The Little Air Scribe

This week I only got to go to my internship for an hour. Because of the very small amount of time I had I decided to use the air scribe. One on the bones I worked on the other week had a very thin layer of cliche on it so I decided to try out the small air scribe. I'd never used that scribe before, but I liked it much better for detailed work on thin cliche. I enjoyed trying out and adding a new tool to my prep work portfolio. This new tool also helped me to overcome the problems I was having with very detailed prep work, and for these reasons I will definitely use it in the future.

Spoil Bone

Last week I only got to go to my internship for an hour on day 1 and a little over an hour on day 2 so I decided to spend my time practicing cleaning cliche off of Spoil bones, bones found in the Spoil pile on the Craddock Ranch, with the air scribe. On day 1 I started cleaning a fragment of bone, and got one side cleaned. On day 2 I almost completely finished cleaning the other side.

I decided to work under the microscope with the air scribe. I had some trouble with this at first because I was having trouble focusing on the bone while I worked on it, but eventually I found out that if I raised the whole microscope a little more I could see the bone a lot better and keep it in focus while working on it. I showed David the half of the bone I had cleaned at the end of the day on Wednesday and he said I'd done a very good job cleaning it which made me feel good. I also feel like I'm getting more comfortable using the microscopes while cleaning bones.

Before:

After day 1:

 After day 2:

 Removed caliche:

The Air Scribe and a Friend

Last week I only got to one day. Part of my time was spent helping my friend Ian from school set up his internship with scientific illustration and teaching him about some of the animals from the time period that he'll be drawing. As always I fully enjoyed getting the opportunity to share my knowledge of Paleontology and the Permian period in Texas. I feel like teaching people about what I'm working on is a strength of mine and I wish I got to work out in the public eye more often.

After I helped set Ian up I got to work with the air scribe, which I hadn't done in quite a while. I got to work on removing heavier caliche than I'd ever worked with before, and it was fun to undertake that challenge. I had some trouble with the thin caliche and once my hand slipped a couple time I decided to just work on the medium to thick caliche. I think I'll ask Davis for some tips on cleaning thin caliche off with the air scribe next time I'm there, because I think I could use some work on that. I'm very glad I got to take a break from my Jane jackets and work with the air scribe; I hope to do this more in the future.

Before:

 After:

 The Start of Ian's Drawing:

Jane Jacket #2

On day 1 I spent the day cleaning the large Jane jacket. This was basically the same as what I did last week. I was proud of myself for removing quite a bit of the dirt so I can finally get closer to the bones on the left side of the jacket.

On day 2 I got to to work on my jacket again. But people also came down to the lab, so I got to help David talk to them about the work I'm doing. It's always really fun to be able to share what I've learned with other people. I feel really good knowing that I can help others to learn about how Earth was long before any humans ever inhabited it.  David also showed them a coprolite, or fossilized poop, that had been sliced in half. The 290+ million year old poop is actually really cool to look at because it shows what the animals ate. This goes one step further than simply looking at their bones. I looked at the coprolite and all the little pieces of bone it contained under the microscope and learned how to used the microscope at higher zoom magnitudes, because normally I don't zoom in while I'm working of cleaning a jacket under the microscope.