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A Story, Of An Urban Excavation Of A Fossil Gray Whale Named Raquel


PRK

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wow... again, look at those vehicles in the last photo... not one, but two split windshield VW buses. Wow.

Not to mention the Mini Cooper!

"There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant

“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley

>Paleontology is an evolving science.

>May your wonders never cease!

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Rule number one at the landfill,

NEVER look up with your mouth open!

Why?

sea gulls ;)

It's hard to remember why you drained the swamp when your surrounded by alligators.

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this whole thread has been faaaaar out, man!

Grüße,

Daniel A. Wöhr aus Südtexas

"To the motivated go the spoils."

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I add the pics cause I know there are some skeptics out there

I also know if you've been following my past threads, you know I enjoy the stories behind my fossil hunting adventures almost as much as the fossils themselves. And yes I have been on aLOTTA digs all over the western USA.

So for the fossil purists out there who wish to see fossils rather than hear a story, I thought I would post a couple more pics of the exquisite articulation/preservation of this Pleistocene beast. Which , if you remember, is the initial reason for this thread.

We haven't even begun to uncover the skull at this point ( in these photos)!.

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I'd like to know more about the nature of the matrix there, and the methods of its removal, it looks very soft and sandy... :)

"Your serpent of Egypt is bred now of your mud by the operation of your sun; so is your crocodile." Lepidus

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Hi xonenine- I'm not quite sure what you mean by "methods of removal"? Each overlaying bone was jacketed and removed individually to work on the bones below, which were removed in 2 giant jackets. #1 was the skull, removed in one jacket, and #2 jacket was the entire vertebral column in the second giant jacket (25 or 26 vertebrae), although it was a shame to see this beautifully articulated skeleton gradually dismantled.

As this was a Pleistocene fossil, the surrounding sediment didn't have much time( geologically) to lithify, so the matrix surrounding the fossil was quite sandy. And although softish when removed, it was quite tough (resistant to digging) when in place

This photo is relatively in the beginning of our project, as you can probably tell from the barren background

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wow... the two pix of the ribs and verts are amazing. What a cool specimen. So did you have toplaster jacket the ribs? Or were they solid enough you could just pick them up?

"And although softish when removed, it was quite tuff when in place" Did you mean tough (difficult/hard) or tuff (volcanic rock)?

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Hi thanks JPC- the ribs were removed individually, and due to their extreme size, did need to be jacketed before removal. And thanks for calling my attention to the tough word, I have subsequently chganged it in the previous post. TOUGH not TUFF!!!

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We collected a mammoth a few years ago. We also had public visiting days... Satrudays. We left the bones exposed after we found them so the people could all say Ooooh and Aaaah. After three weeks we found that the ribs we had exposed the first week were starting to pop wheelies; the head end of the rib stayed in place, but the distal end rose up off the ground. One of them as much as 4 inches... supporting its own weight almost along the whole of its length. At this point we decided the ribs did not need plaster jackets. It was pretty cool.

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Sounds cool! Sounds like as those mammoth ribs dried, they also warped. BTW what happened to that mammoth?

i could only wish we didnt have to jacket. The ribs took several people each, just to coordinate the turn over, and remove the individual ribs without any damage from bending, as they were over 7 feet long. I can't seem to find the rib removal photos yet either. However I'll add the next installment of this saga, mañana.

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Any associated smaller fossils like shark teeth or evidence of scavenging? It looks like the scavenging would be minimal with such a well articulated specimen.

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Yes-for one, we for some strange reason, could not find a trace of either of the lower jaws. The best logical theory would be predation. And secondly, while cleaning off the palate of the skull ( now facing up), we found three great white shark teeth ( C. carcarias) all about an inch in length, right next to the bone, another excellent indication of predation. and those sharks luckily began feeding in head area.

Probably when still in deeper water, the whale carcas was fed upon by the Carcharodon. Then the sharks probably left the rest of the complete whale alone, as it drifted into shallow water where the sharks dare not follow

We also found evidence of baleen. None of the baleen itself, but where sediment that had built up around the base of the baleen, leaving long narrow rectangular impressions of where the baleen was in place before disintegrating through time! A sort of "washboard" effect

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baleen impressions... wow.

Our mammoth is now mounted at the Tate Museum in Casper, WY (shameless plug) where I work. His name is Dee.

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Just ran across this photo and thought I would post it. It shows the unique proximity to the lower dump. The access road to the main dump entered down along the lower dump from the main paved highway about a third of a mile below. There was a drive in theater just the other side of the lower dump, so we could even watch movies at night. although we couldnt hear the sounds. The area in the upper right of the photo, was the access road to the upper dump(a borrow pit at the moment), and the fossil.

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It's actually fairly common for mandibles to be absent from whale fossils - they are the first element to be lost from a floating carcass. They are elongate, and already adjacent to an easily decomposed mucus membrane, and due to their length, bob up and down causing tensile damage at the jaw joint, hastening their disarticulation. Since they are too large for any scavenger to really move, in a case like this, it's almost certainly ascribable to decomposition in the water column, rather than scavenging at the sea floor.

Also, those grooves along the palate are actually formed by arteries which "feed" the gingival epithelial tissues which produce the keratinous baleen tissue.

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Being right "in" the dump was quite the convenience. We built a camp with discarded furniture and decorations gathered from out of the dump, (chuckle) things we could recycle and use for the moment. Sort of an " early dump motife". And as the crew grew so did the dump laden campsite. An old rocking chair here, an old lazy boy there, and a table or two. Soon it was a LARGE and very used living room. We even brought up a broken television from below to make things more homey. In all, it was a very comfortable camp, with a seemingly endless supply of furniture

All the lumber we needed was reclaimed from the dump. The wood for our fires at night, the boards for the reinforce of the larger jackets, etc.

The city even brought up some Andy gumps " port o Pottys" and left them for a couple weeks, for our convenience.

Now that's what I call community spirit! I also am really enjoying the group-narrative style here. PRK, you have a knack for encouraging conversation. Looking forward to the next installment :popcorn:

 

Greetings from the Lake of Constance. Roger

http://www.steinkern.de/

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We were constantly removing the upper layer of bones, and as they became ready for removal they were jacketed and removed quickly, so we never got a photo of the complete whale in tact, only pics of the immense fossil in different stages of removal.

At this point I should tell you that in the very beggining it was dubbed a (she)? and was christened "Raquel", because "her bones were so well stacked." The older people on this forum will know what this is all about!

Yes ludwiga, this saga became a citywide project. (ie: once, in the begining of this project, when we put out a request for glue, shellac and lots of plaster/ hydrocal. That afternoon the crew was happily greeted with several gallons of shellac and glue, and hundreds of pounds of plaster, donated by a local hardware/paint store, and delivered in a local police car). Even the officer was quite interested, as he returned several times, even off duty times. It seems even the local merchants were more than happy to accommodate our every need.

At one point even the state assemblyman (Vincent Thomas) from our district, had heard the news, and flew down from Sacramento to inspect the dig site and lend a helpful hand and suggestions with the "red tape" issues. Of which there were plenty.

Vincent Thomas is wearing the suit and tie.

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I really like that last picture... quarry and collection of cars, including the cop car. NIce.

Thiose of us old enough to understand Raquel also say, yikes, shellac! Is that what you used as a field consolidant?

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Not nearly as much shellac as diluted white glue, as shellac was in process of being phased OUT for fossils. we had a lot of shellac left over. it just leaves a hard crust that eventually crystallizes, and does NOT penetrate well, we didnt use much shellac, as we needed something to penetrate the bones

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i think i can still hear some Moby Grape playing in the background...

Grüße,

Daniel A. Wöhr aus Südtexas

"To the motivated go the spoils."

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Here's some bone shots. After the skeleton is exposed to find the size parameters of the fossil, a trench is then dug around the entire exposed skeleton, putting it on a pedestal, making it much more convienent to work on. The base of the skull is partially exposed in the lower right of the photo.

Before doing any major overburden digging we were always careful to cover the exposed bones for protection against damage from scrapes and knocks that might happen during the excavation process.

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These shots wouldn't fit on the previous post. I thought they were also interesting, so heres a nice shot of the left scapula, before jacketing for removal. In the first shot, the guy lying on the skeleton has his arm around the partially exposed atalas vertebra.

Pic#2, with Bill is in his unconventional teaching mode. Yes he was the teacher we contacted, quite the character.

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I imagine that disassembling the fossil required some type of initial survey and sketches to properly reassemble it and to record the institu position and orientation of the bones? Was that task assigned to a surveyor?

It's hard to remember why you drained the swamp when your surrounded by alligators.

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Hi squali- we took on the numbering, photographing, and drawing of the specimen ourselves , although LACMNH did sugguest doing this, and you can plainly see some of the numbers on the bones in post #55. Although, there was no need to number the sequential vertebrae as they were removed in one large and in tact jacket

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