In the Field: week 1

I spent the last week in the painted desert, particularly the Chilne and Kayenta formations, of Arizona, about 50 miles north of Flagstaff. It's awesome! The whole of the Chilne formation in this area seems to be a petrified forest. There are large trees in situ and fragments of petrified wood everwhere. It did however take me a few days to find any bone material and it's rather difficult for me to tell where the boundary between the Chilne and the Kayenta formations actually occurs, so I'm not always sure if I'm in the upper Triassic or lower Jurassic. Two of the days without finding bone don't entirely count. On one day I was asaulted by a sand storm that kept me pent up in my van most of the day¹ and on another I spent without success while trying to find a known bonebed in the Kayenta formation². The last couple of days however have been a great success, wherein I've found one in situ partial skeleton that I've begun excavating and one microvertebrate site from which I've recovered over 20 vertebrae, several partial ribs and four teeth as well as several whole and countless fragmentary osteoderms³. I can't be sure, but I think that most of the material that I've found belonged to a group of large plant eating reptiles called Aetosaurs. However, it is just as possible that the osteoderms that I'm finding belong to one of the other archosaurs that were alive at the time.
My most significant discovery so far however is of a piece of petrified wood from a tree sized lycopod, which I think might be stigmaria or a very worn down lepidodentron. I didn't bring my paleobotony notes with me, so it's difficult to say. The reason that this is significant is that this group of plants is thought to have died out completely by the middle permian. The fact that I found this in either late Triassic or early Jurassic rocks means that the group lasted more than 60 million years longer than previously thought and in fact survived a mass extinction that killed off more than 90% of all life on earth at the end of the Permian!

1. Two things learned that day were: A. never try to brush your teeth during a sand storm. B. Aviator sunglasses are not an adequate substitute for safety goggles when going for a walk in a sand storm.

2. The site was 10 km east of my camp site and consiquentially meant that by the time I got there I only had an hour of prospecting before I had to turn around and go back. I still didn't get back until after dark. While descending a hill in the dark I fell and hurt my right knee; something that's slowed me down every day since. Bad show all around.

3. If you don't know what an osteoderm is, think of the armor plates on the back of an alligator or crocodile. They're modified scales with a bony center. Unfortunately, just about everybody in the triassic had them, making them unhelpful for identification purposes.

Tucson, Day 7

I saw the last of the show today and was kind of disappointed that the remainder was almost entirely minerals. It's nice and shiny, but it doesn't pique my interest. As with the fossil dealers, alot of the minerals were the same kind of specimens, the same quality and from the same mines, just in the booths of different dealers.
I'm skipping town tomorrow, right after a trip to the post office to send all the stuff I've picked up to my parents for storage. Sorry Mom, sorry Dad, but the museum has to be put somewhere. There is still a chance for me to pick thinks up for people who are interested so long as you call me before 2:00pm mountain time.

Paleo-News

A new primitive Tyrranosauroid has been described. This time it has a crest on it's head reminiscent of a pterosaur. They're calling it Guanlong wucaii. As with other crested theropods, the standing hypothesis is that the crest was used for sexual display. Furthermore, following recent trends in popular analysies to do on specimens, a histological thin section was made of the (presumably) fibula and was used to determine that this animal was in its 12th year of life, while another specimen found associated with it was only 1/2 as old. Unfortunately, this discover, as well as others, came too late to make it into the most recent edition of the Dinosauria and will likely not be added as an adendum to The Relationships of Basal Theropod Dinosaurs.

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Tucson, Day 6

Didn't do a whole lot today; contradicted what I said yesterday about not buying anymore moroccan fossils. I just couldn't resist. I bought one jaw segment that looked like it might be from Globidens (it wasn't) and two small blocks that I realized fit together, giving me two nearly complete dentaries; $10 per block, so $30 total. Yesterday I saw two cleaned dentaries of about the same size for sale for $175 and $225 each. It's definately worth my time to prep out the specimens myself. I'm still trying to figure out if the bone fragment associated witht the pterygoid that I cleaned up the other day is an epipterygoid or something else.
Other purchases: 1 dried Draco (the kind that glides using an expanded rib cage) lizard $40, 1 skink skeleton $25, 1 book on the ammonites and other cephalopods of the Pierre Shale formation $20. The guy who was selling the modern lizard material said that he could also hook me up with indonesian monitor lizard skulls, possibly a whole skeleton, and various snake skeletons on the cheap.
In other news, I dropped by the various gem expos around town. I was like one of pavlov's puppies hearing the bell. I saw gems so gorgeous that I wouldn't dare desbribe some of them, lest I do them injustice. One that I will describe though is an emerald that measured roughly an inch and half by 3/4 of an inch. It was a brilliant stone, moderately clear, but of a pale green. It had to be over 150 carats. It almost makes me want to take a semester of gemology to become a master appraiser.

Tucson, Day 5

For me and for now, the buying of fossils has ceased. I decided against buying a badly crushed Moroccan Prognathodon rostrom even though I talked the dealer down to nearly half of his original asking price. Most people decide not to buy something that they want because of a bad experience with people selling it or because they can't afford it, I decided not to buy it just because of the good experience I had with another set of dealers of Moroccan fossils. Until now, it'd been my experience that these dealers are shifty and fake as much of the vertebrate material as they find and that they were ignorant to nearly every aspect beyond the name and price of the specimens that they sell. I'll admit, I even got a little racist; generalizing all dealers from Morocco as generally hurtful to the scientific process. The people with Sahara Overland however are quite different. One frenchman with the company was quite knowledgeable and even knew Dr. Caldwell, read his papers, as well as just about all other literature on vertebrate paleontology in north Africa. In fact, I listened to a rather passionate tirade about how North American scientists are throwing away research opportunities buy not working with them.
The other people were also helpful; one Texan even flat out told me that I shouldn't buy any of his "complete" skulls, calling them "Ribosaurs." As a consiquence, Sahara Overland and it's sister company Doc Fossils, are the only Moroccans that I have or will do business with. When I bought the trilobites in Quartzite, it was from Sahara Overland. Yesterday I bought a section of Halisaurus (a mosasaur; I'm guessing on the genus based on its small size and strongly recurved teeth) pterygoid and a parietal and partial frontal from a (I think) Prognathodon. Tomorrow I'll buy an isopod from them which I'll send up to a friend in Canada who is studying them currently.
As a consiquence of my good experience, I have decided that my next great adventure will be to Morocco. Naturally, this trip may have to wait until after grad school, but I will not buy any large specimen until I've been to Morocco and had the chance to satiate my facination with fossil reptiles. Until then, the US is my hunting ground.
On another note, I've had some success in interviewing people about the rock and mineral trade. The consensus so far, among rock, mineral and fossil dealers alike, is that paleontologists have their heads up their collective ass with regards to policy for collecting on public lands.

Tucson, Day 3

Today was a good day. Althought I spent alot of money, I feel that I got some awesome specimens as well as some good information on where to find more. In particular, I bought 3 lizard jaws, two turtle jaws, a small turtle skull, three or four large salamander vertebrae, and about 40 snake vertebrae - all from the late pleistocene of Florida. I also bought 4 Branchiosaur larvae for $100. I also picked up a tiny Keichousaur and a section of pleistocene alligator maxilla that shows replacement teeth growing in under the older teeth. Most of all though, I'm happy to finally have found some affordable lizard material. I'll grant that it isnt' that old and doesn't say anything about the origin of snakes, but it is a start to figuring out changes in squamate biogeography in North America during the latest cenozoic.
Tomarrow I anticipate spending more. One of the most unusual things I found today was a collection of Miocene partial penguin skulls. Given how odd these are, I'm compelled to spend a little money on one. I also found a Moroccan mosasaur brain case and another fragmentary skull for a good price. On the other hand, I've been hearing some very compelling arguments for me to ignore the dealers here and just go to Morocco myself. That however is a trip that will have to wait.

Tucson, Day 2

Today, I found more of what I was looking for; specifically interesting fossil lizards. Not only that, but they are cheaper today ranging from only $1,800 to $10,000 for whole lizards and $300 for a mosasaur braincase. The most interesting things of today were a partial Agialosaur (close relative of mosasaurs) and a small, possibly jouvenile Archialosaur (also closely related to mosasaurs) from Brazil. If I hadn't used up all of my Flickr uploads for the month of February, there would be some pictures here to illustrate what I'm talking about. In the mean time though, I'm going to e-mail some pictures to Dr. Caldwell to see what he thinks of them.

Tucson, Az

The word of the day is disappointment. I had envissioned the Rock, Mineral and Fossil show at Tucson to be some sort of magical land where dealers coffer their earthen wares at prices close to what you would pay in the region that these fossils are from; a place where I could find fantastic deals and specimens worthy of study. This was not the case.
I'll grant that there are some spectacular items here. Among these are ichthyosaurs, Psytacosaurs, Eocene bats and birds and more ammonites and trilobites than you can shake a stick at. The fact of the matter is however that everybody knows what their fossils are worth and are selling them as such. We're not talking cost of replacement, but ebay, open market price. Before I came out here I looked at people's photos from previous years. Since everything has a price tag on it, it was easy for me to guage how much I would expect to spend. It seems that the price of two of the things that I was interested in buying has close to dectupled (10 fold increase) in the last couple of years. Where photos from previous years showed Sinohydrosaurs and Keichiosaurs for below $50, with some as low as $25, the price now starts at $150 and goes up to $400 for small ones. Incidently, very small and very large specimens are worth more; as though most of these creatures consistantly died at the same age.
The thing that I've been looking all day for is lizard material. Alas, I only found one non mosasaurian lizard. It was from the Liaonang formation of China (same as sinohydrosaurus). I got a picture but didn't have time to reference anything to find out what it was. The cool thing was that it had skin impressions showing scute like scales on the tail. The only drawback was that they guy was asking $28,000.00 for it. He was only asking $25k for his complete theropods (excluding birds which were less) and about 25 hundred for psitacosaurs.
On the positive side, I did manage to get two of the largest Paleophis vertebra I've seen for free. The guy was selling mixed fossils from morocco by the pound, and the vertebrae were too light for his scale. Consiquently, he just gave them to me. Another gem of a find was a miocene snake vertebra from Florida.
I just hope that tomorrow is more rewarding.

New Phone Number

If people want to get ahold of me by phone, my new number is (714) 767-2886.
I changed so I wouldn't get charged roaming or for night or weekend calls. Night is from 7 pm to 7 am. Not only that, but my parents are paying for it since it only costs them $10 per month to add me to their plan.

Neo Con Mom

My parents keep getting more and more conservative. They've bought in completely to the "freedom in exchange for security" mentality. It's a major difference in paradigms; so much so that nothing I ever say would be able to convince them otherwise. We just have different views of what is important. I opened with comments about the Boing boing article about it costing 15 million dollars per person caught with the US - visitor program, and they rebutted with "it's worth it, because it's a deterrant. Besides, the cost per person caught will decrease as more people are caught."
Last night, the president announced a "22-percent increase in clean-energy research. . . to invest more in zero-emission coal-fired plants, revolutionary solar and wind technologies, and clean, safe nuclear energy. (Applause.)¹ " I checked the department of energy website but couldn't find how much is currently being spent on these kinds of programs. I think that somebody should do a study on the cost effectiveness on reducing the probability of terror attacks, comparing spending on programs that increase security and those that reduce dependancy on middle eastern oil. I'll grant that such a study would probably cost $15 million, but that just means that we wont catch Cat Stevens the next time he tries to enter the USA.

1. That quotation is from the white house website. The "applause" was actually written into the transcript. I'm not sure if that means that people were scheduled to applause there, or actually cheered spontaneously there.