Friday, August 15, 2014

Just a weird spot

My trend continues.

 Over near where I found that femur, there was a part of the ash that had some weird patterns to it. In this picture, you may be able to easily see the vertical lines. Those are normal ripples. That one isn't too weird. But if you look closer, you'll see the odd pattern I'm talking about. My first (but not serious) thought was "huh. That would look a lot like dinosaur skin if this were the Mesozoic. Weird." When I showed it to Rick, he basically voiced my thoughts. Both of us were joking, but that is the texture it looks like.

 So when Mike got back today, I showed it to him to see what he thought...

 He said it looks like little tiny ripples superimposed on larger ones. It doesn't look like ripples caused by wind, like the rest of them though. In fact, these would be too little to be recorded if they were in sandstone. But this isn't sandstone. It is ash.

 Turns out that such small ripples can be made by a small, local disturbance, say an animal dropping something or taking a step nearby. I commented at this point that I really hoped I didn't miss something significant (like a footprint) while digging. Mike took one look at the tiny ripples and said that I'd been able to spot that, anything else would've been seen, too.

 Yay, vote of confidence!

 Anyway, it was interesting to me that the bone was nearby these and not near a skeleton. I can just see it getting dropped and the scavenger running off once it had been stripped clean of meat. Yum.

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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.