Caliche/Bone Masses

     Last week I got to go work in the lab for 2 1/4 hours. It was a pretty quiet day and I got the lab to myself for most of it. I was back on the air scribe because I decided that's what I need to use to clean the bones first. I ended up working on a couple different Jane bones. These proved to be particularly complicated for me because they have a decent amount of caliche and are different pieces of bones in big clumps. Both are vertebrae, but they're both exploded, shuffled around, and then caliche covered. This makes cleaning super difficult because the pieces are everywhere, and I have to work carefully since I have no idea where bone might show up. This definitely means it takes longer to clean the bones, but it's important so nothing is destroyed. I also worked on one other piece of Jane bone. Below are some picture of these caliche bone masses.

Finally Used the Air Abrasion Unit

     Last week I spent 2 1/2 hours in the lab. This was the day I finally got to use the air abrasion unit. Needless to say the unit proved to be much more complicated than I would have expected it to be and I ended up spending quite a bit of time with another volunteer messing around with it. This tinkering actually proved to be very fruitful, being that we both now know more about the unit than we expected to. The unit is basically like a mini sandblaster. I learned for the 'sand' component we use baking soda because it won't build up in your lungs like other 'sand' materials will. This is very important because our unit isn't super well ventilated, but that isn't a problem with the baking soda. We ended up having to add more baking soda and then thought it was clogging the tubing; so we learned the inner working of the area that holds the baking soda and the tubing. This part wasn't too confusing but we were a little confused on what each part did until we tried it while it was completely empty. Once we knew what each part did we knew the baking soda wasn't clogging it, and we actually found out that it loses pressure as it's used. This means that you have to pump your foot on the pedal so that you keep a pretty consistent pressure that will actually do something. I found that it definitely does do a good job of finishing touch cleaning on the bones. This means that they can't have much caliche on them when you're using air abrasion. So I discovered that my plan of action will be to clean everything off of the Jane bones pretty well with the air scribe and then move to the air abrasion unit. All in all I think this will be a useful tool, that I now have in my tool belt, and I'm glad I got to use it. Check out before and after air abrasion cleaning pictures below.

Moving Day

     I only went to the museum for one day this week for 2 hours and 45 minutes, but it was a very productive day. I started out by carrying out the same cleaning routine as last week, but it quickly became a moving day. First of all I found out that the 4th floor of the museum is being cleaned out. Up until this point we had a few larger jackets and quite a few buckets of matrix and plaster stored up there. For roughly the first half of my time at the museum I helped David load up the cart a couple times and move the majority of the items down to the lab. The second part of this was to clean off some shelves and more thoroughly pack others so we could fit everything. It's amazing how much stuff is in the lab. It's funny because when I used to think of a lab I would think of a clean, sterile environment, but not anymore. There are definitely some labs that are like this, and have to be, but in a paleo lab there's just so much dirt. This is because when we clean bones we're cleaning dirt off of them. And when we were moving things in we moved in quite a few buckets of dirt, matrix. 

     After everything was moved in I got to help de-install two fossil mounts. The reason that they were being removed and put into storage is so that the wall they were sitting on can be knocked down and cases that are lower down can be made for them. This will make it easier for people to view them, being that they are pretty cool specimens. You can see pictures of them on the carts below. 

The Cleaning Process

     On Day 1 I was in the lab for 2 hours. All my time was spent using the air scribe to remove small amounts of caliche covering part of a limb bone. I think so far the air scribe has to be my favorite lab or field tool that I've used. Even though I have to be super careful and use magnification so that I don't touch the bone there's something satisfying about seeing small bits of caliche chip away to reveal clean, smooth, beautiful bone. You can see the process on a small part of the bone by looking at pictures 1-3. Picture 1 has a small bit of cleaning done in the top left corner, picture 2 shows this closer up, and picture 3 has all the cleaning completed. I followed this up by working on some more of the little bits of bone that were almost exposed. You can see the line between brown and white on the pictures that shows this. I really want to try the air abrasion unit, which is like the air scribe but not as strong, because I think that would make cleaning off this really thin layer much easier.

     On Day 2 I was in the lab for 2.5 hours. This day I went through the cleaning process with almost all the stray Jane bones that were left. First I removed the big clumps on dirt with a dental pick. Then I bathed them in vinegar and scrubed them with a toothbrush. Next I did the same thing but with water. After that I removed much of the remaining dirt with a dental pick. As you can see in the pictures the caliche on the bones actually goes from being stained red to a grayish color. This is another satisfying sight to me after I've cleaned a bone, because it feels like I've really made progress, and progress isn't usually something that comes quickly in Paleontology.

Vinegar & Water

     On day 1 I went to the museum for 1 1/2 hours. On this day I worked with water and the dental pick to continue cleaning the bone I was working on last time. There's so much dirt on these bones, so they take quite a bit of cleaning. The other difficulty with these bones is that they've been sitting for a year with the dirt drying out on them. This means that I have to use a lot of water to loosen the dirt up so I can get it off. I think I need to scrub these bones down with water and a toothbrush to loosen up the dirt enough to really remove it all. I'm excited to get them cleaned so I can play around with them to see how they fit together.

     On day 2 I went the lab for 2 1/4 hours. This time I decided to work with another one of the bones I've been working on to practice cleaning with vinegar. I started out with cotton swabs and vinegar, which worked well but was using a lot of cotton swabs for not a lot of progress so I changed my tactic. I decided instead to scrub the bone down with vinegar and a toothbrush to loosen up more of the dirt. This plan worked really well and I was able to get the majority of the dirt loosened up. I followed this up with water and a toothbrush so that the vinegar wouldn't be left of the bone to eat away at it, this is a very important step. After this process I was able to get the majority of the dirt off. So I followed this up with the small air scribe to take off small amounts of caliche at a time. You can see the progress below. 

Losing the Red

     Last week I had a meeting about the Paleontology A-Term for 1 1/4 hours and did prep-work for an hour.

     During the meeting Dr. Ott and I finalized the budget and chaperones for the trip, got the readings together, and wrote up a syllabus and description.

     In the lab I worked more on removing the very red dirt from the Jane bone I've been working on for a couple weeks now. I'm finding that the vinegar does a much better job of loosening the dirt from the bone than the water does. The one thing I have to be careful with when using vinegar is that I remove it in a timely fashion, because if it sits on the bones for too long it can start to erode them. You can see how much red dirt I've been able to remove from the bones using the vinegar and a dental pick.