended our thank you's to Karen for a great evening.

We have now reached our half way point in this 10 day fossil prospecting adventure. The fossils are here, and sometimes we find them and so often we don't. When we do succeed it makes them just that more special because we know how hard they are to find. I had a vision recently that fossils are a bit like chameleons: if they sense exposure they change their color to match their surroundings and essentially disappear.

Cheers,

Momasaurus