Sunday, August 3, 2014

Completely Traced Out

Sometimes, holes in the ground take an unexpected turn. Especially when rule number 1 in paleontology is, well, don't just dig a hole in the ground.

 But this one turned out to be a special kind of problem; that carnivore burrow I was following? It turned out that it wasn't dug by a scavenger trying to get to half-rotten meat, but more likely by an animal just trying to dig out a home. How do we know that?

 See, the problem here is that the filled in hole didn't stop at the sand. It didn't scrape a little into the sand and then come to an abrupt stop and disappear. It just kept going. And at the point when it started (at least on top of 6 weeks worth of ashes...), there wouldn't have been anything good to eat in that sand. Just some old, dry bones. I wasn't really digging a hole in the ground, I just couldn't remove the surrounding sand stone to get at the ash I was removing.

 After going four inches down, we had to just call it on the grounds that it was becoming a trip hazard. That's mildly unfortunate, because it was either about to turn or stop, but sometimes that just happens. It's the only burrow so far that we've pursued into the sand layer, and it turned up with some neat little finds. 
For example, Mike got curious and screened the sandy-ash I was pulling out of the burrow, and found a chewed up salamander vertebra and several fragments. Something was living in here.

 I also came across this little guy in my hand; a horned rodent tooth. It's in pretty bad shape, but you can still see enamel and the classic shape that is associated with rodent teeth. 

  But the coolest part about digging into the burrow are the little scratches in the side that are filled in with ash, left by the animals teeth or claws when it was originally digging into the hole. Because they were filled in with ash, I know it wasn't my tool that formed them. See the little triangles against the sand in my picture? I wouldn't have ever thought of it, but Mike recognized them right away, and it was really exciting when he did. There is the potential for the marks to contain little grooves that can be matched back to teeth and claws if they were preserved well enough. Here's hoping! Right now, we think it would've been a horned rodent's hole, but the hole is just a little bigger than the fossils we've found. Still though, its not outside the range of sizes one probably could have gotten. 

 Next plan? On to the next square. There has actually been a bone fragment spotted in it.

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My Story (Very briefly...)

Lots of people claim that they wanted to be paleontologists at the age of 3. So did I. The problem is, I never really grew out of it. My third birthday party had dinosaurs. Everywhere. I grew up digging in fossil dirt from Aurora, NC, looking for coral and shark teeth. I practically lived at my local science museums (and still do, only now I get to do research, fossil preparation, and work in collections!) When local paleontologists discovered a dinosaur with a "fossilized heart" (no longer considered such) when I was little, I got to meet the man who led the work. And then, years later a dinosaur bone with soft tissue turned up. I was officially hooked.
No longer was I dreaming about dinosaurs. I was actively pursuing the science behind prehistoric creatures. I didn't want to read about it, I wanted in on the action. So I started working at the museum, and finally going on my own adventures. And thus, I needed a place to share them and maybe inspire others the way I was inspired. I have gone from watching fossils be prepared from one side of the glass at the museum to working on them on the inside of the glass. I am a student working toward my goal. I can finally start to call myself a paleontologist.