I'm waiting for my supervisor to finish some office stuff before we go out into the field to extract a large (possibly) brontothere jaw from an extremely large block of sandstone, so I thought that I should take this opportunity to post a long overdue update on what has been going on.
I've been in Vernal, Utah since mid July and will likely be out here until the stat of October, when everyone else takes off and makes it impossible for me to continue working. What I've been doing is what we lovingly call "catch and release paleontology." That is, I'm doing surveys of a very large area on the Ute Tribe Indian Reservation so that when oil wells are put there in the next couple of years, they will know what spots to avoid so as to minimize the impact on this valuable scientific and cultural resource. The bad thing is, and this is the release portion of the name, although we are finding vast quantities of extremely scientifically valuable fossils, that would probably close to double the total collections of fossils from this time period, we are prohibited by the tribe from actually collecting anything on their land. We are allowed to collect fossils from BLM land (hense why I'll be heading out in a few minutes) but our survey of BLM land is restricted to areas where they have already decided to put an oil well. The opinion of the Ute tribe appears to be that they want the fossils saved from destruction by drilling equipment and bulldozers, so that they can be destroyed by the ravages of natural erosion instead.
The most common thing that we find on the reservation is fragmentary turtle remains. There are three or four distinct kinds of turtles here, but only one is readily distinguishable by the texture of its shell. Typically, the turtles are broken by erosion into such small pieces that the texture of the shell is the only thing that we can go by. Other than turtles, we are also finding crocodiles, alligators, tapirs, rhinos, primitive horses, primitive artiodactyls called protoreodonts and leptoreodonts, camels, brontotheres (looks like a rhino but only distantly related) and a variety of microfossils. Most of the animals we find are only fragmentary remains, with jaws and teeth being the most commonly preserved part of a mammal. This is not to say that other parts are not sometimes found as well. In fact, on my first day out in the field, I found the skull of a rhino practically sticking out the side of a cliff.
The number of co-workers that I have has varied widely since I got here as different people arrive and leave as their schedules allow. With two exceptions though, they've all been (at least) moderately attractive young women. The face of paleontology is certainly changing.
Beyond work thought, there hasn't been much going on for me. My Birthday was last month and my parents ordered some really interesting books (Cope's Bible and Este's
Phylogeny of the Lizards if you're interested in knowing) and my grandparents sent me checks cumulatively large enough that I can get an air scribe and a stereomicroscope. Tremendous thanks to them if they are reading this! I've also gotten to do some fossil hunting on my own including going out near Bonanza and digging in the Parachute Creek member of the Green River formation. Things that I found there include a large number of fossilized beetles, flies, mosquitos, weavles, leaves and even a small number of exquisite flowers. I also got to go over the mountains to the Bridger Basin (a historically famous area for eocene mammals: Cope and Marsh faught bitterly over naming creatures from that area). The purpose of my brief visit there was to help SWCA's lead paleontologist, Paul Murphy, look for fossils from the upper most Bridger formation, which is also the least fossiliferous, in order to find support for the hypothesis that the upper Bridger is the same age as the Uinta Formation.
I also had a brief and somewhat dissappointing trip to Denver for the Mineral and Fossil show that was out there, but Peter Larson of the Black Hills institute once again beat me to the interesting lizard fossils. I'm fairly confident that he got a new species of mosasaur from Morocco, since it had teeth that were intermediate in form between globidens and a more classic mosasaur dentition.
That pretty much brings everyone up to date. I will have pictures of events so far in an upcoming post and I intend to start posting more regularly.
I am in a very intersting part of the world. There is no doubt that the people of this are aware of the importance of the local national monument and the paleontology of the area. In many ways, it is like Drumheller, except that the beer has less than half the alcohol. At the same time, the curche is the center of the comunity, literally. The streets around here are actually numbered with the Mormon temple at the dead center.
This fellow however took the title for most colorful lizard found. I found it in an area of badlands south of Douglas Pass in Colorado
Speaking of Douglas Pass, this is the view to the south from that vantage point
While camping up at Douglas Pass, it had become apparent that I had no conventional can opener handy. Therefore, it fell to my most versitile of tools to do the job. A rock hammer doesn't open a can cleanly, but the can is definately open.
Working in the field kills boots. More precisely it eats them. It chews them up, swallows and later craps out something no longer recognisable as functional footwear. This photo was taken within two weeks of my arival here in Vernal. The wire that you see is all that really held the booth together enough for the photo. Needless to say, I replaced my boots that night at the only shoe store that was still open when I got back into town. Consiquently, I purchased a pair of Redwings for over $80.00, making them the most expensive shoes I've ever owned. In the two and a half months since then, my new boots have been chewed up as well. The leather is worn out, the seems are bursting and the tread is completely gone.