Fossiling

The posted photos show some scenes from the past week of fossiling in the White River badlands of Northwest Nebraska, (Sioux County). The geologic strata we were searching in covered the time period of about 34 to 30 million years before present. The lower strata captured animals that roamed the area when it was a much wetter, rainforest environment, according to Dick. Above this is a layer of white ash from distant volcanic explosions. The more recent (only " 30 million year ago sediments record a much drier time. The animals present at the various times varies.

It's amazing to consider how much one spot of earth has changed over time. Down below any of the sediments we could look at were shales from even more ancient times when a sea bed was present.

The most abundant fossils in the White River formations are tortoises and oreodonts ("oreos" for short). There are many types of tortoises, and their pieces are widely scattered about. You might find a tortoise fossil from the top shell (the carapace), the lower shell, (the plastrons), or if you are really lucky, the entire shell.
Sometimes what's preserved is not the shell at all, but the inner tissue, which
has fossilized apart from the shell. These are called "nougats." Someone even found the fossilized brain cage of a small mammal.

That's what is in the one picture of the rounded blob on the rock pedestal. It is a landmark at one site.

The second common fossil is usually some part of an oreodonts, a four-legged sheep-sized grazing animal. We found many parts of these once-common grazers, including teeth, legbones, and vertebrae.

Over the week, different members of the group also found portions of a titanothere, a gigantic vegetarian, and a subhyracadon, an extinct rhinocerous. The largest find of the week was a group of fossilized skeletons on top of each other in what may have been a den.

That was the one that had to be carried out by four people at a time.

As we went along, we learned how to spot a bit of exposed tooth or tortoise shell by scanning how the light played on the sediments. Each find was carefully extracted, jacketed with the same bandages that are used to make casts, and removed after its GPS location was noted. The casts are later prepared by talented folks who piece together disjointed parts, fashion missing parts where necessary to complete a skull.

It takes a lot of work to get a specimen from the field to the museum. Even more important, it takes a lot of study to understand why the animals were present when and where they were, how they changed over time, and how they related to one another.

Fossil Finding in the Badlands

Here are some photos of our bunkhouse and ranch scenes.

The Crawford mural

As a follow-up to the posting about Lisa, here are some photos of the mural being painted. It depicts Crawford through the four seasons. We will update will future photos.

Riding with Lisa

We got to Sand Creek Ranch on Sunday. We had dinner that night with our host Barbara and her son Jim up at the Drifter’s Cook Shack, the log cabin restaurant that produces scrumptious strawberry rhubarb pies and buffalo burgers, among other specialties, in a cozy space that might fit 30 folks if they squeeze tight on the wood benches. When things get busy, the owners Mike and Linda (maker of the exquisite pies) get some help to serve and cook. Sunday, they had help from Lisa, an elfin brown-haired woman. I woke up on Monday thinking about Lisa, who had given me a nice hug by the evening’s end. I was wondering what made her glow so.

The next day, I got a hint of the answer.

Who do we see when we are in town the next day, standing outside the Ace Hardware and admiring the mural that Jean and her student were doing but…Lisa! She drove up in her red 1973 Caprice convertible, as long as a country mile, with her paintbrushes in hand to assist with the mural. I was captivated by her beautiful land barge and snapped her photo, not realizing at first who was inside. Lisa got out and greeted us and offered me the keys. “Here, take her for a ride!” She didn’t even know my last name. At first, Dick and I declined, then we got sense and joined her for a ride through Fort Robinson, just outside the town of Crawford.

Lisa showed us the tent camping spot at Fort Rob next to the cemetery that she had found peaceful and beautiful when she returned to Crawford before taking up residence there a few years ago. Lisa took us to the museum at the Fort, drove us around the officers houses, and invited us into her lovely home in Crawford. She showed us her other car treasures, a blue 1960 Rambler in mint condition, a 1970 Mercedes, and another red convertible as long or longer as the first. She asked us to each take a rock from three large crates of rocks that belonged to her boyfriend, very sick in South Carolina with throat cancer. I reached in and picked up one at random that has turned out to be a Fairburn agate, which a beautiful stone that is highly prized and is South Dakota’s state gem. Lisa is an artist, and she had beautiful pen and ink drawings. One of a porch scene with plants and treasures, another of a Chinese man and babe in arms. Like Lisa, the art was full of detail but done with a light touch.

I hope to spend more time with Lisa. She agreed to go "tanking" with us. Tanking is where you ride on a river in a cattle watering tank, something I hope to do before we leave these parts.

Well, I’m running out of time before today’s fossiling, so I will post some photos and say goodbye for now.

Windmills, cattle, and coal trains

First post from Thedford, Nebraska, where eastern-bound coal trains from Gillette pass by regularly.

This journey is made possible by fossil fuels, carrying our Honda CRV, the Tortoise, Dick, the paleo-herpetologist, in search of fossil tortoises, and me, the geographer in search of how people are, or are not, changing ways to a future where we will no longer burn fossils to make our lives go round.

I'll be posting notes and pictures regularly to share the discoveries along the way this summer.