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Upcoming Prep Project - The Green River Bird


Ptychodus04

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2 hours ago, RJB said:

Lots of whiskey could give some courage?  Ha!   Just kidding.   Gunna watch this prep for sure.  Good luck Kris, even though I dont think you need any. 

 

RB


I used to use a bit of alcohol to steady my hand on delicate preps. Not for me anymore. After years of not drinking, I don’t think it would be a benefit. :default_rofl:

 

I’m excited about this prep. It’s really challenging but fulfilling at the same time. 

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22 minutes ago, Ptychodus04 said:

here’s the tag I promised.

Cheers mate much appreciated. Really something different for you to work on. Really interesting :popcorn:

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25 minutes ago, Ptychodus04 said:

Bird prep update. It’s slow slow slow.

 

 

@Bobby Rico here’s the tag I promised.

The best preps are. :dinothumb:

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...How to Philosophize with a Hammer

 

 

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1 hour ago, Bobby Rico said:

Cheers mate much appreciated. Really something different for you to work on. Really interesting :popcorn:

Thanks. It’s a fun and challenging prep.

 

 

1 hour ago, Kane said:

The best preps are. :dinothumb:

 

This one is extra slow. I’m about 20 hours in and found a bunch of tiny little rib bones today. The soft tissue and feathers complicate it even further. The feathers floated and there are several different layers of them on top of the bones. It kills me to scribe through them but I gotta do it.

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11 hours ago, Ptychodus04 said:

 The feathers floated and there are several different layers of them on top of the bones. It kills me to scribe through them but I gotta do it.

  Oh Boy!  This would have me putting it aside for who knows how long before I could make a decision of what to do.  Plus I'm sure I would lose lots of sleep over it.  Best of luck to ya man

 

RB

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8 hours ago, RJB said:

  Oh Boy!  This would have me putting it aside for who knows how long before I could make a decision of what to do.  Plus I'm sure I would lose lots of sleep over it.  Best of luck to ya man

 

RB


That’s the best part of prepping other people’s specimens. You can only put it off for so long. :P

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6 hours ago, Ptychodus04 said:

They are almost a carbon film, extremely delicate.

Oh man!  I feel for you on this one.

 

RB

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I’ve spent the last two days working on the left foot. I’m only good for a couple hours at a time before I need a serious break. It’s hard to hold the scribe steady for any longer and there’s no room for error on this prep!

 

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Wow, check out those claws!

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

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That sure does not sound fun to prep! ;) But you are doing a really nice job! I can't wait to see what it looks like when you are all finished. 

 

Good luck, Kris! :)

 

-Micah

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10 hours ago, Ludwigia said:

Man, you sure do have your work cut out for you with this baby!


Yep. It’s quite a prep!

 

5 hours ago, hadrosauridae said:

Wow, check out those claws!


Pretty cool for sure. I may have to break down and buy another scribe to prep the groove on them. It is smaller than the point on my HW-322!

 

5 hours ago, fossilhunter21 said:

That sure does not sound fun to prep! ;) But you are doing a really nice job! I can't wait to see what it looks like when you are all finished. 

 

Good luck, Kris! :)

 

-Micah


It is a lot of fun. Challenging preps are the best. They push you to higher levels of precision. It’s hard but exciting. I wouldn’t have attempted this 10 years ago.

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Nice work.  I had one of my volunteers prep a bird.  He did a good job... found some feathers but most of the layer with feathers was an undiscernible black mass like what I am seeing a lot of here.  I am convinced that this black mass is semi-degraded (composted) feathers since on ours, they fade into a few nice shafts and barbs and barbules.  

 

short tibiotarsus, recurved claws... is this a parrot Tynskya? 

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13 hours ago, jpc said:

Nice work.  I had one of my volunteers prep a bird.  He did a good job... found some feathers but most of the layer with feathers was an undiscernible black mass like what I am seeing a lot of here.  I am convinced that this black mass is semi-degraded (composted) feathers since on ours, they fade into a few nice shafts and barbs and barbules.  

 

short tibiotarsus, recurved claws... is this a parrot Tynskya? 


Yah, the feathers here seem to be a mat rather than well preserved individual feathers. They are also in several distinct layers, suggesting that they floated in the muck before final deposition. The partial disarticulation of the skeleton also supports this hypothesis.

 

As for the ID. It’s leaning hard towards parrot but after that, things aren’t lining up with the 3 known FBM genera.

 

The skull shape seems to compare more favorably to Cyrillavis sp. (I’ll know more once it is prepped) but the extreme curvature of metacarpal I in the carpometacarpus rules out both species of Cyrilavis and Tynskya. Avolatavis is only known from 1 partial skeleton so, there’s no wings to compare but the proportions of the tarsometatarsus and phalanges in A. tenens are different than this bird. :shrug:

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On 11/25/2022 at 11:24 PM, Ptychodus04 said:

I’ve spent the last two days working on the left foot. I’m only good for a couple hours at a time before I need a serious break. It’s hard to hold the scribe steady for any longer and there’s no room for error on this prep!

Hurry  :)

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Here’s a close up of the foot I’ve been working on. This bird continues to evade identification. Pics are with Fossil Butte National Monument and the Field Museum now for help on that front.

 

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And, an overall pic of the state of the entire bird. Next prep session will focus on the wing as I need to uncover more to expose the morphology of those bones.

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