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Covid-19 work at home project... Tate Geological Museum


jpc

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Hey folks, thought I would share what I have been working on all week in my WorkFromHome Office/Lab.  (Well, when I am not doing computer stuff).  

While the Tate (my employer) is closed we have been sent home to work.  I brought a few fossils home to work on. 

The past two weeks I prepped a bunch of Lance Fm micros.  I might show them off, but they are so tough to photograph well.  

This is this week's (and next) project... a Diplodocus skull from the Morrison Formation at the famous Como Bluff in southern Wyoming.  

 

We found this tucked into a group of tail bones.  It might be from the same animal, it might not.  There are a lot of other things in this quarry... typical for the Morrison.  But we are calling it Dip because the tail bones are diplos.  We will see when I get it all prepped and I go out and learn the difference.  

 

 

 

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The left maxilla is on the right side.  The other maxilla is underneath it.  "How do you know?", you ask.  We already cleaned up the other side.  This is the bottom of the jacket.  There are loose teeth all over the place in this jacket.  Other bones are emerging on the left side of the jacket, and are not yet Ided.  This stuff is very delicate and some bones are less than 1mm thick.  Yikes.  For those taking notes, I am using a variety of pinvices with pokey ends, and a MicroJack #3.  All done under the microscope.  And lots of Vinac, and a wee bit of superglue.  Eventually everything will get sandblasted at about 5 psi with bicarb and holes will be filled with epoxy putty. 

 

I will post more next Friday....

 

Y'all stay safe and have a good weekend. 

 

(Edit... I was just thumbing through the post about fossils through the macro lens and took Tim's advice:  I downloaded Photoscape and put a copyright into the photo.  It was really easy. )

 

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Thanks for sharing this. Very interesting. 

Is it next Friday yet? :popcorn:

Life's Good!

Tortoise Friend.

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Beautiful specimen, can’t wait to see how it turns out!

“...whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.” ~ Charles Darwin

Happy hunting,

Mason

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Sounds/looks like a very tedious enterprise.  :hammer01::trex: :megalodon_broken01:  (see now I'm using the emojis too)

Glad someone's doing it, and showing us!

 

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Amazing.  I cant wait to see the completed prep.

"There is no shortage of fossils. There is only a shortage of paleontologists to study them." - Larry Martin

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Awesome! Can’t wait to see progress pictures. Thanks for sharing! :) 

The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.  -Neil deGrasse Tyson

 

Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't. -Bill Nye (The Science Guy)

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Already looks really cool. Can't wait to see more done on it. It's thrilling you get to take ones like that home to work on. Good luck with it.

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Cool nice piece.  Are you planning to leave the dentary and skull in place or inflate it? 

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Very cool and good job on the prep work! :thumbsu:

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Awesome! It’s looking great! I think you may have done this before. ;) 

The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.  -Neil deGrasse Tyson

 

Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't. -Bill Nye (The Science Guy)

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12 hours ago, FossilNerd said:

Awesome! It’s looking great! I think you may have done this before. ;) 

Not a sauropod skull....

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3 hours ago, jpc said:

Not a sauropod skull....

I meant prepping in general. ;) 
 

Being something new, it certainly has it’s challenges, but you have taken your experience and applied it here to do a wonderful job! :D 

The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.  -Neil deGrasse Tyson

 

Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't. -Bill Nye (The Science Guy)

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On 5/11/2020 at 6:01 PM, jpc said:

I am going to take all the pieces out, and then see what happens after that.

 

So you are going to have a bunch of loose bones with no matrix?

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  • 4 months later...
On 5/11/2020 at 6:51 PM, jpc said:

16 hrs of prep work later...  Correction... 10 1/2 hours, not 16 hrs

 

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Last update was May 11th. Any more progress on this beautiful Diplodocus skull?

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1 hour ago, Dracorex_hogwartsia said:

Last update was May 11th. Any more progress on this beautiful Diplodocus skull?

no, since we came back to the office, I have been too busy doing other things to do any prep work.  Not sure when this will get done.  

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