Monday, February 26, 2007

New Additions

I think that it's about time that I share some slightly belated photos of the more spectacular fossils that I picked up in Tucson.




This critter is a crocodilian from the Sichuan province (supposedly) of China. It appears to be mostly real, except for the retroarticular process of the right jaw.



















Directly above is the same Moroccan Dyrosaur (an Eocene Crocodilian) in two stages of preparation. At the left is how it looked when I first got it and at the right is how it looks now. I'm still not done yet, but obviously much closer. What lies ahead of me is lots of fine detail work.



Here is the greatest prize in my collection, a Moroccan mosasaur skull. It is fairly small and has an oddly short muzzle, but it does actually seem to be genuine. The view of the underside shows where repair work has been done to hold it together and improve it's aesthetic value. The red shows major cracs that have been repaired and the green outlines areas that have been filled in with rock putty. The top of the skull has been stained and laquered to give the bone more contrast from the maxtrix. Clearly, I've got alot of work cut out for me before I can declare it ready for study.
What I can tell so far about the skull is that it's definately not a tylosaur because the teeth go all the way to the end of the snout and that it's not a globidens (what is visable of the teeth is the wrong shape.) Because of the small size, I'd be willing to say for now that it could be a Halisaurus, but I'll know better once I've removed the matrix. If anyone else familiar with mosasaur would like to venture a guess, please feel free.
As for the fate of these fossils, please rest assured that once they are cleaned up, I will write descriptions of each and then deposit them in a museum so that I can publish.

Saturday, February 10, 2007

Holy #@^!

I'd never heard of this, but apparently this is the second year that there will be an "Evolution Sunday" in which about 500 congregations will pick up The Origin of Species as a way of responding to Intedigent Designists (ie Creationists) who publicly argue that science an religion are in conflict.

link: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11145-christian-faith-in-the-iotheri-good-book.html

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Tucson '07 day two

Another expensive day; my total coming to about $755. The two big purchases for today are a chinese crocodilian skull and a brazilian geod with a large piece of selenite in it. I understand that some of those who read my blog probably have a problem with me supporting the chinese fossil trade. I justify the purchase because I am not the first person outside china to own it. The person that I bought it from purchased it in San Francisco from a man who was selling off his collection. That and it was a really good price. At least I didn't buy the larger morroccan crocodile that I was offered for less today. Even if it were only $100, I wouldn't pay for that much plaster and miscelaneous bone fragments.
Other purchases include a small eurypterid from Europe, two small Miocene crabs from California, an ediacaran jelly from Morrocco and a piece of triassic petrified wood from Zimbabway that strongly resembles an unusual piece that I found in northern Arizona last year. I also spent a great deal of time browsing the gem and jewlery section of the show today. I try to take orders every year for jewlery when I come here since the show is right before St. Valentine's Day, but was unable to fill even the one request that I was given. Two factors conspired here; one is that the price of gold is very high right now, the other is that since this is esentially a show for jewlers and not for the public, the dealers only bring their finest murchendice and the prices to match. Before coming out here, I went to all the jewlery stores in the mall in El Cajon. I saw lots of fine pendants and ear rings with either low grade stones or no information about the stones that they were set with. For example, at Kay jewler, I saw a 2ct pear cut blue topaz on 14kt gold for less than $200. Here, I saw a flawless, perfectly clear, 2 ct pear cut london blue topaz from a small mine in Pakistan, that had only been heat treated to improve the color, custom set on a 14kt victorian style pendant mount, for over $500. Clearly, information is quite valuable among dealers and of little real interest to the people that ultimately buy it retail. After all, jewlers and gemologists pay alot for the education that enables them to know that one stone is enharently better than another. And to think, I almost signed up to go to the GIA.

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Tucson '07, day one

I have some rather mixed feelings about the Tucson gem and fossil show this year. For one thing, I'm bummed that I've missed alot of it. The show is winding down and many of the fossil dealers have already left. Another thing is that somebody beet me to two fossils that I was prepared to spend several thousand dollars on. They were a small and a large Archialosaur (or Agialosaur depending on which dealer you ask). It turns out that the people who had the smaller one last year bought the larger one that I had seen and then sold them both a couple of days ago. They both went to private museums, but the large one went to the Black Hills institute, which means that casts will be available relatively soon.
After a mad dash around town, I found one guy who had an agialosaur (his nomenclature, not mine) with what definately look like intact gut contents in the form of an undulating concretion running between the ribs down to the hips. The rarety of the gut cast bumped the price up well out of my price range. The biggest dissapointment is that the guy absolutely refused to let me take a picture of it on the grounds that if somebody does buy it, then they'll want to never see it elsewhere in cast or photographic form. I.e. he caters to people who sequester their fossils rather than sharing them with the world.
That somebody beet me to what I wanted doesn't mean that I didn't spend anything today. My grand total for the day was $922.62, although I very nearly spent more. My two big purchases were a mosasaur skull (jaws not included) and an eocene sea turle carapase, both from Morrocco. Other items purchased today include Madagascan ammonites, a dried gliding gecko, two crabs from different parts of the world, an opalized clam, Globidens sp. teeth, a butterfly collection, snake skeleton, Deltadromaeus sp. teeth and others.

Photos to come when I get back to Fullerton

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

The longest 3 days

I just finished up a monitoring project in El Cajon, which is the somewhat poorer city about 10 miles east of San Diego proper. The long and the short of it is that I didn't find a damn thing, and wasn't going to. Whoever did the initial assessment of the site for its palaeontological sensitivity got it dead wrong. What I was told would be eocene fine sandstone turned out to be granite rich modern alluvium. Not only that, but there was a tremendous amount of garbage in it. Not just leaves or roots or the other naturally occuring detritus that might accumulate in alluvium, but broken glass, big pieces of asphault, cement, plates, mugs, plastics, etc. I don't blame the person for mistaking one formation for another, but I got the impression that they didn't check out the site too thuroughly if at all. For one thing, the most recent geological maps say that it's alluvium right there. When I compared a sample from the site to pieces in the San Diego Museum of Natural History, there seemed to be no resemblance to rocks from the formation that I was told I'd be finding. Last of All, the project only called for moving the top three feet of earth. Unless the project site is in a canyon or the side of a cliff or something, the first three feet of anywhere are typically going to have NO fossils, it's all soil.
The fact that I didn't find anything wasn't what was frustrating, it was that for every day of actual work done on the site, I did two days of waiting for it to continue. The day that it was supposed to start, it didn't. The next two days were spent essentially standing around while the guys who did the work removed tree roots from one corner of the site. This was followed by the week-end. Monday, things went smoothly, tuesday and wednesday it rained. Thursday, half the day was spent mixing the soil and drying it out. Friday, with the exception of hitting a natural gas line, work proceeded smoothly, followed by the week-end. Monday, work proceeded smoothly for half the day, until they needed to start moving the stock pile of dirt that they'd built up and discovered that it was still too wet from last week's rain. Tuesday, still too wet and I'm pulled off the project before it even goes to completion. With the exception of Friday and Saturday nights I'd been staying at a Best Western hotel that was charging a little under $70 (after tax) per night. All this delay, meant too much time at the hotel, which means that the company that I work for is pretty much loosing money for taking this project, which they shouldn't have done in the first place and having nothing to show for it to boot.
As for me, besides the frustration of doing something utterly futile for two weeks, I'm doing fine. I'm in Tucson, Az, ready to spend my hard earned money.