As promised, here they are!
Thanks to Bill Montonte for the photos--taken between the 30th of July to the 7th of August, during an excavation with the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center in the Judith River Formation (circa 74 million years ago) of Central Montana.
Field work is almost never easy--kneeling on the burning ground in over 100 degree temperatures, you're caked with dirt and sweat in near equal proportions. All of your concentration is focused on one thing--the remains of an animal who has long turned to stone but still has a story to tell. You dig and dig and dig, and if you're lucky it's in good enough shape to remove. Often it's not--but like an addict seeking the next high you hike for miles in an attempt to do it again.
It may be physically exerting, but the mental rewards are often worth it--you don't think about the heat or the pain, but what you can learn about your quarry (in the ground and long after it has been taken to the lab): where it came from and when. How it lived, and how it died.
These photos detail one such venture.
******
This is base camp (a far cry from the usual tent)--a hunting lodge owned by one of the ranchers whose land we worked on. We felt quite spoiled!
The first day was relatively uneventful--having scouted just outside the rancher's house, we re-discovered and later extracted a pair of caudal (tail) vertebrae belonging to a duckbill dinosaur, or hadrosaur (which is far and away the most common kind of dinosaur you'll find in the Judith River Formation--which 74 million years ago was primarily comprised of various river systems on the coast of an inland sea).
Before leaving, we re-visited a portion of the Ilium (the largest of the hip bones) of a similar dinosaur.
We scouted most of the next day and found assorted traces of bone and teeth--including one belonging to a dromaeosaur (related to Velociraptor from Mongolia). Once we met up with two more of the crew members, it was decided that we would dig in a quarry that was opened last year which contained the remains of an absolutely enormous hadrosaur (the tibia alone was nearly four feet long--suggesting that the animal stood about 13 feet tall to the shoulder and was nearly 40 feet long).
Along with the tibia, there was an enormous and beautifully preserved pedal phalanx (or toe bone).
I'm the dashing individual in the black bandana!
We dug further into the quarry, but found nothing substantial--excluding a snapped Tyrannosaur tooth which suggests that the lack of further skeletal elements may have been due to scavenging!
However, with the dig closed we had nothing else to work on--so we spent the next several days scouting the area looking for potential sites and taking in some of the breathtaking views the area holds (along with some of the local plant and animal life).
After breakfast one morning, we visited one of the local ranchers--and his pet deer.
Not all of the plantlife was modern! Note the growth rings on this petrified stump.
Sadly most of our bone finds looked like this (a product of exposure and the weather)--
While scouting a series of ridges that were far too steep for any sane person to climb (which of course we did), one of our crew members stumbled upon a rib sticking into the wall at the bottom of the hill. This called for a pick axe!
When a potential site is located, the standard operations consists of what can amount to digging a hole--one meter up and one meter back, to evaluate the find for further bones. If we find 2-3 more in the area, it's possible that we have a skeleton--the rib however was isolated, so we didn't dig further.
With the dig a bust, more scouting was in order--which lead us to come upon this interesting notice.
From what we gather, he's quite serious.
The last two days we came upon a lag deposit (a collection of bones, teeth, and scales formed by the turning of a river bend), but found no elements beyond isolated bones (like this portion of a femur and isolated chevron, which's a bit that sticks out from the bottom of various tail vertebrae).
The last day, we visited a dig that had been previously opened by a joint Japanese/Chinese expedition--due to some racial issues (the two nationalities sometimes don't get along too well), they were asked to leave. So we decided to open where they left off--which amounted to nothing in the initial quarry (which was massive--easily 30 ft by 30 ft), but one of their flagged prospective sites yielded several beautifully preserved bones.
A rainstorm the following day cut the dig off short, and we were forced to pack up and leave!
Hope you enjoy--stay tuned tomorrow for a diary discussing dinosaurian nesting habits (and babies!).