Saturday, November 21, 2015

Removing Vinac and Dirt

     My work in the lab was slow the past two weeks, because I was slowly removing dirt and vinac from the small Jane jacket. I spent 3 hours in the lab both weeks. The vinac was originally used to glue some of the bones together and keep them in place while I was removing dirt from the jacket. The only issue with this was that some of the vinac had gotten on the dirt and was holding it in place. I had to add a lot of water, which helped to dissolve the vinac. I was then able to scrape away a bunch of dirt that was previously stuck inside the jacket. It was very satisfying to see a large clump of dirt being slowly cleared away. I am now to the point that I will probably need David’s help to remove a layer of bone before I can do much more with this jacket.

Saturday, November 7, 2015

A Box of Sea Treasures

     The first week I just worked on the small Jane jacket for 3.5 hours. Last week I was in the lab for 3 hours and started removing dirt from the small Jane jacket. A little while into working on this David came into the lab and showed me a really cool box of fossilized pieces of ocean life. These included stingray teeth, shark teeth, fish vertebrae, eel vertebrae, and stingray barbs. I got to dig through these as I filled small plastic bags with about an ounce of goodies. I enjoyed getting to look at fossils that I hadn't seen before and trying to identify them. My favorite fossils were the teeth because there were so many different types. There were also a few that had a very similar shape to Dimetrodon teeth, which I found particularly interesting because Dimetrodons were part of some of the first land ecosystems during the early Permian period.