2 week exploration and collecting trip, day 1

[hadrosauridae]

What a trip my son and I had this year!

We started out in the Hell Creek fm of South Dakota.  This was a special trip through Paleo Adventures for his "veteran" guests who have already spent a few years with him and could operate without supervision.  We started out hunting a new ranch.  This property is virgin ground with LOTS of acreage that needed exploration.  The group was split into 3 teams, each taking a different area. Our team was further split into pairs.  So, it was my son and me, exploring for new outcrops.  The sun was intense, the temperature hot, and hours of hiking and staring intently at the ground for float and possibly something sticking out of a wall.  Eventually we worked our way down into a draw and found an ironstone layer.  Closer inspection revealed a large amount of fossil material.  There were bits of turtle shell, croc scutes and small bone bits all throughout.  The only complete bone was this distal caudal vert my son found.  The sight was thus named "Mitchells Micro Site".  We bagged a selection for further  study, marked the location and continued on.

 

 

From the draw, we worked our way up to the main butte.  Another pair was investigating the east side, so we began working the west side.  Only a few minutes later I spotted a small sun faded bit of float.  I began looking up the slope and saw another, and another.  As I climbed the side it was obvious that I was on a hot trail, and then I found it, a bone sticking out of the wall, just below the surface.  

 

 

Sadly, the only thing left was about the last 8 inches of the bone (like Edmontosaur), and its full of root rot so the prep is going to be ugly.  Just around the corner I followed more float down the slope and found an Ed vert centrum in the wash.

 

 

The processes are gone, but surprisingly the broken edge seen in the pic, was laying on the surface up-slope, so its reattached and the prep has begun.

 

 

Walter's team found a large surface exposure, about half a mile away and determined that my Ed finds, and another team's finds were all the same horizon of  large multitaxic bone bed.  My son ended up finding a nannotyranus tooth in the large exposure site, the only tooth found there that day.

 

And then a call came across the radio "we've got 11 vertebrae in the wall and they just keep popping out".  Of course, everyone went to check it out!

 

It appears to be a juvenile Ed. with caudal verts exposed so far, but Walter is hopeful the most of it is still in the ground.  Even though it was already late in the afternoon, I'm sure we would have stayed on the site much longer but a wicked looking storm was building fast and moving our way.  So the race was on to recover what was exposed so far and get out while the getting was good.  We barely got out too.  As soon as we got to the pavement, I could see a lowering coming down from the storm, and it wasnt much longer someone said they could see it sucking dirt up.  The last place I want to be during a tornado is in the middle of the prairie and stuck in bentonite. 

 

So that was the end of the first day.  We headed back to town tired, sweaty, but ecstatic after an incredibly successful day.