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Site Documentation; What And How


Boesse

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It depends upon the locality, and the sort of find. For my collecting in Santa Cruz, my field notes use the foots of streets that terminate at the cliffs as reference points - so my notes, at the minimum, will include a field number (e.g. RWB 122), a date, the stratum (e.g. 1.5 meters above base of formation, upper shellbed, bonebed 3), the approximate locality (e.g. 20 meters east of Auspex Drive, two meters above wave cut platform) and a list of the elements and possible identifications - all of which then are wrapped up and placed in the same bag (or multiple bags) and then the field number is marked on the bag in permanent marker.

Such a simplified scenario is OK when dealing with a linear outcrop like coastal cliffs - but in a 3D outcrop like the badlands of Montana, it's a bit more challenging. GPS coordinates are a must, accompanying detailed notes on the exact position of the find and a sketch. My buddy Denver Fowler at Museum of the Rockies goes a bit further, and takes numerous photos from different angles which he marks up that evening when he gets back to camp on his laptop. He also takes a brief video in which he narrates a quick locality description including the date and time, walks and pans around to see relevant scenery, and then a closeup of the fossil.

A third example is a coastal locality I prospected as an undergraduate - there were no streets or landmarks from which to measure, so I took photos from www.californiacoastline.org (taken by a helicopter) and marked off every spot on the cliffs where I had found fossils, assigning each locality a different number - and I soon had them committed to memory (I can still - almost ten years later - recall almost all of the locality numbers from memory).

Such an approach is great if you make multiple visits to a locality - take a printed out photo with you, make a pinhole on the photograph where the fossil occurrence (or numerous fossil occurrences!) and on the backside draw a circle around the pinhole and write down the field number. This is a standard convention for marking the position of strike and dips (or other data recordings) in field geology.

This just goes to show that there is no standard, and that it takes some flexibility and creativity in the field to find an optimal method. So long as you record - somehow - 1) who collected it, 2) where it was collected, 3) when it was collected, 4) the stratum it was collected from, 5) what was collected and finally 6) how it was collected (I just realized that this list is quite literally the who, what, where, when, why, and how of journalism - the why part is a bit redundant, as you don't really need any reason to collect a fossil other than it's totally awesome). So long as you can do that - whether by notes, sketches, photos, video, GPS coordinates or a combination of the above - you will go far. Admittedly, if you have a fossil you collected and you can't remember the date is collected, that's fine; no paleontologist is going to thumb their nose at that and declare they're no longer interested in studying it (the stratum is the more important "when" in the equation by far).

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Most people may not have the ability, time, or desire to measure a full stratigraphic section and determine exactly which geologic horizon the bone was found in, but if they take lots of photographs and notes to document EXACTLY which hole in the ground the fossil came out of, and how to find that spot again, then if the fossil later becomes scientifically significant, paleontologists could revisit the original site and make their own stratigraphic measurements and analysis.

These days, cameras are common and file space is cheap, so always take more photos than you think you need.

Photos and notes to take:

-Up close photos of fossil in the ground, from many angles - looking straight down on top of fossil, looking straight at side of fossil (to see vertical position within layer), and every angle in between. You'll probably never need most of them, but if you do need one later, you'll sure be glad you have it. Use something for scale. Ruler or scale bar is best, a tool of known size is second best, and a foot or hand is third best.

-Take GPS coordinates, and make sure to note which datum your device uses (NAD27, WGS84, etc). The same GPS coordinates in different datums can plot hundreds of feet apart in a mapping program.

-Step back and take photo of the whole hill/cliff/etc, to show how high the fossil is on the cliff. Leave a backpack or something near the fossil spot if the fossil itself is too small to see from a distance. Use something for scale, like a meter stick or person.

-Standing in the same spot as the last photo, turn around slowly and take a 360 degree panoramic of photos. This way, when someone is trying to find the site again, once they get close to this spot they will easily be able to match up the fossil hole.

-Depending how in-the-middle-of-nowhere you are, when you hike back to your car, stop to turn around and take more photos looking toward the site from a distance. When you get home, add arrows to these photos to show which hill it is. That way a future person can walk in the right direction to find the site.

-Write down directions to find the site again. Which road did you take, where did you park, which way did you walk? Where there any notable features along the way? Is there one path that's better than another?

-On a map, mark the exact location of the site, in case the GPS coordinates are slightly off or you forgot to record which datum your device used. Topographic maps are best, or a google earth satellite photo is good too.

With all of this locality data, someone 50 or 100 years from now could find the site again and take whatever geologic data they might need. Without this data, in 50 or 100 years the fossil would just be a pretty object of very limited scientific use. And yes, fossils collected 100 years ago without good locality data are sitting in museums, frustrating paleontologists who have to do a lot of detective work to try to hunt own the original site. Let's try to make life easier for future researchers.

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A dot drawn on the map will be good forever, even if coordinate systems change in the future. If you don't know which datum something is using, at least record the product name and date, so someone might be able to hunt down the datum info in the future.

Google Maps and Google Earth use the WGS84 datum. If that ever changes in the future, at least someone should be able to find out that it was WGS84 in 2014.

If you take coordinates measured in NAD27 and plot them directly in Google Earth, you can end up in the middle of a field instead of a nice rocky outcrop.

Also, UTM is more commonly used now than latitude/longitude (although older equipment may still prefer lat/long), so try to change your Google Earth preferences to UTM. There are also websites than will convert lat/long into UTM, like http://www.rcn.montana.edu/Resources/Converter.aspx. Finding programs to convert from one datum to another is more difficult (ie, not free online).

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The scientific value of a fossil is dependent on context; its orientation and associations, the site's geology and taphonomy, and location, location, location. Future researchers may need to visit the exact site of the find, and a collector with this in mind will strive to record the information that will make this possible.

The first several posts in this thread originated in another topic, and have been moved here as 'seed stock' for what is hoped will be a growing reference for the field collector wishing to preserve the full scientific value of their specimens.

"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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Saving a small piece of rock/sediment found with the fossil can also be very helpful in the future. The sediment type, grain size, and mineralogical composition can be useful for determining the depositional environment, and can sometimes help narrow down the original site location, if all other locality data gets lost. The sediment might contain pollen or ostracods for dating and environmental analysis, and certain types of sediment might even be useful for radiometric dating.

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That's a good idea. Most of my finds come on matrix anyway but I can see this being useful for those sites where everything is isolated.

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Here is a <LINK> to a wonderful topic by digit about his experience at the Thomas Farm Site volunteer dig; real hands-on stuff.

"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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