Day 7: Jane's Back

On November 4th I continued to work of my jacket. I used the spray bottle more the get the dirt off. I also found a few new pieces of bone as well as another with geode looking things on it. What I discovered was that I think these two pieces were the roots of a plant, and where the geodes are is were the smaller roots branched off and were broken.

Day 6: More Jacket and The Big Block

On November 1st I continued to work on my jacket. I had gotten most of the loose dirt of so I started using the spray bottle and chiseling away the mud from the dry dirt and the bone. I found some more bones hidden under the dirt. There was also a bone ontop the ended up looking like it had two tiny geodes that had been broken inhalf ontop of it.

I also got to go upstairs for the last 30 minutes or so and take a look at a block containing all different specimens. This block is about 14ft long by 4ft wide by 3ft tall and is covered in fossils.

Day 5: First Jacket

On October 25th I started my first jacket. A jacket is basically dirt containing a specimen covered in plaster. The plaster is cut off on the top and you brush off all the extra dirt and start to chisel on the hard dirt, and you have to keep track of all the dirt for soil samples. My jacket contains the spine from a Dimetradon named Jane. Bellow are a few pictures of my jacket as I started to work on it.

Day 4: Ellie and Tiny Teeth

Last Friday I was going to start jacket work but no one was able to come teach me, so I went through some more of Ellie's soil samples. I decided to start going through soil level nine.

This is what I still have left to go through next time.

This is what I went through and didn't find anything in.

And this is what I found.

This was half a tooth I found still in some of the jaw bone.

This was a really nice tooth I found.

Both these teeth were very small!

Here's a little extra credit question. Can you spot the bone in this picture?

Day 3: Ellie the Dimetrodon

Last Friday I spent most of my time going through soil samples that go with Ellie. I had worked on some of Ellie's soil samples the week before last, so I decided to asks what Ellie is. I found out she is pieces of a Dimetrodon. By this I mean that they haven't found all if the bones but they've found enough of them to name the Dimetrodon they came from.

A little history on Dimetrodons incase you don't know what they are, which most people probably don't. If you've ever been into the Palentology Hall at HMNS you probably remember staring at a large lizard looking sculpture with huge teeth and a large fin on its back, that's a Dimetrodon. I have also included a picture of one bellow incase you haven't seen this sculpture. (Picture by looloolooweez on Flickr)

The reason Dimetrodons are so important is because they're our ancient ancestors. See the resembelence?......No?........I don't blame you. From the outside we don't look very similar, but when you look at both our skulls you find something amazing. We're both two holers, which means we have one hole where our jaw muscle attaches. All modern day mammals are one holers; and that means that Dimetrodons are their of are ancestors. There are both one and two holers and they're the ancient ancestors of different common day life. If this sounds interesting to you you should look it up because it's pretty fascinating!

As always I have attatched pictures bellow of what I did last Friday, so check out what I found digging in soil samples.

 

Day 2: Soil Samples and Paleontology Hall Installations

I had the second day of my internship at HMNS on September 20, 2013.

I started out with soil samples, which was where I left off last time. This time I had a little more of an idea of what I was looking for. Basically bone is shiny, so if you see something shiny it's most likely bone. You can also look for odd textures that you wouldn't expect to find on rocks. So far the two things I've found with odd texture are pieces of shark cartilage and parts of amphibian skull. Digging through the soil this Friday I found quite a few bone fragments and pieces of shark cartilage. I also found three tiny reptile/amphibian teeth, a piece of amphibian skull, and half of a Demetradon tooth (they are in this order in the pictures).

After this we had a change of plans so we went over to the Paleontology Hall and helped install two fossils. One was a feline fossil that kept loosing its ribs and the other was a male Goffer Tortise shell.

My First Day: Dipsy and Soil Samples

Hi my name is Emily Randall. I go to The Post Oak High School in the Houston museum district. On September 13th, 2013, I started my internship with David Temple, the head of Paleontology at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, HMNS for short.

When I got there I went with a volunteer to put a second coat of the base paint on Dipsy the Diplodontus' hip bone for the cast we're making. The reason for this cast is to look at the teeth or claw marks on the hip bone. This is important to look at further because if these are claw marks than is likely this dinosaur was a female. Funny story, it turns out the volunteer I was working with was the mom of one of my friends who I went to Costa Rica with in the summer after 7th grade.

After this I went and dug through soil samples. Soils samples consist of the dirty that's collected around a fossil. When you go through these you pull out any bone, teeth, cartilage, poop, etc that your find. These fossils help to get a took at what was around the larger fossil you're looking at. When you know this you can start to piece together what the environment that the animal lived in.

I had a lot of fun on the first day of my internship and can't wait to go again!