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!
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