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!
