At my school we have a special two week term called A-Term which takes place on the last week of March and first week of April. During this time I went on a Paleontology dig in Seymour, TX and then came back and taught people about the Permian Period and Dimetrodons. Here's the run through!
Week 1
On our drive up to Seymour, TX we saw a couple cool things including:
The abandoned and huge Baker Hotel.
The Washing Machine Museum where you can see old washing machines, wash your clothes, and use their free Wi-Fi.
The Mineral Springs Fossil Park, where you get to keep the fossils you find.
And East Bankhead Highway, which I thoroughly enjoyed simply because I do family genealogy research and know that I'm related to Bankheads that lived in North Texas. (More research is pending on why this road is named Bankhead.)
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When we got to Seymour we ate dinner, and by the time we got to our hunting camp it was dark. But when we woke up on Monday morning this was what we saw. This house provided us with our share of friends, including a rat in the stove and a skunk in the shed.
The next morning we also headed over to Nancy's warehouse, which is where all the supplies are kept. While we were there we met these two awesome people, Mallori and Chris.
They're starting The Whiteside Museum of Natural History in Seymour, and this is the mural on one side of the museum.
The museum is set to open on June 7th of this year, and I fully hope to be there for that. Since the museum is a converted car dealership and fire station the renovation is still in the works. Here's some sneak peaks!
After we saw the museum we headed out to the Craddock ranch where we'd be digging for the next week. Chris works out here very often, so he had a few things to show us and knew the area, as well as the bones, very well. These are some jackets, the same as the one I just recently finished up from Jane, but you can see how much bigger they are by the 5 gallon buckets in the background.
Once we saw that site we went and walked around to see some old sites, and some possible ones for the future. This was my first big Dimetrodon bone I found while we were walking around.
This was another bone that I found in a previously unexplored site, which was exciting. As you can see the bone is pretty weathered, and it's actual a reptile bone not a Dimetrodon one.
Next we visited the Spoil pile, which is where all the debris from the early dynamiting for full skeletons was throw. The spoil pile is fun because you can actually find some really cool stuff there! For example, the top two things in this picture are Dimetrodon claws, the third is a small reptile tooth, and the bottom is a beautiful Dimetrodon tooth; all found by yours truly.
This is another cool thing I found in the Spoil pile, it's a huge chunk of shark cartilage.
That afternoon we decided to try making a new trench to see if we could find anything. That didn't end up working out too well, but maybe we'll find something when it's dug deeper in the future.
On Tuesday morning we took a walk at a different site on the Craddock ranch where we found some cool things including these yellow bones from a tiny baby Dimetrodon.
That afternoon we worked on the trench more, but because we weren't finding much I went and dug on the main quarry wall were I uncovered a Boomerang Head's rib.
You can see how small it was in this picture.
At the hunting camp there were cows, so that evening when we got back I fed the cows and managed to get this brown one to touch my hand, but she wouldn't eat out of it.
That could have been because she saw we were making our first home cooked meal that night, which was hamburgers....
We actually got rained out on Wednesday which came as a big surprise considering how bad a drought they're having in Baylor County. But that was ok because we went about an hour away to Jacksboro and found a bunch of cool Pennsylvanian Period fossils that we got to keep. This was probably my favorite find, it's a 300 million year old crawfish burrow.
There I got the task of cleaning off some of the bones from Jane that had started to get cover. We decided we would have to take them out, which lead to me making my first jackets. Once the bones were all brushed off I had to dig about a 5 inch trench around all the bones.
Then we realized that jacket was going to be too big so I had to find or create breaks in the bones and dig trenches to create smaller jackets.
Then we covered them in tin foil and wrapped plaster soaked burlap around that. We had to let those sit overnight.
Needless to say I was pretty tired that night and got Calf Fries for dinner. If you don't know what those are I'll let you look them and inform you that Rocky Mountain Oysters are better (I'll let you look those up too).
On Friday morning the jackets were dry so we stuck some really long camping knifes under them and flipped them over quickly, and voila we had two jackets!
Once we moved those jackets I got to dig underneath and found some new bone with fang marks on them! This was also what I worked on on Saturday.
That Friday night we made our second home cooked meal, and as soon as we put the steaks on the grill it ran out of gas so we had to improvise with the oven.
We also saw a beautiful sunset that night. The stars were amazing as well, being in the middle of nowhere, but I couldn't get a good picture of them.
Sunday was our last day, but it was a fun one! We started out feed Longhorns owned by the owners of the Craddock ranch.
This is Rockz...
...and this is Pedro with the whole heard.
And then a couple fun things on our drive back.
Double signs in Seymour, and no one's not facing the wrong way.
A really cool old renovated court house.
An Aggie barn.
And the...
Week 2
My second week was completely different than my first. For week 2 I was set up at a table outside the Paleontology Hall at the museum prepping the large Jane jacket you saw in the week 1 photos and teaching people about Dimetrodons.
The was my dolly full of supplies that I took to the table every morning.
And this is was my table looked like when it was set up.
And these were my tolls: a spray bottle of water, a dentistry pick, and a brush.
My first interesting bone find was a foot bone.
Another thing I found a good example of was an ancient burrow that you can see has been covered in with a bluish sand.
And finally my progress, keep in mind the jacket was completely covered when I started.
End of Day 1 - Monday
End of Day 2 - Tuesday
End of Day 3 -Wednesday
End of Day 4 -Thurday
Thanks for reading! Jane says bye!
Emily, great story. Thanks for the photos and description. Helps me to understand the work you are doing. Bravo!
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