Exposing the Layers

     During my first day I spent two hours in the lab and during my second I spent one hour and forty five minutes working on Jane. I’m very happy with the progress that I’ve made on the piece of Jane’s leg that I’ve been working on. I can definitely tell that it went through a lot of wear and tear while it was being either chewed, digested, or both. There is so much bone exposed on the upper portion at this point and within that exposed bone there are many different layers. This makes my job harder when I’m using the air scribe because I’m not working on one large, smooth surface but many small ones. That being said I also get a large sense of accomplishment when I’m able to clean the caliche off of another layer and expose the bone underneath it. The air scribe has also become one of my favorite tools after using it in such as intricate way. I’ve learned a lot about how patients can pay off through my entire internship and specifically this project, even though I’m not done with it yet.

Cleaning The Air Scribe

     I was able to come to the lab for two and a half hours on one day this week. While I was there I continued to work on my piece of Jane’s leg bone. I began to use the air scribe like I’d been doing but something wasn’t right. The air pressure seemed off to me so I decided that I should clean it to see if that fixed the problem. Since I’d learned how to do this not long before the lesson was fresh in my brain, but this time I was going to try it on my own. I was able to get the tool cleaned and re-oiled by myself, which seemed to fix the problem I was having. I was very happy that I could do all the cleaning on my own, and that I now know how to do it, because I can be more self-sufficient in the future. I now also feel more confident in the tools I have under my belt.

Judy Block Mysteries

     Last week I got to spend 1.5 hours at the museum on day 1 and 2.5 hours in the lab on day 2. On day 1 I got to talk to a camera crew about both my internship and my high school experience. This was a very unique experience for me because I didn’t get to just talk to a group once about what I do but students years from now will be hearing from me. It’s really cool for me to know that I get to do that, especially because I pioneered the internship program at our school. So for me it’s a way to show future students that if they want to do something at our high school they can. I also happened to be at the museum at the same time as another student from our school and a good friend of mine, Ian, who has been working on scientific illustration in the lab. (He’s in the second picture below.)

     The second day began with me finally getting to see the Judy Block, which I talked about a while ago while it was on the 4^th floor, installed in the Paleontology Hall. It’s a pretty impressive specimen; check out the pictures below! I also worked with another volunteer, Hollister, to look at a small piece of the Judy Block that had been removed from the main specimen. We also looked specifically at a small piece that was broken off and broken in half. We came to the conclusion that it’s most likely part of a shark spine. The interesting thing was that the inside of the bone contained small, round, red objects within the grooves on either side of the yellow center. We’re really not sure what these things are, but they did look somewhat like red blood cells. That being said we both acknowledged that blood has only possibly been found in a bone, not as old as this one, once that we knew of. So it’s very possible that it could be something else, but we were just exploring the options which is what science is.

After Hours

     Last week I spent 3 hours at the museum on one day. I ended up getting to show a school group of 5^th and 6^th graders and a couple of their parents around not long after I got there because David wasn’t there and I was the only volunteer in the lab. I enjoyed getting to teach them about what we get to do in the field and how bones look before and after they’ve been prepped. This group was specifically fun to talk to because there was one girl who was really interested in paleontology and knew what a Dimetrodon and Edaphosaur were.

     After that tour I started working on the Jane leg bone/joint of some kind that I’ve been working on. I continued removing caliche with the air scribe, which you can see in the pictures below. I also got to stay after hours, and once the Paleontology Hall was empty compared the bone with the mounted Dimetrodon skeleton. Check out that and some cool pictures I got while I was all alone among the dinosaurs below.