Field Log: 07/10/2010

Caleb and Linda, Terri and Kimberly, as well as Diana, Raleigh, and Madison from Washington all joined us on our dig today. We headed first to a microsite to get everybody in the mood for finding fossils. The crew worked well in there, finding a few teeth and some cool croc stuff. We continued our day in the Karlmeister site and this crew moved so much hill and got really into it. We had a successful day of digging, finding a new bone, the first in this site for a while! We all got really excited about it, albeit being a small bone, it definitely looks like something we can easy identify. There was great energy in the site and I know all involved were ready to get back out there tomorrow! Caleb and Linda continued work in the lab, doing really well with some older bones and a really hard stone from the 2008 Big Al site. We finished off the evening with another campfire and round of smores!

Field Log: 07/11/2010

A rainy day in mid July! We woke up this morning to a dark sky and rain drizzling down. It ended up being a lazy morning, waiting for the rain to stop. Caleb and Linda continued their work in the lab, and Caleb finally got through the hard sandstone of our largest jacket from the Big Al site. They both than continued to work on more bones, including cleaning up a few from the Coen site. We finally got out to the field later in the afternoon and continued digging in the Karlmeister site. We moved more hill this afternoon than we have in quite a few days and the crew was loving the evening weather. It was a great day and no one wanted to see it end! A side note, we will be gone for a week due to outside work. We will be back on the 20th!

Field Log: 07/20/2010

 We are back to field today and joined by Ally from Connecticut. We had a small shower in the morning which kept the day real nice and cool. We checked on the Karlmeister site but than headed to a microsite and spent a bit of time in there. Hannah found a real nice dromeosaur tooth. We decided to spend the rest of the day poking around in the student site just to see what was going on, now that our student team has departed. Immediately I noticed how great of a job the team did in there, and we continued with their good work. Ally found a really nice rib chunk and one of the bone pieces that the team found was further excavated to reveal that it is a vertebra piece, sliced in half. We also went and checked on 'Judy', the rib found around fourth of July. We decided that we will jacket the rib soon. It was a beautiful day and we got quite a bit done!

Field Log: 07/22/2010

 Another fantastic day today! The weather was absolutely gorgeous and the crew fantastic! We were joined today by Leonardo, Max and Lucy from Rieti, Italy as well as Caleb, Jo and Buzz from Manchester, England. We spent the morning with some minor prospecting, and Leo found a nice bone chunk of what appears to be Triceratops frill in the ground. He did a good job of excavating it too! We spent most of the morning in the Karlmeister site. The work is slowing a little in there, as we have pushed far enough back in the wall for the rock to be a little harder. It is still producing beautiful plant fossils, but no new bones to report. After lunch, we headed to the 'Judy' rib to jacket it. Leo and Caleb were excellent assistants at building the jacket and we had enough hands for a successful flip!!! With the rock type being so flaky and just knowing that ribs are real difficult jackets, I am incredibly pleased with how well it flipped. We then headed to a microsite to search for teeth and other cool fossils. We got a little rain shower, but that didn't deter our diggers! We finished the day in the Karlmeister site. It was a great day and to finish it all off, we had the good ole' American tradition of smores over a campfire!

Field Log: 07/22/2010
Well we are finishing off the season strong with some favorites of ours! Matthew from Philly is back again this year with Nina and Kathy in tow. This crew has been coming out here for nearly as long as I have and it is great to have them back! It was a beautiful morning and we headed off to the Karlmeister site. We spent the morning digging as well as Matthew went prospecting. In the afternoon, we continued work in the site. We spent the evening chatting and watching the sunset.

Field Log: 07/27-31/ 2010
The final week of our season was a good one, with beautiful weather and good company! For most of the week, we were joined by Matthew, who is an incredible dinosaur hunter and we were very successful in our activities this week. We did a lot of prospecting and Matthew even found a new bone! No excavations were done on it, being so late in the season and locality of the fossil, but it is a beautiful specimen and Matthew proved (yet again, he is known for finding amazing things!) that he has quite the dinosaur hunting eye! It was fantastic to have him, his mom Nina and their friend Kathy out with us this week and they were missed when they departed. Matthew also helped us begin the plaster jacket on the big ilium bone in the Karlmeister site. This bone is very uniquely shaped and pretty big, so the jacket was done in multiple layers, to ensure that we had enough support for the bone. On our final day of the season, we were joined by Gonzalez family from Washington. They did a great job helping us finish up the Karlmeister jacket and we also dig some digging in the site, as well as some prospecting. It was one of the warmest days of the season but that didn't deter our hunting! It was a great end to the season!