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| Dinosaur
hunting is one of the classic endeavors of field science. Venturing into
wild and rugged territory, field scientists continue to make exciting new
discoveries that change and improve our understanding of dinosaurs, and
through them the history of life on Earth. In a twenty-first century filled
with amazing technological developments, some kinds of discovery still require
old-fashioned fieldwork and physical endurance. And there is certainly a
distinctive thrill in uncovering the evidence with your own hands, brushing
away the earth and bringing to light something that no one has ever seen
before. Here you'll find the story of Phaeton's latest dinosaur project,
a mission that took seven team members, our colleagues, and a video crew
on a hunt for an unknown species. |
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Deep within
the western Canadian prairies of Alberta lie the greatest dinosaur hunting
grounds in the world. As you travel through the surrounding level terrain,
the ground suddenly drops into the badlands, a gulf carved into time that
is invisible from even a few miles away. These exposed strata are a five-million-year
slice of the last chapter of dinosaur history. 75 million years ago, this
place was a Louisiana-like swamp, with conditions ideal for the preservation
of dinosaurs as fossils. So today these sediments are packed with dinosaur
bones in profusion to astonish anyone accustomed to the difficulty of finding
such fossils elsewhere. The site has been recognized by the United Nations
as a World Heritage Site, and it is carefully administered by the Canadian
government as Dinosaur Provincial Park. Phaeton Chief Paleontologist Michael
J. Ryan has been working in these canyons of time for over fifteen years,
and it was to this fantastic location that a Phaeton team traveled on a
paleontology mission in late summer 2002. |
| Dr. David
West Reynolds captained the expedition, with paleontologist Ryan (in blue
cap) as chief scientist and the capable Matt Bliss (far left) running logistics
and field operations. Phaeton's Ancient Historian Prof. Greg Aldrete (center)
served as an excavator, and Alicia Aldrete volunteered as field illustrator
(3rd from right). Botanist Vera Williams (2nd from right) and mechanical
engineer Hugh Williams (far right) volunteered as excavators. This mix of
disciplines on a paleontology field team would be highly unorthodox for
most institutions, but it is our standard approach in Phaeton Group. Our
specialists are all people interested in more than just their own fields
of study, and we value the unconventional perspectives they bring to field
missions. |
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What
brought our team out to Alberta was Michael's discovery of a new species
of dinosaur. Michael is one of the world's top authorities on ceratopsians,
a group of dinosaurs known for their rhino-like nose horns and the horned
frills of bone at the back of their skulls. Here our friend and colleague
Dr. Don Brinkman of the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology (standing)
and Michael (in blue cap as always) examine the site of the discovery. Only
a small fragment of horn fossil was exposed at first, but Michael immediately
recognized that this exact shape of horn was unknown to science.
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| "That
fragment wasn't much to go on," Dr. Reynolds admits. "To anyone else that
piece of broken rock might look like nothing, but Michael knew it was unique
and I trust his eye. The idea of working with a brand-new species intrigued
me, so Matt and I began to set up the mission." Reynolds first met Ryan
while doing dinosaur fieldwork in the Canadian badlands in 1987 and the
two have been colleagues ever since, working together on a variety of projects
including sculpting full-size dinosaurs for the museum company P.A.ST. Their
best-known collaboration was their successful quest to re-locate the lost
filming sites of the first Star Wars film in the Sahara, an offbeat adventure
"which got us far more media attention than any of our scientific work,"
Reynolds notes dryly. "I've been back to the Tyrrell [Museum] and the Alberta
badlands a number of times since '87," he says. "And in 2001 Don Brinkman
kindly hosted me for a brief stopover as a Visiting Scientist. When Michael
suggested we field a Phaeton team to help him with his new find in 2002,
I was interested right away." The project would also be Phaeton's first
effort at documentary video, as David invited creative videographer Mark
Brazeau to bring a camera crew as an experiment. |
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| "Badlands"
are a kind of terrain characterized by relatively soft sediments and heavy
erosion. Very little vegetation protects the sediments from water and wind,
so the whole landscape is carved into exotic patterns by rain runoff. The
nature of the sediments determines whether the terrain will be carved into
sharp spires, such as the Big Badlands of South Dakota, or more rounded
forms such as these at Dinosaur Provincial Park. "Badlands" were so named
by North American settlers, who found these rugged formations brutally difficult
to travel through--but in spite of their name, they are "goodlands" for fossil
hunters for several reasons. The lack of vegetation leaves the ground uncovered,
so that fossils can be easily discovered on the surfaceeen prospected for many
years can hold surprises for teams like ours. |
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When
you go hunting in badlands you always have the chance of spotting a find
that no one has ever seen before. Phaeton volunteer Vera Williams is our
botanist and has spent many a day tracking down rare plants in the field.
Her keen eye for identifying specific sedge species in swamps and marshes
proved just as effective at spotting dinosaur bone in the badlands. On the
team's first day prospecting in Dinosaur Provincial Park, Vera made this
find (left), a "scute" of heavy armor plate from an ankylosaur, an armadillo-like
dinosaur. The fossil's excellent condition and the rarity of ankylosaur
finds in general made this a celebrated discovery amongst the group. The
scute turned up in a spot which Michael Ryan has passed countless times,
but this was the first year that it had been partly exposed by weathering.
Michael trained the team to recognize bone by looking for its distinctive
eggshell sheen, its porous texture, and its typical dark mineral coloration
in these sediments. |
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first order of business at a dig site is to lay out survey grid lines. Once
this is done, digging can begin. Any exposed bones are cleared and their
outlines determined. Then exploratory digging proceeds in search of more
of the dinosaur skeleton. Exposed bones are what lead us to finds in the
first place, but exposure to weather can quickly deteriorate a fossil. Just
a few years can degrade an entire large bone into a scatter of crumbled
particles. So the bones first exposed at a site are usually those in the
worst condition. Others in much better shape will be concealed nearby. The
danger of weather damage injects urgency into field operations when an unusual
find like Ryan's unique horn core is discovered. Delay could result in a
single heavy rainstorm turning crucial elements of a new species into unrecoverable
sludge. |
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Volunteer
field artist Alicia Aldrete made a field excavation map with outline drawings
of every bone uncovered in the dig. To help make the drawings accurate,
she used a drawing grid, a wooden frame strung with a grid of strings. Laid
over a section of the dig site, the drawing grid corresponded with the grid
on Alicia's graph paper, and helped ensure precise proportions and relative
placement of the bones she drew. An excavation map is updated with each
new bone uncovered, and the mapmaker gives each bone an identification number
keyed to excavation notes and numbers we mark on the bones themselves. The
layout of the bones in the ground may contain important information, such
as clues to the dinosaur's death or evidence about the natural forces that
affected the body before, during, and after fossilization. The recovery
of information is our highest goal in scientific excavation, and we strive
to preserve as much as possible as we work. Once we take the bones out of
the ground, that information will be lost forever unless we've kept good
notes. It's not the bones we're really after, it's what they can tell us--so
without their excavation context they lose much of their value. This is
why unscientific excavation is so destructive: even if it brings back bones,
it loses much of the information that the site once held. |
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can bang a hammer against a chisel, but a good field team member must wield
dig tools like medical instruments and maintain their skill during long
days of punishing weather. Digging a dinosaur site is often more like sculpting
marble than mining rock, since you must use your tools to remove rock so
deliberately. Otherwise you'll end up smashing the bones you came to find.
You start with the heavier tools--a rock hammer, or even a jackhammer at first. You use progressively finer tools as you get closer to the bone--smaller chisels, and finally dental picks. As you close in, you are careful to always aim your chisel away from the bone, so that you don't risk damage to the fossil. Difficult field conditions separate those who just like the idea
of dinosaur hunting from those who can really handle the work and enjoy
it in spite of the effort it takes. |
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Taking
a bone out of the ground is the most delicate part of excavation. To protect
the bone, you leave a good bit of rock on the fossil--you don't try to clean
it while you are out in the field. You prepare the bone for removal by "pedestalling"
it, digging a trench around it until the fossil is sitting on a mushroom
of rock. This technique helps keep the bone from breaking when you remove
it. To protect the fossil during transportation, you "jacket" the pedestal
by covering it with cloth strips soaked in plaster of paris. A barrier of
wet paper towels protects the actual fossil surface. The plaster forms a
protective shell just like a cast on a broken arm. An identification number
is stenciled on the jacket (above) for inventory control, indexed to the
excavation map and notes. Finally, when the plaster jacket is dry, you make
the final cuts underneath the pedestal and remove the bone package, just
as Michael Ryan is doing here (left). |
| You
try to cut as much rock away from the underside of each bone as you can
without weakening the package. Weight is an issue, since you and your teammates
will be carrying every one of these heavy loads out of the badlands by hand.
From the dig site they reach the expedition trucks, and from there on each
package becomes cargo. Matt Bliss oversaw our work of transporting everything
out of the field, making sure that each field-jacketed and carefully numbered
package was moved safely to its final destination. These "diamonds in the
rough" soon filled the staging area of our laboratory. |
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The
fieldwork of prospecting, excavation, and transportation concludes once
the bones arrive in the lab, but our work continues as we crack open the
field jackets and work to clean the rough fossils into beautiful specimens.
Part II-Dinosaur Prep Lab |
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