Escalante Dino Day

Editor’s note: Nearly 90 elementary school students descended on the Escalante Interagency Visitor Center to learn about dinosaurs on Friday. Partners helped coordinate the field trip, while Monument staff and volunteers ran the stations. Visitor Center manager Jeanie Linn offers her thoughts here:

The entire Escalante Elementary School — 87 students plus teachers and assistants — arrived at the Escalante Interagency Visitor Center on Friday for a program on dinosaurs.

Paleontologist Alan Titus presented a talk on dinosaurs that have been discovered on the Monument and answered numerous questions from the 1^st to 6^th graders. Interpretive Specialist Mary Dewitz gave an interpretive program on the traveling ceratops exhibit, and two Monument volunteers gave a demonstration on how scientists unearth and clean up dinosaur bones. GSEP Education Coordinator Wade Parsons had the event well organized and it went smoothly with the sound of happy kids filling the Visitor Center for three hours.

The kids were extremely well behaved and they asked many great questions. My favorite was “How long does a dinosaur live?” The answer is that it took approximately 20 years for them to reach full size and then they lived for approximately 40-45 years after that!

Later that day when I went to the grocery store, I had several teachers approach me and tell me that the students had a wonderful time and that they just couldn’t quit talking about dinosaurs! Since then we have had a number of the kids bring their families to the Visitor Center to see the traveling exhibits that will be here until the end of February. So the Dino Day Event lives on.

– Jeanie Linn, Escalante Visitor Center Manager

Are you interested in doing this type of interpretive and educational work with students at the visitor center in Kanab? Partners is organizing a pool of volunteers to help out with student field trips this spring. If you’d like to participate, please call Education Coordinator Wade Parsons at 435.644.4354.

Postcard from the field: Plesiosaur dig II

Editor’s note: Did you know that paleontology is one of the few sciences that makes massive use of volunteers? In this guest blog post, BLM volunteeer Jim Duncan talks about maneuvering the plaster jacket that contains our Plesiosaur, and how he and others winterized the specimen at the end of the 2010 field season.

A previous group has already uncovered the fossil and stabilized the exposed bone with a liquid fixative. They have also covered it with several layers of burlap-reinforced plaster and have cut away the surrounding shale layer so that the fossil, in its plaster cap, sits on a pedestal of the underlying shale. The center of the pedestal has been tunneled out horizontally and plaster straps wrapped all the way around to keep the fossil in its shale matrix from falling out.

Our goal today is to roll the cap onto its back without spilling the contents. We will then remove as much of the extra shale as possible to lighten the weight, cut back the cap and then cover the underside of the cap with six or seven layers of plaster.

There is some discussion as to whether the plaster strap is wide enough or not to preserve the shale’s integrity and prevent the spilling of the cap’s contents during the roll. The consensus is that the shale should hold together and that we are ready to attempt the roll.

A fourth BLMer has now joined us, and all four insert pry bars under the pedestal and, on command, attempt to roll the fossil. It responds by rolling through 90 degrees, sliding off the pedestal and refusing to roll any further. We decide that a wider and deeper trench will allow us to complete the rotation. So, while two of us dig, the others clear off what remains of the pedestal and eat a late lunch. It is then relatively easy for all six of us to lever the fossil onto its back with only minimal spillage of the contents of the cap.

Due to the delay there will now not be enough daylight time to complete a final plaster jacket adequate for a helicopter lift. We therefore opt for a light waterproof jacket, which can be upgraded later, prior to the lift. The next step is to carefully remove shale until we uncover fossil bone, which is treated with the fixative as it is exposed, and then covered with several layers of wet paper towel.

The cap is then cut back to the level of the shale and two layers of burlap and plaster are layered on top to seal the fossil inside its jacket.

Although not structurally sound, this is enough to protect it from weathering, even over a winter if necessary. We will return at a later date to complete the jacket. The Plesiosaur won’t care for a little delay. After all, it’s already been waiting for 92 million years.

– Jim Duncan, BLM volunteer

Postcard from the field: Plesiosaur dig

Field season 2010 saw some spectacular paleontology finds on Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Scientists here have collected North America’s oldest Tyrannosaur, and uncovered the most complete skull of a Parasaurolophus found on the Monument.

They’ve also found what they think might be the youngest-ever Plesiosaur to be pulled from the Monument’s crumbly layer of Tropic Shale. Monument Paleontologist Alan Titus led a team out to the site in late summer to prepare the 92-million-year-old Plesiosaur fossil for the laboratory. Here’s what they got up to:

 

Thanks for watching, listening and reading in 2010.  Happy New Year!