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.
!http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/resources/schweitzer/june5-1.jpg!
!http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/resources/schweitzer/june5-2.jpg!
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.
!http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/resources/schweitzer/june5-3.jpg!
!http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/resources/schweitzer/june5-4.jpg!
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...
!http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/resources/schweitzer/june5-6.jpg!
!http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/resources/schweitzer/june5-7.jpg!
!http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/resources/schweitzer/june5-8.jpg!
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]