Reentering Jackets

     On week one I spent an hour and a half in the lab and on week two I spent three hours. During this time I worked on the both the large and small Jane jackets. A lot of the work was very time consuming but minimal, like the small piece of bone that I removed almost all of the caliche from in the pictures below. It felt really good to get back into working with these jackets, which I hadn't worked on in a little while. I was able to take some of the cleaning techniques I'd learned or improved on since I was last cleaning them and put them to work. I think this next step in cleaning these jackets will be the most time consuming of all because I will have to do very minuet work over a long period of time to see it pay off, but I think it will be worth it. And the bones sure are pretty when they're clean, just look at that small bone fragment I cleaned in the pictures below!

Removing Bones

     Last week I spent three hours and forty five minutes in the lab. During this time I got out the big Jane jacket and decided to go back to working on it. I'd been meaning to ask David about photographing the upper bones so I could remove them, and he was there so I was able to do that. I took the photographs myself, using the jacket tag for scale, and was finally able to remove some of the bones. Typically we try to leave as many bones in the jacket in place as possible until we're completely done cleaning, but in this jacket there was a line of bones on top of more bones. Because of this I had to clean the upper bones and then remove them to get to the bones underneath. I did this by wrapping them in tinfoil the same way they were situated in the jacket, and lightly vinacing together any pieces that I could tell fit together. I was very excited to get these bones out and to continue removing dirt underneath them. Now it's just a matter of time until I can see all of the bones in the jacket, which is very exciting!

Flipping Bones & Volunteer Tours

     I went to the museum twice during the summer, once in the beginning and once at the end.

     In the beginning of the summer I worked in the lab on one day for two hours and fifteen minutes. During this time I continued to work on the detailed process of cleaning off the many layers of Jane’s leg bone. By the end of my time there I was actually pretty much complete with the bottom part of the front half of the bone so I flipped the bone over and started cleaning a tiny bit of the bottom part of the back half. From looking at the caliche the back side of the bone looks as though it’s preserved in a way that’s quite a bit smoother and one layered than the front half. If this is true I should be able to finish this side of the bone faster than I finish the front side. I’m excited to see if I discover anything new or different on the back side of the leg bone.

     At the end of the summer I came to the museum with family that was visiting just intending to show them what I do in the lab, but ended up conducting two tours for campers. It turns out that the Behind the Scenes HMNS Summer Camp gets a tour of the lab one afternoon a week, which just so happened to be the one I was there. Typically David gives them the tour but he was out of town. They didn’t realize this so they showed up anyways. I love to tell people about what I do and didn’t want to send them away empty handed so I offered to give the tour. I pulled out some of the neat things we have in the lab for them to see, showed them a couple of the Dimetrodon jackets I’ve worked on, and let them see and touch a piece of scrap bone found in the Spoil Pile that I cleaned some of the caliche off of just for purposes this is. They took lot of pictures and seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves. This made me feel proud that I’ve gained enough knowledge that I can confidently talk about what I do and why it’s important to people.

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.