North Dakota Dinosaur Dig: Part 4

(Be sure to read part 1, part 2 and part 3 first)

Ah, Thursday and Friday. We're almost at the end of our journey. I'm not posting anything about Friday as it was just our drive home.

After our rain day Wednesday we were itching to get back out in the field on Thursday.

We had a fantastic day. I drank over four liters of water in the field and I was still thirsty. I can see how if you were to run out of water out there it could be bad very quickly. It wasn't even that hot. The week before we arrived they were having temperatures in the 100s.

The arrow on the left shows the view of our van from where we ate lunch Thursday. That white splotch is an 18 foot long 15 passenger van.

Here's the same photo uncropped for comparison. Can you pick out the van? We hiked though this basin and stopped atop this butte for lunch. The spot we're sitting in is relatively flat as they removed a triceratops from this site a few years ago. There were some bone scraps left behind and little pieces of plaster from making a field jacket for the beast. Can you imagine carrying the dinosaur back to where the van is in this photo?

I sometimes read complaints that the fossil record is incomplete. This sometimes comes from those who oppose the theory of evolution. They argue that there has been plenty of time for scientists to find all the fossils they need and transitional forms have not been found. First of all, EVERY fossil is a transitional form since evolution is a gradual process. The "no transitional forms" argument is completely bogus and anyone who uses it shows a gross misunderstanding of what evolution is and how it works.

Second, people who complain in gaps in the fossil record need to go on a dig to appreciate how hard it is to get these finds out of the field. The dinosaurs are embedded in hard rock. First you have to find one, then you have to have the time and physical and financial resources to spend a year or more getting it out of the ground. This often involves taking off layers of stone many feet thick, one exacto blade scrape at a time. Imagine scraping away a whole hillside of hard rock with a dull exacto blade in blazing heat and humidity. Once you finally uncover the dinosaur you have to make a plaster field jacket and then transport it back to a lab (which in some cases means building new roads just to reach the site) It doesn't end there, you have to spend possibly years cleaning and assembling it which takes more money. Once you see the vastness on an area like this and then realize there are essentially two or three people with a shoestring budget trying to find the treasures that have been battered by erosion and covered over for 65 million years and you begin to see how it may take some time to fill in our gaps in understanding. This is still a very young science and there are many millions of critters still waiting to be dug up.

Thursday was all about microsites. Microsites are locations rich in animal parts but not necessarily complete animals. These were often little backwater areas long rivers. As animals died in or near the river their remains broke apart and were carried downstream. These parts all collected in slow spots and when scientists find these today the sites are very valuable scientifically. It may not seem as interesting if there are no complete animals at a site but a complete animal doesn't give us much information about the ecology of the place it lived. In microsites we get a cross section of animal life and that can tell us what types of animals lived together in the same area. Working a microsite means we spent a good part of the day sitting on the ground moving painstakingly forward looking for teeth, turtle shell pieces, fish scales and small limb bones. At the third site of the day I found two dromeosaur teeth but stupidly didn't take a picture. This particular site was still of scientific interest so we couldn't keep anything. It was similar to the teeth pictured here.

In the photo to the left we're heading home for dinner on Thursday. You can click on it (or any photo on the blog) to view a bigger image. The barbed wire fence on the left hand side of the picture marks the border with Montana. I could have spent many more hours in the field I was having so much fun. I inhaled a huge dinner of nachos and encheladas after the hour and thirty minute van trip back to Marmarth. I was very excited to not have hot dish.

I had a great time on the trip and I can't wait to go on another dig. I'll have to though. We need to line up some funding as this was an expensive summer camp to offer. In the mean time I'll have to content myself hunting down an relatively complete ordovician period cephalopod along the banks of the Mississippi or perhaps a complete crinoid. That should keep me busy.

~Kirk

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How to tell how old a bird is

Today we taught our Fall Migration class so that means bird banding. This was the first non-raining day all week which made for a lot nicer conditions. The lead bander for the day was non other than my co-host on the podcast, Paul Smithson. I took a break during the day to see what they were catching and learn a little more about ageing birds. When I arrived, Paul was taking out the first bird of the day, a Fox Sparrow. This was a treat as it was the first Fox Sparrow at the nature center this fall. I love these big robust sparrows and their feeding behavior. Paul set to the task of gathering information about the bird to be recorded before it was let go. One of the things banders try to determine is how old a bird is. Often the distinction is between a hatching year bird (HY) or after hatching year bird (AHY). In the photo below he's looking at the outer rectrices to see how worn they are.


Here's the diagram banders use to determine the wear on the outer rectrices of a Fox Sparrow. Ideally they would look like one of the two drawings marked "Fall." In reality, that doesn't always work. In this case, the feathers looked somewhere in between the two drawings. He checked a couple of other feathers but wasn't confident enough to make a determination. It was probably a hatching year bird but without enough certain information the age was put down as unknown.
A very different technique came into play while determining the age of all the White-throated sparrows that were caught this morning. In the fall, white-throated sparrows can be aged by looking at the color of the iris of the eye. A hatching year bird will have a grayish brown to brown iris while an after hatching year bird will have a reddish brown iris. The distinction can be subtle and good lighting helps. Can you tell what color the iris is for the bird below? It was only slightly easier in person, which is to say, hard.

I thought it would be fun to include another photo here of a white-throated sparrow. Look at the difference in the heads. There are two different color morphs of the White-throated Sparrow. The one above is a tan-striped morph as the light colored stripes on the head are tan. In contrast, the bird below is a white-striped morph. (The stripes looked even whiter in person)
These are not two different sub-species. They are both represented about evenly in the population. What is really fascinating is that research suggests that the birds almost always mate with a bird that has the opposite color morph. Also, both males and females of the white-stripe morph tend to be more aggressive during mating season. The more aggressive white-striped females are preferred by both color types of males. Ironically, both types of females prefer the less aggressive tan-striped males. So, white-striped females do well and tan-striped males do well while white-striped males and tan-striped females do less well. That's all clear right?

Another fun bird of the day was a Winter Wren. It was the first winter wren caught at the nature center in 2009. I just love that little tail!


That's all for tonight. Thanks for stopping in.

~Kirk

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Name the Screech Owl Contest

The Raptor Center at the University of Minnesota has a new Eastern Screech Owl education bird and they want your help naming it. If you think you have a good name for the little guy click on over to their website and enter your idea for a name in their contest. Education birds are important ambassadors to the animal world as they allow a wild bird to come in front of an audience so the public can understand them better.

There are two different kinds of education birds. Some are injured birds that cannot return to the wild. This is often a case of a broken wing or even a broken jaw like the Red-tailed Hawk I work with at the Lee & Rose Warner Nature Center. The other type of education bird is an imprinted bird. This is the case with the new Screech Owl you can name and is also the case with the American Kestrel I work with on outreach programs. Imprinted birds were taken from the nest or found when very young. Usually a well-meaning member of the public takes them in and tried to raise them instead of taking them to the raptor center or leaving them along like they should. The birds accidentally imprint on humans instead of their parents and basically never learn to be an adult bird. It is then our responsibility to take care of them for the rest of their lives.

Go name that owl and good luck!

~Kirk

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Call for Submissions: I and the Bird #111

I'll be hosting I and the Bird number 111 on October 15th. I'm now accepting submissions of blog posts.

I and the Bird is a rotating blog carnival. Twice a month, a different blog hosts the publication of an edition of the carnival. The host collects submitted blog posts on birds and aggregates them into one fun round-up of what people are seeing and writing about. If you have a blog and write about birds then you too can participate. Send an email with your name and a link to your submission to kirkmona (at) yahoo (dot) com ASAP. It is a great way to expose new readers to your blog.

~Kirk

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North Dakota dinosaur Dig: Part 3

(Be sure to read part 1 and Part 2 first)

Tuesday night we heard a rumble in the air. No, it wasn't one of the two nightly coal trains that sped through town about 50 feet from my window, it was a storm. I was dreading rain as it was completely out of our control and would bring all fossil hunting to a screeching halt. This is perhaps a good point to put in a picture of the "roads" we traveled on to get to the sites. These are not roads, they are two-track ranch trails through the Little Missouri National Grasslands and private ranches. Rain is not a good thing for two tracks as it makes them impassable mud pits.

Even at their best, these two tracks are a crazy ride. Both tracks don't have to be at the same height. The kids said it was more fun than an amusement park. It was a lot of fun to drive and it felt a lot wilder than it really was. We paused to take this photo on what was a pretty typical slope. From inside the van it felt like this was an extreme 45 degree angle and we were going to flip the thing. In reality it was probably only about 18 degrees.

It doesn't look that bad you say? Okay, okay, you'll have to check out the video. This was not for people who get carsick! I wonder if this was against our rental agreement? We were listening to They Might Be Giants in the van so that's what you'll hear in the background if you have the volume up.

These were active ranch lands so we often shared the "road" with cattle. They usually got out of the way but the view to the left was pretty common. We often had to get out and open and close gates as we drove along. The rain actually stopped by Wednesday morning but the roads would still be muddy.





Since the back country was impassable, we headed into Montana to the little town of Ekalaka where locals drove by again and again to look at the strangers. I'm glad we could entertain them. Ekalaka is home to the Carter County Museum which has a nice small fossil collection including a large hadrosaur, a copy of the skull of Peck's Rex (pictured to the left), and a triceratops skull. There were other nice small paleo items as well.



Being the county museum it also featured historical items. My brother would have appreciated the two headed calf. Now that's history we can all ogle at and appreciate. Here's a picture for you Erik.

We ate lunch at the historic and sacred native site the Medicine Rocks which locals have taken care of for the tribes by carving their names, two feet high, into the soft sacred stone. Way to go Montana. It was pretty disgusting not to mention horribly insulting. I consider all religion pretty silly but I still don't think it is okay to desecrate someone's holy site by carving your name into it. It would be like going into a catholic church and carving "Class of 95 RULZ!!!" into Jesus's chest over the altar. I found the place kind of depressing.

We finished up Wednesday in town by casting some plastic resin replicas of dinosaur teeth and claws. In the photo, I am showing kids how to add a little natural grit to their replica t-rex tooth to give it that fresh-out-of-the-ground look. Thanks to Doug for letting us work out of his garage as a temporary lab! We learned how to make the molds with real fossils and then how to cast as well. It was a really nice hands-on lesson for the kids in how to do actual lab work albeit in a pretty informal setting. I have lots of other great photos from Wednesday but since they all show the kids faces really clearly I don't think I can use them here.

Thanks for reading, come back tomorrow for part 4.

~Kirk

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North Dakota Dinosaur Dig: Part 2

Here's post number 2 about my dinosaur hunting trip. (Be sure to read part 1 first!) I present, Tuesday.

Tuesday we headed out to the Triceratops site. This is a site where they were working on a partially complete triceratops. It was very neat to see, though a bit confusing as the skeleton was not complete. I know what a sacrum and ilium are but I'm guessing the kids didn't and had a harder time making sense of the jumble of bones. I wasn't going to include a photo because unless you know what you are looking at it just looks like a shot of the ground and some rocks. I figured what the heck, why not include it. I think it is telling. Take a look at the photo to the left. Can you see the triceratops? This illustrates nicely why this is such slow work. The fossils are hard to locate and often very fragile.

The previous day, a group had made a plaster field jacket for the triceratops femur so we helped haul that out. It was very heavy. I believe this was one of the only pieces taken out as this was the last week of the season and there was not time to remove the entire dinosaur. It would have to be capped for the winter so that it would not degrade now that it was exposed. That's me in the green on the back right getting ready to lower the femur down a small hill. I think the dark blotch on the horizon might be the truck we were carrying it to. We stopped to rest a lot. The field jacket consists of a 2x4 for support, some foil and a lot of plaster strips. The femur was enormous.



While waiting to carry out the femur I did a little prospecting and located a rich trail of bone fragments coming down the hillside maybe 100 feet from the triceratops. I called the rest of the group over and we followed the pieces up to the top of the hill where they stopped. We dug a little but didn't find anything. The two experts with us looked at some of the pieces we found and could tell that they were triceratops frill. It was really cool to follow the trail and start looking for more even though we didn't turn up anything. They hadn't found the head of the triceratops they were excavating 100 feet away so perhaps it disassociated when it died and we were finding pieces of the head of the one they were digging up. Who knows.

Here I am doing a little cleaning up on a different piece of frill. You can see the lines from where the blood vessels were. If you think that triceratops were cold blooded then you think the blood vessels were there to help heat up the dinosaurs via passive solar collection. If you think they were warm blooded then the blood vessels may have helped it cool down. I'll leave that debate to the experts.

FYI: The stylish latex gloves are actually to keep paint and chemicals off my hands as we were making plastic casts of dinosaur teeth and talons on the table in the background.


Later that day we climbed to the top of a butte and felt one of the strongest winds I've ever felt in my life. I took this clip of video but it doesn't do the force of the wind justice. You can get a good view of the basin we are about to descend into as I pan across the landscape. I know it isn't the best video but it also gives you an idea of the landscape.



Atop this bluff we collected some of the K-T boundary. This is the geologic boundary between the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods. This layer of ash comes from the meteorite impact that slammed into the Yucatan peninsula 65 million years ago and almost ended all life on earth. The actual K-T boundary here is very visible, one of the best spots on earth to see it. You can even see yellow ribbons of iridium in the black. Iridium in this concentration generally only comes from meteors.

For reference, check out this satellite photo.


View Larger Map
The marker marks the exact spot we collected the KT boundary. Can you see why they call this the Hell Creek formation? It isn't a real hospitable location. The basin to the south of the butte is where we spent the day hiking and looking for fossils.

We headed down into the basin and scouted out several cool sites. We found many pieces of turtle shell. Most pieces were about the size of a quarter.

The pieces I found are from trionychid turtles such as this one. The complete one in the photo is a replica in the Warner Nature Center collection. For size reference, that is a standard countertop it is sitting on and the fossil takes up the entire depth of the counter. These large turtles are related to the soft shelled turtles that inhabit rivers today. The basic turtle design is evolutionarily very robust and has changed little over time.

At one particularly interesting site after lunch I picked up some broken pieces of fossil that had washed into a small wash coming off a hillside. Since the pieces were found close together (within a five foot stretch) and all appeared similar I put them into their own bag and asked our leader about them. He said they were from a turtle and that I could keep them as they were just broken scrap type pieces. I took them home and to my delight two of the pieces fit together. As I played with them a second piece fell into place and then a third, then a fourth. All in all there were 18 pieces and 9 of them fit together but they don't add up to much.

What I can tell is that it is a portion of the anterior right plastron of a turtle. I have one piece of carapace as well. You can see the curved up portion where the plastron would have connected to the carapace of the turtle. It seems about twice as thick as the trionychid shell pieces we found so I need to do some digging to get and idea of what species I'm dealing with. My impression is that trionychid turtles did not have such solid plastrons.

I had a great time putting all the pieces together. I just wish I had a whole turtle to work with! It was a like a fantastic challenging jigsaw puzzle but in the end, instead of a photo of a basket full of puppies or kittens, you end up with a fossil of an animal that lived 65 million years ago. Pretty damn cool.

We continued on our hike through the basin learning about geology and fossils until our water ran out and we needed to head back. We spotted a badly crumbled hadrosaur femur on the ground and noted it with GPS before turning for home. Maybe another group can look longer at this area next season.

That's all for Today. Come back tomorrow for Part 3!

~Kirk

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North Dakota Dinosaur Dig: Part 1

Over the next four days I'll be recounting the dinosaur dig I went on in the summer of 2007 with the Marmarth Research Foundation. Here's Part One.

In the summer of 2006, I taught my regular Fossils to Feathers summer camp where we dig up local fossils from the Ordovician and then talk about birds and how birds are related to life that existed earlier. It is basically a class about evolution. Fellow Warner naturalist Bekah Dalen brought in some fossils to show me over the summer. She said she got them on a dinosaur dig while working at the Children's Museum. Hmm, we thought, why don't we lead a dinosaur dig though work?

Here were the two selling points.

1. Digging up dinosaurs
and
2. Getting paid to do it

Need I say more?

We offered the summer camp in the summer of 2007 and we took seven 6-8th grade kids on a 10 hour van ride to the far nether regions of North Dakota to root around in the famous Hell Creek Formation. (Okay, famous to other geeks, geologists and paleo-types.)

We worked with Marmarth Research Foundation and the week was tons of fun. Fossil wise we found many pieces of trionychid turtles and parts of other species of turtles. We found champsosaur bones, a hadrosaur femur, a triceratops femur, a triceratops tooth, dromeosaur teeth, fossil trees, crocodile teeth, freshwater ray teeth, triceratops frill and more. The pictures tell a good story so let's start there.

We set out on Sunday for the 10 hour ride to Marmarth, ND. The highlight of the trip was of course stopping to gawk at Salem Sue the world's largest holstein cow statue in New Salem, ND. That's six tons of reinforced fiberglass in the shape of a cow up there on that butte. She's actually the world's largest fiberglass animal. Okay so the picture is awful. Follow the link for up close giant cow bliss. This is largest cow I've ever seen. It is much larger than Chatty Belle.

We arrived in Marmarth just in time for dinner. The kids were interested in what the food would be so we joked with them that it would be Tater Tot hotdish. We fell out of the van and into the cafe only to discover that dinner that night was indeed tater tot hotdish. That night we got our room assignments in the Marmarth Bunkhouse. The bunkhouse was built for railway workers back in the old days. As far accommodations for a dinosaur dig this was posh. Most digs involve sleeping in tents so this was nice. There was a phone, showers, private rooms and satellite TV. Weirdly, the kids all wanted to watch shows about serial killers while I preferred spongebob. Go figure.

Monday morning we headed out to a site where kids a few years ago uncovered a hadrosaur femur. There is still probably more of the dino inside the hillside but a LOT of rock would have to be removed to get at it. Maybe someday, but for now there are easier quarry. I found one of my first cool things here. It was a little piece of a trionychid turtle shell. It was thrilling but little did I know I would be seeing thousands of such parts in the next few days. This site was also home to many many modern rodent bones as a large owl roosted in the area and the ground was littered with bones and owl pellets. Our leader, Doug Hanks, showed us a profile of the rock in the area and taught us how to read the record of what had happened there. Here he is explaining the term orogeny to the kids, as in the Rocky Mountain Orogeny. A couple of days later he asked the kids, "And what do we call that event that was happening to the west at this time?" To which one of the kids replied, "Oh! The Rocky Mountain Orgy!" He realized what he said as soon as it came out, he turned bright red and we all had a good laugh.

Monday afternoon we headed out to another area to work on a site rich in turtles. It is apparently one of the richest turtle sites in the world. We didn't see any. Such is this line of work. I used an exacto knife to slowly carve out a one foot square area. In an hour our so I went down about four inches. This is the very unglamourous part of field work i.e. carefully looking for nothing. The area I worked in was where they had just removed six complete turtles so it was important to keep searching. It was too bad we didn't uncover anything but that's part of the job too.

Dinner Monday was meatloaf hotdish. We ate LOTS of hotdish (that would be casserole to you non-midwesterners) When I say meatloaf I mean many many pounds of ground beef tossed into a pan, covered in ketchup and baked. I think there may have been a can of "cream of something" soup mixed in. Welcome to flavor country. Why didn't I take any pictures of the food?

That's it for the first installment. Return tomorrow for Part 2.

~Kirk

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