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In anticipation of my “Field Notes 101” webinar on 29 September —
Where am I in this field picture?
(Former students of mine are disqualified from spilling the beans.)
If you are interested in finding out, attend the webinar!
Very excited for @bmacfadden’s webinar! I don’t think I qualify as a “former student” so I’m going to hazzard a guess as to where Bruce is. To me, the environment looks a lot like I remember the Belgrade Quarry looking like–it’s got that tall grass and the sort-of grayish sand that looks kind of pebbly. I think @lcone has found a few megs in Belgrade too, so the meg tooth is helpful in this instance.
Anyone else want to guess where Bruce is?I’m going to have to upload more challenging photos for our “Which paleontologist is this?” social media campaign. Morgan Cole (also known as @tmorgan!) guessed it with no effort at all.
The photo (on the FOSSIL’s facebook page) is of Malcom McKenna, my major prof at Columbia U. The photo was taken in 1972 in New Mexico where we collected a pilot series of paleomagnetic samples. This then became my PhD dissertation research topic.
@bmacfadden’s webinar on field notes is TONIGHT! Any last minutes questions for Bruce that you’re interested in finding out during the webinar? Post them here!
Our next webinar is quickly approaching. This one is on excavating fossils with @dbutler! Any questions for Dava, please post them here.
Who has excavated fossils before? Anything you are excited to discuss now? @egardner, I think you said you’ve excavated some fossils before. And @walter-stein was digging allllll summer! How about @vperez? Or @taorminalepore?
My question so far: how many different kinds of excavations are there? I’ve participated in dinosaur field excavation with plaster jacketing in the Badlands, but are there many techniques?
I’ve been on more traditional jacketing digs for turtles and crocs, but most of my field work has involved mapping fossil track sites or surface collecting coprolites!
This past summer I was conducting more surface collection of teeth and other microvertebrate fossil assemblages. I think the distinction between surface collecting and excavation is a good one to make, since so many permits draw that delineation đ
I have excavated fossils in a variety of locations, including Lusk (WY), Ashfall (NE), a cave in the Bahamas, among other locales. My question to @dbutler would be – what range of sieve sizes would you recommend for an amateur who wishes to do dry-sieving at a site?
Good question @egardner – I’ve used all sizes, and I’d like to know if there’s a good consensus for nesting sets of sieves, especially for microfossils.
Hey Lisa and everyone on MyFossil! I’ve been out in the field since June 1st, and just got back last week. Unfortunately, I missed the first two webinars but will try to attend the next two, which sound very interesting and informative. Our summer excavations were very successful with lots of cool and important discoveries. We found several new localities on ranches in MT and SD as well as continued work on our main digs. I hope to have a couple papers out in the Spring (though I’m way behind schedule!).
I suppose there are lots of different “types” of excavations and these all depend upon the type of fossils being collected, the preservation of the material, the research questions that are being asked, and the methodologies used to extract the fossils and the data. Some types might include: “Bulk Sampling” for invertebrates where large volumes of fossils might need to be collected to answer “big picture” kinds of questions, ” “Salvage Excavations” over threatened sites or construction projects where time is of the essence, “Single Specimen” sites, “Bone Bed excavations”, “Mass Mortality Excavations”, “Regional Surveys”, etc.
I’m looking forward to Dava’s webinar!
Hi, @walter-stein! Looked like (from the world of Facebook!) a great and productive field season for you. Although you missed the webinars in person, you can re-watch them–we’ve recorded them and posted them in the Resources section. Here’s the link if you’re interested: http://www.myfossil.org/video-tutorials/ Â Scroll to the bottom of the page and you’ll be able to see the previous webinars there.
I appreciate your overview of different types of excavations. @dbutler did a great job and covered information on “single specimen” sites, but I know we have a lot of invert fans and specialists out there, so it’d be great to continue the conversation on different types of excavations! In the areas you work, do you see a lot of inverts and do a lot of bulk sampling?
Lisa,
Sorry for the delayed response. I’ve been on vacation and I’m just now catching up with emails and posts. Sorry I missed that last webinar. Busy busy. I’ve gone back and watched the first part. I’ll finish later this week. To answer your questions… no, I do not do a lot of bulk sampling for invertebrates out my way. It’s mostly single specimen sites, salvage or regional orientation surveys with vertebrates. If we find any inverts its usually associated with a single specimen vertebrate and they are retained in the microfossil collection for that specimen. In a terrestrial fluvial system there is usually not much. So can’t help much with that. We collected a plesiosaur skeleton back in 2007 that was buried in a shallow marine shoal deposit. We collected many invertebrates in this case, but this was to simply determine strata and paleoenvironment- not to answer bigger questions that would involve thousands of inverts.
The last webinar of the 2016 Fall series is happening on Wednesday!
It will feature @rnarducci, who’s been working hard to prepare (pun intended!) a great presentation. Any questions for Rachel about fossil prep before the webinar? Ask them here!
@egardner @llundgren – how do we log on to watch the webinar? I’ve been able to find the past webinars on the videos & tutorials page, but I don’t know where to go to watch the live webinar đ
As a follow up question to Rachel’s webinar, Â the question about foam turning yellow with fossil storage… Yeah it’s an eye sore for display purposes but I want to make sure it isn’t harming my fossils either. Thank you! Â Fantastic webinar!
@michelle-barboza  – The web address for connecting to live webinars is always available in the myFOSSIL events calendar, too! http://www.myfossil.org/event/fossil-webinar-series-presents-rachel-narducci-flmnh-on-fossil-preparation/
@joyce-drakeford Thanks for you question and for attending the webinar! So, there are different grades/levels of the polyethylene foam. If you are not using the archival one that might be why it is yellowing (the archival kind should not yellow under the proper conditions). So if it is the archival type, the next, probably most common cause, would be exposure to UV light. That is mostly okay for your fossils but it could break down the glues over time. It could also be caused by things that would harm your fossils over time like heat/humidity or oxidation. I also found this PDF with some info: http://fxi.com/assets/pdf/up_06_quality/Discoloration_Info_Sheet_-_111010.pdf
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