December 6th, 2013
If there was ever a roller coaster year, 2011 was it; big highs and big lows. We began the year the same as last... in the wet. May, 2011 was a rainy cold, miserable month. We tried to get out and do some exploration, but alas it was too wet to even think about driving out most days. As it turned out , the rain wasn't completely bad. All the indoor time gave me the opportunity to finish a good deal of the interior finishes to our new building and prep lab. I wasn't able to get everything done as I liked, but the final result came together nicely.
Once we finally made it out to the field, things got real interesting. A new ranch in Wyoming was producing and producing well. I made a bit of a convoluted deal to get access, but I thought it would be worth it, given the untapped potential of the ground. A quick survey of the land revealed numerous Triceratops and Edmontosaurus partial skeletons and of even greater interest something the rancher thought was an Ankylosaur. He was right! A quick look over the spot revealed a very rare Edmontonia specimen that was coming out in various places. As we dug back we got more and more excited. Ankylosaur scutes were everywhere! Not only was there lots of them, but they were in excellent shape. Unfortunately, our euphoria quickly turned to confusion. The more scutes we found, the stranger the dig became. There were no bones. We dug and dug and dug. Nothing. Just a large pile of scutes. We removed half a mountain and unfortunately, in the end, we had over 400 scutes, one badly weathered rib, and a of couple toes! The trouble is, 400 scutes one rib and a couple toes do not make a skeleton. Frustrating. LOL! As near as we can tell, the Ankylosaur must have decayed and disarticulated on the floodplain, leaving the pile of armor and a handful of bones. During a minor flood event, the armor which is more dense and more hydrodynamic (like little frisbees), than the other bones, was picked up and washed into a nearby oxbow lake. Here, they were sorted and concentrated. Very interesting from a scientific standpoint, but not very interesting to museums looking for a great, mountable display piece.
Two other duckbill skeletons on a different ranch looked very promising, until we actually began to dig. Then they too petered out. Our giant sea turtle site yielded a little more of the critter, but that too ended abbruptly. Another deal I had in the works with a different land owner fell looked extremely promising (virgin ground), but then that too imploded, leaving me frustrated and scratching my head. Lady luck just didn't want to smile on us in 2011 no matter which direction we tried. Eventually, our solo field time ran out, and the tour season hit us with a vengence. We were so busy with tours (which was great mind you), that we had little time for anything else. Guests were coming from all over the country.... Illinois, Hawaii, New Jersey, Texas, Florida, Wisconsin, California etc. One very interesting call we recieved was from a guy working for FORD motor company. He explained that they had a contest called "GO DO FORD EXPLORER." People were asked to write an essay on what they would "go do" with a brand-new decked out Ford Explorer if they had one for one week. One of the winners wanted to go on a dinosaur dig and the guy on the phone wanted to know if we could provide it for them. WE were more than happy to help. The contest winners were a nice family from Illinois with two great kids. The one is sure to become a paleontologist one day given his enthusiam and hard work. The commercial they filmed on our digs turned out great. It wound up being more of a commercial for us. If you haven't seen it yet, please visit youtube and check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=lnCfmqoxWA0 It's great!
Since none of the skeletons we were going for had panned out, time was short, and tours were high, we decided to focus on our bread and butter site the "Tooth Draw". This turned out to be a great decision, because we were able to really get in there and see what was going on with the deposit. A lot of very interesting and important specimens came out this year, including a gorgeous left dentary of an adult T. rex. If you'll recall, several years ago we found a partial T. rex Tibia from the TD-west about 150 yards away. It's a stretch, but possible that the two were from the same animal. If that is the case it is possible that we have a disarticulated T. rex in there somewhere. Wouldn't that be something! Next summer we intend to spend a good deal of our time chasing that bone bed in the hopes that somewhere in its depths a new Rex lies in wait.
At the begining of September our summer was unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it, LOL) cut short. We were called on to do the L.A. County Fair and their Jurassic Planet exhibit again and this time, we were ready. This time, my whole family tagged along and my wife ran the sale booth. This time, she handled the customers, while I did the educational shows. One morning we had over 22,000 kids come past our displays. It was a lot of work, but well worth it. We sold out of nearly every common and commercial fossil we brought along.