June 6 - Flying Out
Well, the rains from last night have lingered, and in fact the weather has deteriorated rapidly. We spent the morning checking out some land for potential prospecting, in hopes that the weather would clear, but not only did in not get better, the land turned out to be all marine sediments. Since dinosaurs didn't live in oceans, that turned out to not be useful. But, the scenery was spectacular.
At last it looked like we might take off. Checking radar, weather, and farmer's opinions, we loaded up at the Malta airport, and headed out.
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AAAAAAA! I forgot to unpack my camera once we were inside! I missed 2 hours of incredible scenery...But, the weather was increasingly iffy as we headed south, and so my colleague decided to touch down in Lewistown to see if we could wait it out. Camera was the first thing I did. These small airstrips often leave a car for pilots to use to get to town, and this was no exception. We found the keys hidden in the car, and drove the five or so miles to town for lunch, keeping one eye on the sky the whole time.
Back from lunch, more computer checking, and we finally decided to make a go for it.
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So, off we took from the Lewistown airport, heading south by way of Big Timber so we would have an option for landing if the visibility or wind worsened.I am still amazed at how green it is. It is even more apparent from the air. It surely has been a huge relief to the farmers here to have so much moisture. It has been years since things looked so pretty! Yes, it is still pretty bleak, compared to the green of NC, but for this part of the state, it is impressive!
We headed south, and made it to the pass about 13 Cherokee 7045 Romeo waiting for take-off miles from Big Timber. But visibility was worsening and the rain picked up, and all of a sudden, just as we were to fly through a narrowing in the hills and on down, the clouds lowered like a cement gate. Doug said "guess what, we are heading back to Lewistown." But, things lightened up north a bit, and so we decided to try Harlowtown, a teeny tiny farming town (pop. 1000) that would save us an hour or so. We would try again in the morning, when the weather would either get better, or worse, depending on who you listened to.
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We decided not to take any chances, and try to stay the night. so, we called a small, family operated hotel (no one left a car at this airport! Or gas, or anything else). So, about 20 minutes later, a car comes bumping down the gravel road from town, and the young hotel owner was there to pick us up. A quick bite of cheese and chips, a soak in a real, hot bathtub, and I was out. Until 2 am, when I was awakened by a dull roar, like a train bearing down on the town.
Except it didn't pass, like a train--it just kept building and building. For 3 hours, it blew strong and steady. It was a long night, and I could just imagine my colleague in the room down the hall, having nightmares about heading out the next morning to find his little plane wadded up like a crushed tin can. But finally it blew itself out, and by 7 am when we checked radar, it looked possible, so off we headed, on a flight path that would follow the Crazy Mountains down over Livingston, and over the Bozeman pass, and on in--wow--that is all I can say.
!http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/resources/schweitzer/june6-4.jpg!
Well, that is it from the field in Montana. The snow line here on June 7, 2007 is about 5000 ft, and here in town it is hovering around 45F. There are more dinosaurs waiting, but the next trip in about 3 weeks will be east, not north, (I think?you never really KNOW), to the Hell Creek, and the land of the Tyrannosaurs.
Posted at 11:32AM Jun 29, 2007 by tppeake in General | Comments[1]
June 5 - moving the jacket
Ugh. Morning. I try to ignore the pale pink crawling slowly across my tent wall. It is too early to get up, even for field work, but it is worthless trying to go back to sleep. So, I slowly try to unfold and sit up without breaking any bones. I look for some article of clothing that is not sand filled, and get ready for another day. Coffee. I need coffee. Normally, I love to fall asleep to crickets and coyotes, and wake to the meadowlark song. However, this morning I am not particularly happy with them.
Ok, breakfast, with coffee, and then we pack lunches, fill water jugs, apply sun screen, and pile in the back of "Grey" (as opposed to "Brown", the other field truck up here. We paleontologists are nothing if not creative). We bounce around the pickup bed, trying to stay balanced amidst the boards and ropes and buckets and boxes and picks and shovels, up rutted paths and down again. Then, we jump down and begin to cart all of that down precarious paths to quarry level. We have run into a cement hard concretion layer just below the bone, and we have to try to break through it to see if more bone is beneath. Oh, I am hoping for more dinosaur. However, after an entire morning of ringing rock hammer, pick and shovel against this stuff and making about two inches of progress, I am willing to let the darned thing stay there.
But, after lunch, Bob breaks out the BIG jack hammer, and it goes much faster. The bend, scoop, straighten and toss is back, but harder. These cemented chunks are HEAVY.
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At last we decide that there is nothing there. Last year, we knew we had a dinosaur leg, thigh, shin, ankle and toes, all lined out as in life. But this year we found no other sign of dino bits anywhere. The fossil record is capricious indeed.Either it had eroded away before we found it last year, or it would stay hidden until the prairie winters finally made headway into the concretion llayer. We were not going to do it. So, we proceeded with the take-out protocol.
Because this bone will be used for molecular studies, we took 3-5 inches of sediment that normally would ave been cleared away to lighten the jacket. We covered that with tinfoil to keep outside contamination to a minimum. Then we applied plastered burlap in long strips, smoothing and adding layers as it formed to the bone and began to harden. After that, for support and stability, we added two 2x4s, and plastered them to the jacket. Then, it was time to let that dry fully and stabilize, so the exhausted crew--some of us more exhausted than others--took a lunch break on the bluff.
The hard stuff remained to be done--the quarry was cut into a cliff face, and was about 15 feet below the truck that would take it back to camp! Now, graduate students are good for a lot of things, but there is a limit to what even they can do, and scaling a cliff with a 750 pound jacket goes beyond that. But--first things first, and that was to finish the jacket.
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So, once the top had hardened and stabilized, the next step was to flip the jacket, so that we could plaster the other side. That involved undercutting the sandstone pedestals upon which it rested, making a tunnel under the main body of the jacket, and plastering that. Then, pressure from a crowbar would flip the jacket. Now comes the truly innovative step. Bob, quarryman extraordinaire, had the foresight to buy the hood of an old truck. His plan was to use it like a giant sled--gulp. If he is wrong--my precious bone will slide 25 + feet to the bottom of the canyon, taking out anything in its path! So, we had to do a couple of things to prepare to flip our dinosaur drumstick. First, we had to measure the truck-hood sled, to be sure that the jacket would fit.
!http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/resources/schweitzer/june5-5.jpg!
Then, we had to jack-hammer a path in the lip of the quarry, so it would slide. THEN we had to flip the jacket, and then plaster.
So it was with bated breath I watched (and took pictures) as they worked to turn the jacket onto the waiting sled...
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and FINALLY...SUCCESS!. Ok, that is the EASY part of the hard part. Well...umm. wait. The jackhammering, picking, shoveling, was hard. This was hard. But...what was REALLY tough lies ahead...because...This is PART of the slope that it has to go up; only about the lower ΒΌ is visible in this picture!
So, we plastered the other side of the jacket on its truck-hood sled, and let it dry to figure this out. We trussed up our femur like a poorly wrapped birthday present, with multicolored chains and nylon ropes and belts, strapping it firmly to the hood and leaving enough chain to wrap to a thick nylon rope-cord thing (yes, good technical language, I know, but what DO you call those things?).
!http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/resources/schweitzer/june5-9.jpg!
The other end we bound to "Grey," our trusty field truck. Laid down two 2-x-4 tracks for it to run up, and then got out of the way. Here is our neatly wrapped present. We are delaying the ultimate test of Bob and Nels' engineering ingenuity--gulp. Well, in the worst case scenario, I won't have to GRIND my bone before I subject it to my tests...
Well, ultimately we can put it off no longer. The sun is sinking, rain is forecast, and the crew is ready to break camp and move to the next site. After a REAL scary start, when the hood caught on a rough cut in the side of the quarry, lo and behold--look! There it goes! From here, to here...
!http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/resources/schweitzer/june5-10.jpg!
Then, it was time to pack up the quarry (15 trips up and down the cliff face with equipment on our backs), and my favorite thing--I got to drive the 6-wheeler back! Yay! I love it. I have a lead foot in a car, and a lead thumb in an ATV!
!http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/resources/schweitzer/june5-11.jpg!
But, we made it! Then, it is back to camp--hot, dusty, aching...and to a brief break for dinner, prepared by our opera singing cook (Nels's wife). Then, the major undertaking of breaking camp and moving out before the rains hit--by then it was dark, and as we headed over the roads to the hiway and all the way into town we were surrounded on all sides by sharp forks of lightening streaking the sky. It was a scene from a movie, eerie, and spectacular, and the type of storm designed to make humans seem small and insignificant. My pilot colleague and I got rooms in a malta hotel--a wonderful place right out of the 50s. OH! HOT SHOWER!!! REAL BED...HOT SHOWER!
And, in the morning, a plane ride to look forward to...
Posted at 04:00PM Jun 28, 2007 by tppeake in General | Comments[2]
June 4
June 4
We got to the Andisaurus site about 8 am. The crew had unloaded most of the equipment before I got there, so only carting it down the hill on our backs remained. Nels, who was the crew chief on my favorite Brex dig, is trying to bring field paleontology into the 21st century. He is doing 3-D laser scanning of the site, with pictures every 20 seconds to document progress and monitor things we might miss.
!http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/resources/schweitzer/june4-2.jpg!
At left you can see our crew, or part of it, inspecting our bone find at the end of my first day. We were looking for evidence that there was more dinosaur to go with the articulated foot and leg we took out last summer.
!http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/resources/schweitzer/june4-1.jpg!
Even though the crew had removed about 10 feet of the soft sand before I got there, there was still at least 5 to go to get to the level of bone. Bend, scoop, straighten, toss, bend, scoop, straighten, toss...hour after hour, stopping only long enough to let the jackhammer loosen more of the back wall. There is not a lot of talking in the quarry. Most people are just trying to get the work done. Occasionally though, we get rather choice comments. After about the 15th faceful of sand, Lee started singing: "Just a spoonful of silicates makes the medicine go down..." (you get a little loopy from the sun out here). During a short lunch break, I took the time to walk around and just drink in the emptiness, majesty and beauty of this stark land.
!http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/resources/schweitzer/june4-4.jpg!
Looking down at my feet, I saw prairie flowers. They are all tiny, and ephemeral. They have to grow quickly, because there won't be enough water for long to keep them alive. But if you take the time to look close, they are incredibly beautiful.
!http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/resources/schweitzer/june4-3.jpg!
As we get closer to the bone level, things slowed. Finally, about 6 pm, amidst a lot of protest from Nels, we decided we had gone far enough. Oh...I don't think I have a muscle that doesn't hurt! I know that I will need my legs for fieldwork, and stamina, so I make a point of running all year round so that I am in shape for the ups and downs of prospecting in the badlands. But--I forget about my arms and shoulders, and now I am paying. It was a rough first quarry day for me, but we took down 5 feet, and tomorrow should show whether or not more dinosaur remains hidden.
It was hot most of the day with the sun beating down as we worked, reflected off the buff sands of the quarry walls. I am sunburned, with hands that feel permanently claw shaped and back permanently bent. The sand on my face has sand on it, and no shower is in sight till we are done. Whoever invented wet-wipes, I am forever indebted.
But, after cleaning up, and making a slight dent in the first several layers, there is hamburger on the grill, and the food tastes especially good. Even the sleeping bag on the leaking air mattress sounds lovely. The sunset is beautiful, and I am looking forward to sleep sooo much.
!http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/resources/schweitzer/june4-5.jpg!
Ah, but the night was again not so restful. After about two hours of exhausted unconsciousness, my dreams were penetrated by the yips and howls of a passing band of coyotes. They have high pitched barks, so much that it is almost hard to take them seriously as predators. Each one tries to outdo the other for loudness, and the cacophony went on for at least an hour. They sound quite close, and I am glad Barney, my cat, is safely back with the horses and dogs, not here.
Posted at 11:21AM Jun 22, 2007 by tppeake in General | Comments[1]
2007 Begins - June 3
June 3 (Sunday)
Well, late last night I found a message on my phone. No mistaking Bob?s voice, like gravel in a cement mixer. "Hey Mar, we will be down to that femur by then end of tomorrow,so you need to get up here." So my plan was to leave around noon for the 6 hour drive, afterchurch, a run, and packing up. Then, my colleague called--we had talked about me driving his rig here to leave, as he has property here--then later in the week he would fly up and fly me back. Gee. Drive MY car 6 hours up and 6 hours back alone, or drive HIS car, and take 1.5 hours to fly back...easy decision. The exchange, however, took longer than I thought and I was two hours late leaving Bozeman.
Then, I got so lost in the scenery and the views of springtime in Montana that I drove right past the Big Timber turn off. Added another 40 or so miles I didn't need to drive...but eventually I got away from the people and the population. From about 20 miles out of Roundup until the outskirts of Malta, the thin ribbon road stretched straight and true, without a bend in sight as far as the eye could see--which, out here is virtually forever. I think I saw 20 vehicles on the road in all that time--all pick-up trucks of course. I guess no one wanted to be driving on such a perfect Sunday. There are probably 2 turns in the road between Roundup and Malta, separated by 200 miles or so. We don't go lateral here, and the only relief from the long straight stretches is vertical. Crest a hill, and it is like cresting a wave on the ocean--the whole flat world falls beneath, and one can see forever because there are no obstacles--only the curvature of the earth. Except the waves are green, and sage-brush scented. At last I see the Little Rockies rising up north of Zortman: the second turn! And for the next 50 miles, I parallel them--peaks jutting against the evening sky, one cone-shaped that I have been told is an extinct volcano.
Miles and miles and miles with no radio coming in that this car can detect--then suddenly, the wild seeking for signal stops and I hear, "Welcome to 88.8, Native Voices, serving the Lakota peoples," followed by beautiful native drumming and music. It was hauntingly beautiful. Sigh. Only in Montana.
Oh, the wildlife I see on these lonely prairies! The small herds of pronghorns, buff and bright white, with short black horns that fork at the end--they are enjoying all the fresh tender grasses the recent rains have brought. And the muledeer. We don't see to many white-tails in this part of Montana, but the mulies replace them.
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They are bigger, usually, and as their name implies, they have great big ears. The birds are prolific! Pheasant and grouse and turkey for game birds, and countless prairie birds. In the late summer it gets so hot, and dry that it seems nothing could survive except bugs. But they are food for the birds, and once again I marvel at how different birds are in their physiology, from equally warm blooded mammals. That reflects, I guess, their histories, with both groups coming to warm-bloodedness through different means and different ancestors. And, thinking about birds makes me think about dinosaurs!
Then, finally the traffic picks up and I enter the thriving metropolis of Malta Montana. It's another 20 miles to camp, leaving the highway and driving thru prairie and cows on deeply rutted trails through the short grass and sage until I see tents. I have been watching the thunderheads build since the mountains--many hot days are followed by intense afternoon or evening showers. Quick but so welcome and cooling. It was a race between me and the rain to get the tent up. And setting up these lightweight back-packing tents is a real challenge in the wind. Hint: when trying to put those snap together tent poles in a thunderstorm, do NOT hold them straight up in the air...guess I looked a lot like a lightning rod. But, as the last stake on the rainfly went in, the rain hit, and I crawled in, nice and dry. There is nothing like listening to rain beat down on a tent, while you are safe and cozy and isolated within.
As quickly as it came the storm was over, and soon we were gathered for an absolutely delicious meal: fajitas from steak cooked on the grill, and all the trimmings. How many field camps have a bona fide opera singer for a cook? That is another story... Then, back to the tent and bed, but it was a short night. First it was the crickets, then with the very first vague light, the meadowlarks began their singing, and by the time it was daylight, I felt like I was in a Disney cartoon, there were so many birds singing LOUDLY outside my tent! I am exhausted, and feel like I slept not a wink--but no sense staying put--time for coffee, breakfast in the cooktent, and a day of hard labor. Yay.
Posted at 11:32AM Jun 20, 2007 by tppeake in General | Comments[0]