Prepare for the Worst

Yesterday (friday) was an awesome day. One so good that something freakishly horrible, if not widely fatal must surely happen to ballance things out. What made it so great was what I found at work. Everyday, the construction workers ask me if I've found any dinosaurs yet. The fact that the rocks that I'm digging in are much too young for dinosaurs means that I usually have to answer in the negative. Yesterday I was finally able to answer "yes." In fact, I found a fossil bird (descendant of the dinosaurs). For those of you who don't know, this sort of thing is rare, extremely rare, rare enough that many paleontologists working in rocks of the right age go their whole careers without finding one. The specimen isn't anywhere near perfect. In fact, it's only about half complete. The specimen includes one leg, the hip, most of the spinal column, most of the ribs, but is missing the skull, wings and pectoral girdle. In life, it would have been about the size of a sparrow or smallish jay.
I only wish that I could provide a picture as proof of my discovery, but sadly, the company issue camera has stopped working this week, thereby inhibiting me from photo documenting any specimens.
The bird is now in the Pasadena office of SWCA where it will wait until donated to a museum. If you're wondering why it's there and not now in my personal collection, believe me when I say that I was tempted to keep it and tell nobody. However, if I did, I would never again be able to aquire a fossil and justify the expense or unethical chanel through which it came by saying that the fossil stood a better chance of being studied with me than some other collector.