Happy New Year!

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PaleoLab Thursday 12.29.16

Welcome back to the PaleoLab. Our update this week is very image intensive! Thursday we got back in and tackled more of our barosaur block. We also welcomed one more team member! Bryn Howell had her first day in the lab and did a remarkable job learning the first tricks of the trade!

Bryn 12.29.16- Learning to use the air scribe. (Photo Credit: Brianna Cencak)

Bryn 12.29.16 - First matrix removal session start.

Bryn 12.29.16 - First matrix removal session end.

Rick, Jodie and Sara hard at work. (Photo Credit: Brianna Cencak)

Jodie worked diligently at her vertebra and the work was fraught with perils. Her portions this day were covered in tiny fractures which flaked up nearly every five minutes. These are the situations we have been trained for. To let her phrase carry the gravity of the situation: "Crumble, vinac,crumble, vinac." ~Jodie Visker 

Jodie - 12.29.16 Vinac is a girl's best friend.

Jodie- 12.29.16  Fractures in bone.

 Our mystery item from last week has finally been solved.

 I scribed away as much of the matrix as I could from around our mystery object and Rick took a knock at it gently with a flat head screwdriver.

Sara- 12.29.16 Mystery bone fragment

 The upper portion broke away easily revealing a thin sheet of bone. Our theory is that it was indeed a clay deposit that had rolled over a fragment of bone and encapsulated it. Below are close up images through a large magnifying lens.

That puzzle now solved, I moved on to attempt recovery of some severely damaged and crushed portions. (Image below.) I also dedicated a portion of my time to starting removal of harder matrix from the end cap.

Sara-  12.29.16 Crushed bone fragments, held in place by vinac to prevent further bone decay as we remove matrix.

Sara- 12.29.16 Uncovering the tip of the "Iceberg" endcap on the left side. Note the crush damage evident at the top of the bone.

Jodie and Sara- 12.29.16 Our block is starting to look more like dinosaur than sandstone!

See you for next week's update! (I have added a follower option on the right side of our page, if any are so inclined it should update you as soon as we make our posts!)

Stay safe over the weekend! 

Happy New Year from the PaleoLab team!

PaleoLab Thursday 12.22.16

This is just a quick update since we are all looking forward to Christmas festivities. 

Thursday's Paleo Lab brought us a new lab partner. Connor Schwartz has joined us and is going to be working on the large barosaurus block. We are thrilled to have him on the team!

Connor- Cleaning up his work space after working on his block.

My own time was spent clearing away more matrix between the vertebra. I discovered a discoloration and approached Rick (our paleontologist) about it. He seemed just as mystified as myself. Initially we thought it was a clay ball which Rick informs me has been previously noted to form in a body of water and then roll into the crevices between bones. He instructed me to continue excavation with caution.

Sara- Color variance in matrix detected.

Over the next few hours I attempted to isolate the material. It is a soft, nearly waxy substance and has hairline fractures in places. It presents itself to be roughly the size of a fifty cent piece. Nearer to the base of the object, there was evidence of bone. The sandstone matrix clears away with relative ease from the edges. If nothing else, when we remove this from the matrix I will have polished up my skills in fine detail and isolation work. It was nearly painful to leave the lab without having freed it from the location where it was found.

Merry Christmas to all of you wonderful people. We hope that your weekend is filled with wonder and love. We are sure going to be wondering about this week's discoveries until next Thursday!

Hope to see you then. 

Wednesday Witticisms

PaleoLab Thursday 12.15.16

We made it to the lab today. Phew!

 It is amazing what a release of stress working fossil prep can be. Jodie and I had a very productive shift at work and stopped in to the lab afterwards to relax.

We spent the first hour removing most of the matrix from between our vertebra and then she had to run off to see her songbird of a son sing beautifully in a choir. I stuck around till 5 and worked on removing matrix from the broken half of the middle vertebra closest to my original one.

Jodie - 12.15.16  Upside Down For Us, Right Way Up Anatomically

Jodie - 12.15.16  Upside Down For Us, Right Way Up Anatomically

Jodie - 12.15.16 Widening the Gap

Sara- 12.15.16 Removing matrix from between bone fragments

Sara- 12.15.16 Large piece of matrix removed from the right side, under the center vertebra. Also removed majority of the bulky matrix over the vertebra above the blank space.

We're not too sure if we will be going in next week since Christmas is around the corner, but we will pick back up in January if not before then! See you guys next time!

Wednesday Witticisms

Late Lab Updates

The Christmas Rush is no joke, and we have all been running a little haggard this month it seems! Here is a quick catch up from last week to today!

Jodie-  4:20 pm 12.08.16 Post Prep

Jodie- 12.08.16  4:20 pm Post Prep

Jodie managed to get in to the lab last week, I was sadly called off for a family emergency. So you might note her time stamps  above show the correct Paleo Lab Thursday date. Our new powerful scribes have been a massive blessing and are letting us get some amazing detail work done. Jodie worked on the ends and they cleaned up VERY nicely. Her pictures do not do her workmanship justice. This bone she is working on is pristine. 

Sara- 12.13.16 12:17 pm Pre-prep 

Sara- 12.13.16 3:27 pm Post Prep

Sara- 12.13.16  3:27 pm Post Prep

I had an odd shift today and I managed to slide in to catch up on my own detail work. I started by going back over the entire exposed surface and removing any remaining matrix. I ran into an issue with the hairline fractures in the bottom center of my images, so I slathered on the vinac and waited 20 minutes, working around the issue till I felt that it had dried sufficiently. I removed the offending matrix with little problem and by the end of my hours I had cleaned the majority of the central surface area. This Thursday I intend to work on the horribly crushed end caps. 

PVA (Polyvinyl Acetate, commonly known as Vinac™ *) is a great high quality preservative coating that can be used in all stages of fossil collecting and preparation. We use high-purity, Polyvinyl Acetate Beads (PVA)  as a penetrant and coating for fossils in both the field and in the laboratory. We dissolve these odorless, tasteless, nontoxic beads in acetone (approximately one pint of PVA beads per gallon) to make a thick concentrate. This is later thinned with additional acetone for different viscosities for various uses. Thicker solution will work best to slow the weathering if a specimen must be secured for later excavation and extraction. Thinner solution will leave a light protective coating on the surface of prepared fossils. (reference: http://www.bhigr.com/)

I hope you are enjoying our updates! See you Thursday!

Paleo Lab Thursday 12.1.16

Hi there! I hope everyone had a yummy Thanksgiving! Welcome back to our blog. 

Today was Paleo Lab Day and we have some picture updates for you! (Remember you can click them and make them bigger.)

 Jodie had an extra hour between our last update so this first picture is of her fossil. This is how it looked when we started today. Pretty great!

Jodie 2:00pm start.

When we arrived today at the lab Rick taught us a bit about a new scribe which has an ability to be incredibly accurate in removal of matrix. With this new tool in hand, we made significant progress.

New Scribe Tool

The new tool is thinner and lighter in weight. It is quieter than the others we had been accustomed to and much much sharper.

Jodie- 12.1.16 Scribe progress in 2 hour time block.

It has given us the chance to move significantly faster and with far more precision. The down side being that it is easier to leave tool marks on the fossils now, so we are extra cautious!

Jodie- 12.1.16 4:00pm Close-up right side of her fossil cleaned by the new air-scribe.

Sara- 12.1.16 4:49pm Cleaned by the new air-scribe.

Sara- 12.1.16 4:49pm Closeup .

Needless to say, we are thrilled. The image below is a collection of Diplodocus caudal vertebra, or tail vertebra. They are similar to those of this Barosaurus and should give some reference to the shape of the fossils we are currently uncovering.

Tschopp and Mateus (2016: fig. 1). More anterior of the only two reasonably complete caudal vertebrae of the type specimen of Diplodocus longus (YPM 1920) in dorsal (A), anterior (B), left (C), posterior (D), right (E), and ventral (F) views. The neural spine is lost. The estimated position within the caudal column is caudal vertebra 17â24. Note the transverse ridge between the prezygapophyses shared with AMNH 223 (1).

Can't wait to get back in there next week and see what we uncover! Thanks for stopping in!