PaleoNoel's Summer of Fun: Week 1

[PaleoNoel]

A small caudal vert. May also be oreodont, difficult to tell.

Small artiodactyl astragalus.

 

[PaleoNoel]

My best find of the day came after I stopped for lunch under a grove of cottonwood trees. I gathered my belongings and headed to an area I had passed earlier, but had planned to check out on the way back. I see another  hunter was searching on his hands and knees several yards away, I give him his space as I slowly scanned the rugged terrain for fossils. He called me over to look at something he had found and as I step over a rise in his direction, my eye is caught by a slight discoloration on the ground. I took a closer look and my suspicions were confirmed: it was a tortoise and in just the right stage you want to find one in. I dropped my pack next to it and went to help my fellow hunter. While his find turned out to be geologic in origin, he did inadvertently lead me to my find of the day. After digging around the tortoise and gluing the shell to prevent any breakup of the bone, it was time to pop him out. (I call it a him now in retrospect as I would later learn that these tortoises were sexually dimorphic, with males having a concave rear plastron, while the females were more flat). Luckily, he came out in mostly in one piece aside from a few pieces of the plastron breaking free. I wrapped him up in aluminum foil and tucked him away into my bag.

 

 

[Opabinia Blues]

Ah man, this takes me back! I had so much fun on this trip this last summer. Cool seeing myself (and my backpack) in a few of these pics. I came in having a lot of enthusiasm and book knowledge but essentially zero practical skills, so I had to learn pretty fast. I didn't get quite the haul that Noel got because of this, but I came back with some pretty sweet stuff nonetheless! By the last day I felt like I actually had some handle on what I was doing.

 

Also, @PaleoNoel you gotta show everyone the "figs!"

[PrehistoricWonders]

Great report! Can’t wait for the rest of it!!

[jpc]

Nice turtle.  I would like to see that little Lance Fm mystery bone when you get it prepped. 

And just so you know, the Wyoming White River Fm is not split into Chadron Brule Fms.  We just call it White River Formation (not Group).  The lower portion has Chadronian mammals (incl titanotheres) and the upper portion has Orellan mammals (no titanotheres).  Chadronian and Orellan are North American Land mammal Ages.  In South Dakota and Nebraska the two formations look quite distinctive; here it is hard to differentiate the upper and lower by sight alone, hence no separate names.  

[IsaacTheFossilMan]

Super super excited for the next entry in this thread... I'm hooked! 

[PaleoNoel]

5 hours ago, jpc said:

Nice turtle.  I would like to see that little Lance Fm mystery bone when you get it prepped. 

And just so you know, the Wyoming White River Fm is not split into Chadron Brule Fms.  We just call it White River Formation (not Group).  The lower portion has Chadronian mammals (incl titanotheres) and the upper portion has Orellan mammals (no titanotheres).  Chadronian and Orellan are North American Land mammal Ages.  In South Dakota and Nebraska the two formations look quite distinctive; here it is hard to differentiate the upper and lower by sight alone, hence no separate names.  

Interesting, did not know that! The strata surrounding the titanothere bonebed, a big area of exposures referred to as "the Bowl" on this ranch have distinct colorations with the upper being a light pink/salmon and the lower being a greenish/ white. I don't think I got a great shot of it when we stopped there this year, but when I was helping dig last year I got a pretty good one.

[Pemphix]

Waiting for the report of the next two weeks..

[Pemphix]

No report from second week ?

[PaleoNoel]

Sorry for leaving you all hanging like this since February, but now that I'm back on my home computer that has all of my trip photos on it I'll jump back into this trip report. 

 

Following my tortoise excavation, I continued to prospect around that series of exposures and noticed a good sized bone on the ground. I picked it up and realized I had found some kind of astragalus, and since it lacked the double pulley system I was familiar with on artiodactyls, I concluded it was from a perissodactyl. While my initial thoughts were that it was from a Titanothere, the material I was able to find online told me that wasn't the case. Rather than finding a comparable picture of any white river rhino astragali on google images, a pic on Instagram of the same bone from a North Sea Woolly Rhino was what allowed me to confidently identify it as Subhyracodon. 

 

A view of the badlands

A small artiodactyl tooth

Our time in the field that afternoon was slowly waning, so I began to make my way to where the vehicles were parked. But before I left, the badlands had one final gift for me in the form of this bizarre stone.

While I had no clue what it was when I picked it up, I knew it was no regular rock. Lucky enough for me, it fit right into Dr. Nicklas' wheelhouse of expertise and he quickly identified it as a Native American sharpening stone.

 

Thus concluded a successful and beautiful day out on the White River formation!

 

Edited May 28, 2021 by PaleoNoel

[PaleoNoel]

But the fun didn't stop there! After dinner, me, Quincy @Opabinia Blues and some of the other participants drove up to the butte adjacent to our motel to hunt for ammonites in the Albian aged Newcastle Sandstone for a sunset fossil hunt.

Something I hadn't taken into consideration before we started hunting was the fading light, which made the already faint impressions of the ammonites even harder to spot. Despite this challenge, I did manage to find a few, along with some pieces of inoceramid shells 

A view of the talus slopes we were hunting.

 

Some pics I took of the ammonites from home with better lighting.

[PaleoNoel]

Now for the final day of Week 1. 

Straying from the standard formula, the group would be split between those who chose to hunt either the Lance or the White River. Given that I would be spending the next week entirely on the latter, I stuck to the Cretaceous. 

Quincy and I returned to the conglomerate side which had been productive earlier in the week, wanting to pick up where we left off. It didn't take long for me to find some small fish and croc teeth in the soft sandstone. 

Around the bend from my spot, another participant was splitting rock and found a layer packed with bivalves.

A few minutes later, I found this awesome Thescelosaurus premaxillary tooth! One of my best finds of the day.

A close up shot from home.

Croc tooth.

Eventually, my hunting neighbor had turned up a massive block of shells so I naturally had to check it out and take a pic. On the left side you can see the potential theropod bone they found in this layer, which continues into the rock. 

Croc/Alligatoroid tooth poking from the matrix.

Odd oval shaped piece, not sure what it was. Someone thought it could be some kind of crushing tooth from a fish.

A little lizard who came to see what lunatic was banging on rocks near his home.

A gar tooth (center) mixed in with other debris including dinosaur bone fragments, snails and carbonized plant material.

My makeshift work bench

A dirty and exhausted Noel after a long day of breaking conglomerate.

The road, the plains and the endless sky.

 

 

 

Edited May 28, 2021 by PaleoNoel

[PaleoNoel]

Epilogue from week 1: Saturday

Following a trip to the Mammoth Site & Frank Garcia's new Museum in the Hot Springs area with Quincy, I sat alone on the grass next to the motel. By now, all of the other participants had left and Steve &the gang were out and about enjoying Sylvan Lake and Hill City if I remember correctly.

Since I had nothing better to do, I decided to split some of the extra conglomerate I had collected with intent to work on at home. After taking a closer look at a piece from the shell bed, I noticed the smooth texture of dentine from the interior of a tooth and after a gentle split, sure enough a partial tyrannosaur tooth was exposed. It was a beautiful piece with pristine serrations.

While finding a partial tooth is better than finding no tooth, I couldn't shake the sinking feeling that the rest of it was either still in the field or attached to one of the pieces collected by one of the other hunters. Bittersweet to say the least.

[jpc]

fun stuff.  I can't make out the possible theropod bone..... can you post another phtoto...please?

 

[PaleoNoel]

2 hours ago, jpc said:

fun stuff.  I can't make out the possible theropod bone..... can you post another phtoto...please?

 

Unfortunately that's the only photo I got of it, I should've taken one when it was further along in excavation. Maybe Quincy @Opabinia Blues got a better one. Either way, it's between the bag with the PaleoBond and the spot where the positive sides of the bivalves are visible.

[Opabinia Blues]

On 5/27/2021 at 9:56 PM, PaleoNoel said:

While finding a partial tooth is better than finding no tooth, I couldn't shake the sinking feeling that the rest of it was either still in the field or attached to one of the pieces collected by one of the other hunters. Bittersweet to say the least.

I felt this one. My tyrannosaur tooth from this trip has a missing tip that I bet is still out there. Also have a half Dromaeosaur tooth from a microsite, and I’m pretty sure the other half was at that same site somewhere.

On 5/29/2021 at 11:14 PM, PaleoNoel said:

Unfortunately that's the only photo I got of it, I should've taken one when it was further along in excavation. Maybe Quincy @Opabinia Blues got a better one. Either way, it's between the bag with the PaleoBond and the spot where the positive sides of the bivalves are visible.

I didn’t get a better picture either, though the person excavating it was sure it was T. rex from the size. 
 

I was however the one who ended up with that big plate of clams. Here’s the flip side after I washed it off at home, if anyone is interested:

 

I assume that these are freshwater clams. Information about bivalves of the Hell Creek fauna is sparse. Still debating whether I keep displaying it as-is or I try to do some prep work on it. Most of the clams are exposed, would just be trying to smooth down the matrix. Seems like a lot of work for minimal gain to me.

[jpc]

Are these clams from the Lance Fm?  That is a pretty unusual for the Lance.  

[Opabinia Blues]

15 minutes ago, jpc said:

Are these clams from the Lance Fm?  That is a pretty unusual for the Lance.  

Yes, they’re from the Lance. Literally within a few meters stratigraphically of the microsite where Noel and I were finding the more typical dinosaur stuff.

Edited June 1, 2021 by Opabinia Blues

[Clint08]

Great report, and love all the pictures! I will be heading out to hunt with them the last week of June.

[PaleoNoel]

7 hours ago, Clint08 said:

Great report, and love all the pictures! I will be heading out to hunt with them the last week of June.

Nice! Hope you do well!