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Showing results for tags 'dry bone'.
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So glad I joined the forum recently. Years ago, I was an undergraduate in PA in Geology, and finished some other degrees in Climatology along the way. Although my academic geology days are gone, I collected a lot and visited areas along the east coast, including the now defunct Fruitville Quarry for the Kinzers formation - and finally did some field work in Montana (I will post another thread shortly about a fossil I found in Elk Basin that I would love some pointers on). I found these bones in Maryland along the coast around 7 years ago. My notes are poor, but I believe them to be from the St. Marys formation (?) though please correct me if I am wrong here. My guess is from a field trip to Calvert Cliffs, or the area where the Mary's may outcrop. The matrix is a grey, very dense, putty/cement like clay that I remember sticking to everything. Over the years, it has dried forming a tough cement. I believe these are Whale. I would love some pointers on what you think I should do, if anything, to preserve and better display these pieces. I dread the idea of them slowly drying out and turning into dust. I have a few more small bones (finger bone maybe?) from the same location, one of which is a gorgeous brown tone. You can see the tone coming through a little bit on the larger rib bone but the clay material covers it up a bit - and fills some cracks along the side. The bones are very heavy. Should I work this with a toothbrush, an air abbrasive unit, a scribe.... and butvar-76 it? Any thoughts, comments, suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I have never done any prep. and have some great rough laying around with parts of trilobites, bones and other bits and bobs that would be great to work on! Note: I know the rib is rotated - I didn't want it convex-up as I would think it would stress it. - I don't know how to add photos efficiently to the forums yet... so I will add more images in reply posts.
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- bone
- bone preservation
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