Sharpening my Tools

Last week I only went for day 1 because I was out of town the other day. One of the other volunteers that I've gotten to know was working on Blind Smiley. Smiley has been taken out of the large jacket I went on a treasure hunt for on the 4th floor with David and another volunteer to find and transferred into a smaller jacket. There's actually two Diplocauluses, or Boomerang Heads, is the smaller jacket. They have such tiny bones compared to Dimetrodons. The only one I've work on was in Seymour last school year, but I'd love to work on a jacket with one of them after I finish my two Jane jackets; so I can practice my detail work.

I continued to work on the cleaning the clump of bones/dirt I was working on last time. I used the microscope to get a better view and found out how to adjust the height of the arm it's on, which was a great help. I also learned where the sharpening stone is for the pick tool I've been using is located. This made my life much easier because the pick was starting to get dull and I didn't know how to sharpen it. I'll definitely be using that stone again in the future!

Splitting the Bones

     On the first day I was in the lab for an hour and a half. I worked on cleaning out more on the dirt, and then at the end of the time I revinaced the new bones I found. I also talked to Mitch, another one of the volunteers, about the soil that fills in the old burrows in the jacket I’m working on.  He asked what it was so I told him that, and then we discussed why it might me blue. We concluded that it’s most likely due to copper; because there are copper coated rocks on the Craddock Ranch around the fossils we work on. He was saying that at some point there must have been a vent that let out the copper. And that it makes him wonder if the vent possibly let out toxic gases that killed the creatures that created the burrows. I thought this was a very interesting idea that I’d never thought about before.
     On the second day I was in the lab for two hours and fifteen minutes. My question for the day was does the clump of bone and dirt on the right side of the jacket, in the pictures below, create two lines of bone or is it really just a clump? As I suspected after working on the clump all the time I was in the lab the bones create two lines, but I’m not done working on them yet. It’s amazing to me how much time this detailed work takes, and it explains why paleontology prep work takes so long to complete.
     I also included a picture of a relatively new wall of photography that was put in the Volunteer Library. I like it a lot and I think you should take a look at it.

In the Newspaper

A couple weeks ago I had an article in Bay Area Citizen. Check it out!

http://m.yourhoustonnews.com/bay_area/living/area-student-thrives-at-montessori-school-in-houston/article_27ec76a1-20e6-517b-b369-8b84e0f51d06.html

Reaching the Bottom

This week I only got to go to my internship on day 1 for 1 3/4 hours.

I went back to working on my large Jane jacket and actually found quite a few bones because I've gotten down to the bottom where the original bones we saw are located. About half way through I had to vinac, a glue that can be removed with water, the new bones to the tin foil in the jacket so they would stay in place. Since vinac needs to sit and harder I couldn't do anymore digging, but I cleaned the bones on the right side. As you can see in the pictures I took the red layer off of some of those bones.

This was the first time I'd used the tool that looks like a pick to clean the bones further and I think I did a pretty good job. I've been shown how to use it before but I've never actually tried it. I think when the bones are layed out basically flat that'll be a very good tool to use. Hopefully next week the vinac will have set nicely so I can finish up my digging.

Beefing Up the Cast

Last week I got to go to my internship for 6 hours on day 1 and 2 1/4 on day 2, so I made up for the past few weeks where I've been able to go for an hour or two. My main focus this week was to beef up the cast we made of Dipsy the Diplodocus' hip to look at the scratches on it. The reason these scratches are important is because they are why Dipsy is thought to be a female, this is because they were most likely caused by a male who mated with her.

On day 1 I started to beef up the cast with David's son Zach. Beefing up the cast took several steps. Step one was to remove the rubber mold we had made before so we could work solely on the cast. Step two was to take cheese cloth, basically burlap with plaster infused into it; wet it; and shape it around the rubber mold to make the sides of the cast deeper. This is as far as we got on day 1.

On day 2 I got to take on step three, which was using sculptamold, a pulpy plaster when wetted, to fill in any holes between the original cast and the extra cheese cloth we added on Wednesday. I didn't get to finish this process but I did get about half the cast done.

I had a really fun time getting to work on the cast. I've never worked on casts before, so this is a new experience for me. I figured out that I'm pretty good at shaping the plaster, and I think that's partly because I'm an artsy person. This was a good break from my normal jacket work and a great way to learn about another part of Paleontology.

Also on day 2 Dr. Ott, David, and I met to discuss our Seymour A-Term which I'm very excited about!