A Day in the Life of Paleontologist Thomas Carr

Normally, this is a very long and tiring process, but lucky for you, I've been able to join doctor Carr in his Carthage student crew on a few digs. So the hard work is already done, and in this short film we will share some of the experiences we go through on a typical dig. Now we can finally get onto the field. This is a very significant moment for us. So we can actually do what we've been waiting to do for a year. And because the dinosaur discovery museum is so focused on dinosaur evolution, you'll see those are the fossils we are after. I have learned a number of things from doctor car on these digs. One is that we have to start our day early because it gets way too hot to work in the afternoon. You want coffee, please, black? We also have to leave camp with everything we need, so there's a lot of prep work to be done. When we have all of our equipment, along with plenty of food and water, we are ready to head out for a busy and safe day. There are three major parts of a dig, the first is prospecting. Hey, look at that. I've got tangled prospecting is looking around or carefully observing your area for bone like objects. Walking around the hillside, we look for scatter or possibly just a single bone or fragment. 

This is what I consider a scatter and what we do is we follow it up and there's more bone up there, so who knows it may continue further up. If we find something of interest, we look at it more closely. We carefully dig around the object, exposing it without harming or disturbing it. That's right. That's rock. Well, I might have found something else. It looks exactly the same usually this growth won't be hanging on to a rock. It'll be hanging onto a bone. So I'm not sure I think I should ask Eric to come over. Take a look at this. Yes? Maybe? Yeah, I think so. Looking like it? This is usually the indication to me. This is growth on here. Yeah. That's a spread. It's a piece of bone. It's definitely a piece of bone. Once something is identified as a bone, we start a process called quarry, quarrying is digging around the fossil to expose it. In to see if there are other bones around. There are very important parts of this process including first marking the objects exact location. We do this using GPS. This ensures that we always know precisely where the bone was found. Then, as much dirt as possible needs to be removed without disturbing the bone. We then apply coats of a liquid plastic called vinex, to stabilize the fossil. 

The site is also a mapped before removing any bones, which helps pinpoint their relationship to one another. And this brings up a good point. During a dig we log or take notes on everything. It is important to have documentation on all aspects of fossil digs. I'm just going to take some notes on what we did yesterday. After the fossils are stabilized, GPS and map, they are wrapped in a messy but sort of fun process called jacketing. Jacketing ensures that each specimen is protected as much as possible. We encase the bone inside a plaster jacket. When the top half is dry, the fossils rolled over and the jacket is completed. The jacketed fossil bakes for about a day in the sun. And is then ready for transport. Some jackets get very heavy. We had to carry this one back in the evening to avoid the heat of the day. This step by step procedure of a typical find prospecting, quarrying, vine acting, mapping, jacketing, and finally extraction aids not only preserving the bones, but preserving an understanding what the bones in their location can mean. Some definitely ending on a good note. 

It's pretty exciting. I mean, anytime you find any little thing that's exciting, but being in the same grid with the portion of the fema we found last year that's pretty exciting, pretty exciting. After long hours of digging, it's time to call it a day. We make sure our fossils are covered to protect them from the weather, so we can pick up where we left off. We grab our personal items and head back to camp. Like any important undertaking patients is key. And experiencing paleontology for a day, hopefully demonstrates that patients has its own rewards. And when a discovery is made, if the work is done and the right steps taken, that patience pays off. Hey, science is not boring. Check it out.