Fieldwork Friday #11

Continuing my post from last week on work we were doing down in the Moab area (where we got chased off by alot of rain the entire week), I thought I would post about the Mill Canyon Dinosaur Trail (also managed by the BLM). This is a trail similar to what we have in Rabbit Valley here in Colorado - The Trail Through Time – an in situ displays with interpretative panels. Pictures are below:

It is a nice trail, short and ways to walk. Unfortunately bone has been stolen from the trail over the years and ATV/dirtbike/mountain bike/motorcycle riders cut down the fence and/or ride around the gate in an area where they are not allowed and generally tear the area up.


© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster. Please see the "Field Work Friday Rules" about the work I do and collection practices.

Fieldwork Friday #10

A few weeks ago we were working down in the Moab area, most unsuccessfully due to daily rainstorms, which made digging a bit difficult. So we had to bail on the quarry work for the most part and stuck to prospecting and checking out a few track sites in the area.

We prospected a section of Chinle Formation, where we found some wood (picture below) and isolated, indeterminate bone. Nothing to spectacular, unfortunately. And we, inevitably, got chased off by rain. A while down the road the rain blew out and we stopped to prospect a Paleozoic outcrop (I can’t remember the age, Penn. maybe). We found quite a few brachiopods, some crinoids and bryozoans - your typical invertebrate fun (I forgot to take pictures!).

We checked out quite a few track sites while we were over in the area, including the Poison Spider Mesa and Copper Ridge track sites (both in the Jurassic age Entrada Sandstone) that are managed by the BLM.

The tracks at Poison Spider Mesa are interesting because not only are they awesome tracks but also mudcracks, ripple marks and a ton of petroglyphs! These petroglyphs are from the Fremont culture. Some are really great and weird, and many of them have been vandalized by others who feel the need to leave their mark right next to these marks or some even modifying and marking over the petroglyphs. So sad and illegal!

Pictures from the Poison Spider Mesa Track Site:



Pictures from the Copper Ridge Track Site:




So, even though this is more of a paleosite visit trip than fieldwork, I thought I would include it in the series. Hope you enjoy it and have a chance to visit these sites some day!

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster. Please see the "Field Work Friday Rules" about the work I do and collection practices.

Fieldwork Friday #9

Yesterday John and I had a chance to visit with Dr. Jim Kirkland (Utah State Paleontologist). Jim worked in Fruita in the 1990's as the lead paleontologist for Dinomations International Society, in the same building where Dinosaur Journey is currently located. He found and participated in many important paleontological discoveries in the western Colorado area during this time. These include a Dryosaurus nesting site in the Morrison Formation, a bird skull from the Green River Formation, the first Jurassic Ankylosaur - Mymoorapelta maysi (below), along with numerous other dinosaurs from the Morrison Mygatt-Moore Quarry.

image from Gaston Design

While Jim was in town we took the opportunity to have him show us some of the classic sites he has worked, including the Dryosaurus nesting site. We hiked out the site and were happy to be able to find some additional bones.

(above) Jim and John at the site, (below) John and I at the site (picture by Jim Kirkland)

I was very excited to find a nice Dryosaurus coracoid, partial femur (pictured below) and two phalanges (toe bones). John found several small bone fragments and Jim found a nestling Dryosaurus vertebra (very small! I wish I had taken a picture of it).

Jim believes that this site was raided by mesosuchian crocodiles, which would eat the eggs/hatchlings and yearlings known from this site*. We also found a few pieces of egg shell at the site (pictured below).

This was only the second time I have seen egg shell in the Morrison Formation. The first time was at the Young Egg Site, also in Colorado (pictured below).

We continued on to prospect and locate another known site from the area (see below). We hope to be able to go out today to visit additional sites and have a chance to prospect some (if the rain will hold off).

Additional bone found in a Morrison Formation channel sandstone while prospecting.

* Kirkland, J. I. 1996. Predation of dinosaur nest by terrestrial crocodiles. Pages 124-133 in K. Carpenter, K. Hirsch, and J. Horner, editors. Dinosaur Eggs and Babies, Cambridge University Press. [free online here]

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster. Please see the "Field Work Friday Rules" about the work I do and collection practicies.

Fieldwork Friday #7

I am actually in the field for the next week and a half, but I have set this post to automatically appear, since I have been so MIA recently.

There has been some talk over at Accidental Remediation (AR) and Green Gabbro (GG) about hotel and field vehicle amenities. I thought I would add in field camp needs. I encourage all the other bloggers reading this to add thier own and expand on this psudo-meme! I would love to see what others look for.

Short Geologist of AR posted that they most like to have Internet and breakfast at their hotel. I am pretty unused to the idea of a hotel during field work to start with (although it is unclear if the Short Geologist was specifically talking about field work, or just in general or for meetings). We almost always camp when doing fieldwork. When I go to meetings I try to stay in the host hotel, so that there is easy access to a nap, a place to easily ditch your stuff, a change of shoes, and a good, localized party area. But when it comes to field work and I do have the luxury of staying in a hotel it is usually not the nicest of hotels (less that $50 a night, unless someone else is paying for it), so I shoot for a place that has:

• a shower that is not super nasty
• a door/window that locks/latches
• no roaches
• a place with clean sheets/bed (actually hard to find in some places, I have spent the night in a sleeping bag on top of a hotel bed; I always take my own pillow for obvious reasons)
• My husband like to stay in places near food/bar and that has a fun rustic name like the "Waggon Wheel" or the "Rusty Cannon" (we have stayed at both).

If I can swing it, it is always nice to have:

• free internet (or be near a place where I can "borrow" it from, I will not pay a hotel for internet, it is a rip off)
• a breakfast that has the waffle bar or better and is included in the price (I hate those old red apples they always serve that taste like they have been out since last year)
• A safe place to park my car
  
• A clean pool in the summer

Maria of GG talked in her post about things she most looks for in a field vehicle, such as multiple cup holders, an emergency kit, and a aux input. I love my field vehicle, although it has not been running very well since I decided to get it "fixed" and a few thousand dollars later it is still leaking oil and I am terrified to take it to far out from civilization.


Some of the requirements I look for in a preferred field vehicle are:

• high clearance
• a reasonably well running engine (something I can fix if the need be)
• spare tire that is inflated and a good jack (not a scissor jack)
• 4 wheel drive (that works)
• older, but not falling apart (built like a tank (but not to heavy), not the tin cans they make these days)
• cargo space
• enough room to sleep in the back if I (or the weather) so choose
• not to clean (I do not want to worry about it getting mud inside it or scratches)
• Not to big (narrow enough to go down those roads no one has driven in a few decades)

Some things I wish I had in a field vehicle:

• a built in crane/winch
• satellite radio
• extra large gas tank
• a cup holder that a Nalgene bottle would actually fit in
• John wants a propane refrigerator

And my contribution to this ongoing discussion would be field camps. When we go on museum trips my husband has a tendency to pack everything but the kitchen sink (or so it feels) since we have the room in the van. When I am at a moderate sized field camp (2 to 5 people) I like to have:

• a good tent that can stand up to the wind and rain (and all of the regular stuff you have in a tent)
• a campfire is always nice
• a chair (not a requirement, but nice)
• walking distance to quarry
  
• enough coolers and water
• Something I am forgetting........

John just wants:

• good weather (lol, we have had a lot of wind this spring in our camps)
• beer & bacon
• a shade tarp (we have already lost 2 this spring)
• a table to cook on (I can get by with a piece of wood on a cooler)
• a tent facing the sun first thing in the morning (I am not a fan of this)

At a swank, fancy camp it is nice to have (some of this I have actually had, some just a dream):

• flushing toilets!
• Running water from a sink
• showers
• someone to cook and/or food I do not have to cook
• no bugs
• cell service (this can be a good and bad thing)
• electricity!
• a refrigerator
• more things I can't think of right now.....

I am happy to admit I have all but two of these things this week while in the field.

What do you look for in these items?

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster. Please see the "Field Work Friday Rules" about the work I do and collection practicies.

Fieldwork Friday #6

Here is an oldie to tie us over till I have something new to share.

I had the opportunity to do field work with the University of Utah's Paleo group in Grand Staircase/Escalante National Monument from October 22- 29, 2004. It was a great time, and I appreciate the chance to work with some wonderful paleontologist, while also having a new field experience and making some new friends.

I did this field work while trying to complete my next to last semester of grad school. It was a very stressful time in my life and I needed a chance to run away and get out of town. This fieldwork was just what I needed. It came at a time when I needed to just relax and work on something else. My friends were doing some work in the Kaiparowits and Wahweap Formations (Campanian; Upper Cretaceous in age), much of which will be talked about next week at the Advances in Late Cretaceous paleontology in the Escalante/Grand Staircase National Monument meeting. Check out the abstract book to see some of the research details.

Shot of the Kaiparowits (above)

The Wahweap Formation (if I remember correctly)

Jella & Eric working to winterize a site where a theropod was later excavated.

At this site I helped the crew remove a very large, beautiful hadrosaur skull that had skin impressions perserved around the neck region. This specimen was perserved in a Kaiparowits sandstone. You can read more about dinosaur skin impressions that have been found on many specimens within Grand Staircase on page 38 of the program and abstract book for the Advances in Late Cretaceous paleontology in the Escalante/Grand Staircase National Monument meeting here.

The morning of the 29th we awoke to this! About a foot of snow had fallen overnight and that ended the field season for that year.

Sorry I do not have more to share from this trip. It was 5 years ago (hard to believe!) and difficult to remember to many details. Here are some more pictures from this trip.

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster. Please see the "Field Work Friday Rules" about the work I do and collection practicies.

Fieldwork Friday #5

After a long break, here is another episode of Fieldwork Friday.

This was the last of our spring trilobite collecting trips for this year. We headed out to the House Range of west-central Utah (west of the town of Delta), long known to be a trilobite collecting mecca of sorts. I had never visited this area before, but had long heard rumors that trilobites there are so common you could just pick them up off the ground. These are the common types of trilobites (usually Elrathia kingi) that you will see in nearly every rock shop across the United States. John was interested in visiting to gather some more data for his presentation at the International Conference on the Cambrian Explosion.

The trilobites we collected were from the Middle (to Late?) Cambrian Wheeler Shale, Marjum and Weeks Formations. Lucky for us we had a friend along who was familiar with the area and could show us some good collection localities. But it is not hard to see where others have looked. As you drive into the area it is pockmarked with hundreds of holes. It is kind of sad (to me) to see the area just destroyed all in the name of looking for trilobites. There are really no regulations it seems to keep people from doing this. The land in this area is mostly BLM land, and it is legal to collect a reasonable amount of common invertebrate fossils. But this is where the trouble starts. It appears that many people in the area operate "Flagstone quarries." The one I visited had already been shut down by the BLM, but sadly these people left a HUGE hole in the ground, large amounts of trash, and nearly a hundred banded up, ready to go, pallets of rock.

When you look closely at the rock, this is what you see:

Those are hundreds of inarticulate brachiopods (Acrothele?). I would guess they classify as a "common invertebrate fossil." But the BLM website clearly states "If you wish to collect common invertebrate or plant fossils for landscaping, sale, or commercial purposes you must apply to the BLM for a mineral materials sale." [link] I guess these people had not done that, or were being deceptive and selling trilobites. Who knows?! We observed trilobites in these pallets of rocks. The trilobites at this site however would typically require some sort of preparation (air abrasion).

It was cold and windy most of the time we were there, which was not a blast, but at least it was not raining or snowing. The last day was great - sunny and warm. We took the dog again and he seemed to have fun.

The shales were pretty easy to split. The limestones required a little more muscle, but were nice to work with. We found more complete trilobites here than we did in either the Marble Mountains or at Spence Gulch, but they are often missing their cheeks.

There were also some pretty big trilobites out there (larger than at any of the other sites we have collected at):

We also spend a morning looking for eocrinoids (Gogia). We found two.

There were also commercial collecting spots located in this area where you can actually pay these people to dig up rock with a back hoe and give it to you to sort though, so you can find your own trilobites. Seems barbaric and like cheating to me, but that is just my opinion. Why in the world would you pay people to do this for you when all you have to do is get out of your car, walk 100 yards and look down. Seriously, it was that easy in most areas. Looks for some shale and then look down. I guess if you did not know what you were really looking for, but it seems like a waste of money to me. In the first picture below you can see the number of trilobites we surface picked at one site.

Some other fun trilobite pictures from the trip:



© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster. Please see the "Field Work Friday Rules" about the work I do and collection practicies.

Fieldwork Friday: After the field

*I am going on vacation for a little over a week. See you when I get back! Thanks for reading*

A while back Tony Edger (of the blog Fossils and Other Living Things) asked me to "...consider at some point tracking something you find in the field through the collecting and curation steps." I thought this was a great idea and would be a great continuation to show what happens when many of the fossils I have shown in the Fieldwork Friday come back to the museum.

The museum has a great group of volunteers, who do many various task (picking micro verts under a microscope, screen washing, talking to museum patrons, working in the lab, preparing fossil, assisting with field work, making cast...). Our museum runs very smoothly thanks to the thousands of hours these individuals work every year. We had a "cataloging party" this week at work where the volunteers helped us catalog a backlog of fossils we have, so several of the pictures are of these great volunteers helping us out.

Some of the hundreds of fossils we cataloged this week during our party.

Thus far we have not collected anything large that requires preparation (or removing the fossil from its surrounding rock and stabilizing the remains). Most of the remains we have collected have been relatively small (that will change this summer), consisting of small isolated bone pieces and a few hundred trilobites. I though I would show a few of the trilobite specimens we collected in California and track their progress from the field to collections and study. Upon returning from the field, the trilobites are taken into our cataloging room where they are identified by our museum curator (to the species level if possible). During this process he will also take any measurements he may need from the specimen and make notes of these for his research.

Our museum curator identifying trilobites from the Marble Mountains (above) and measuring specimens for his research (below).

After the specimen has been identified it is given to me to enter into our museum database (we use the program Past Perfect).

In this database I enter as much information as I can, including:

• land collected from (BLM, Forest Service, Park Service, private...)
• catalog number
• object identification
• date and who entered the information
• the collector and date
• the identifier and date
• preparator and date (when it applies)
• any preservation methods (tools used; conservation materials, such as glues, used)
• Site name and locality number (we have a separate database for this information)
• description of the specimen
• taxonomic classification
• geological formation and age
• condition
• a photo
• any notes (as needed)

I then write out a specimen label for each item cataloged. These labels include the specimen number, identification, element, formation, age, locality and locality number. These labels are printed on acid free paper and are included with the specimen in the collections room.
Specimens are places in the appropriate size box (or glass vial), with a layer of ethafoam cut to the correct box size and placed under the specimen.

Tom placing cut foam in boxes

When follow the methods of Davidson et al. 2006 (see the paper here) to label the actual specimens. The first step included putting down a small "stripe" on the specimen as a basecoat before writing, using Paraloid B-72 (a general-purpose thermoplastic acrylic resin), which is allowed to dry fully. If the specimen is light enough we write directly on this surface. If the specimen is darker, as many of our specimens are, we put a similar small "stripe" of w

hite acrylic paint on top of the B-72 basecoat.

Darrell painting labels on the Marble Mountain trilobites

When this is dry we write the specimen number onto the item. Davidson et al. suggest using a carbon based ink (reasons for avoiding dye based inks and other commercial pens/sharpies are discussed in further detail in the paper). An overcoat of B-72 is then placed over the specimen

number, to help with durability.

Kay writing a specimen number on a small trilobite (above) and a labeled specimen, below.

Photographs of the specimens are taken to enter into the database. Specimens are then moved from the cataloging room to our collections room where they are stored in steel Lane Cabinets and cabinets made by Steel Fixture (specialty built cases for geology and paleontology specimens). These specimens are now ready for anyone who would like to visit the collections to study the items. Superb items are put on display in the museum.

Example of a picture for the collections database. This specimen (a piece of turtle shell) was collected during Fieldwork Friday #1. 6043 is the specimen number.

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

Fieldwork Friday #4

Sorry this is late - but it is still Friday (for  a few more seconds...)

What a week! We arrived home from our trip to the Marble Mountains Tuesday. I am home for a week and a half and then we are in and out of town until the second week of May! I should not complain - a little over a week of that is field work.

Our trip to the Mojave was wonderful! We could not have asked for better weather! A little background on the trip – we were in the Marble Mountains south of the Mojave National Preserve of California searching for trilobites in the late Cambrian Latham Shale. My husband has been working there since he was an undergraduate and is gathering data for a presentation he will be giving this fall at the International Conference on the Cambrian Explosion. Last year they collected 147 specimens. This year we collected close to 300 specimens. 

We met Dr. Andy Farke (curator of paleontology at the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology in Claremont, California) along the road on our way to the site. Andy worked out in the field with us the first day. I had a great time getting caught us with him. We realized it was out first time to do fieldwork together - and we were in the CAMBRIAN! What is the world coming to? We need to get out to the Cretaceous where we belong. ;)

We had great luck at our first site. The area was frequented by many hobby collectors while we were there and we had the pleasure to be seriated with gun fired from the camp below our pits (as their children ran loose on the mountain side trying to find trilobites). But everyone came away with a trilobite and no gun shot wounds, which always makes for a good day.

The second day we worked out first day’s area, and then moved to an area closer to camp. We had moderate success at this site. We worked pits that had been opened by others (minimizing any surface impact) and found an amazing amount of trilobite cephalons in the spoil piles. It appeared that many of the people who were working the area were looking for whole trilobites. I found 2 complete trilobites on this trip. The rest were cephalons (and some pretty nice ones!).

This area provided a nice view and we saw a nice variety of lizards (2 Chuckwalla’s!), a nice variety of spring flowers, some fun weird beetles, and 1 huge scorpion!! The weather was perfect with the exception of a strong wind we had our third night that threatened to take down our tents, and did take out our shade tarp. We all got a nice coating of dust and a free facial that day.

This trip was also our dog Tikka's first field excursion since we have had him. He is an Australian Shepherd/Border Collie mix, and an older dog. He enjoyed going out with us and stayed very close, enjoying any shade he could find. He did not even chase any lizards or bugs, just chilled out and watched us work, snapping at the occasional fly that would bug him. He did really well until the last day. We were returning to a quarry that was up a long shale covered, rocky hill and as soon as he saw where I was headed he sat down on the trail and refused to go any further. We decided, since it was the last day and he was so insistent on NOT going up that trail, to just let him hold down the fort at camp that day. He seemed to be feeling much better, although still sore, that evening.

All in all it was a great trip! Feel free to take a look at my pictures from the trip. I hope to take some pictures soon to share of the curation process and research the trilobites we collected will now be going though.

Olenellus (nevadensis?)

Mesonacis fremonti

Mesonacis fremonti

The brachiopod Paternia pospectensis (below)

Mesonacis fremonti

Olenellus nevadensis

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster. Please see the "Fieldwork Friday Rules" about the work I do and collection practicies.