Little surface cleaning for your Sunday.
Preparators go through multiple steps when cleaning fossils from the field. You much rather bring back a ton of rock encasing the fossil to the lab – because let’s face it – these guys have survived for 65.5+ mya; they’ll be fine in the rock until you can get back to a proper facility to then remove them from the surrounding matrix.
These, though, are surface fossils known as “float”. You literally trip over them in the field because the rock/landscape has been eroded and these guys are just chilling on the surface. Easy, right? Well, sometimes. Depending on the specimen (this being of the Diplodocidae family), you can continue finding bits and pieces for years to come every season. Thousands of shards just resting on the surface.
Since most/all of the rock has been eroded, these shards are easier to clean, but piecing them back together is tough when you’re dealing with so many different shapes, colours, sizes, textures, etc.
These were three bits found in one of the documented bags by a volunteer, who then notified me to confirm the match, and have them glued together.
Before photos: The fossils slightly cleaned by a volunteer once she found they matched.
After photos: Further cleaned by myself and then photographed right before I bonded them together.
“Piecing” fragments of fossils can be very frustrating because these have been morphed, moved around, shattered, etc. Sometimes you know two pieces are from one rib, but you’re missing about two inches worth of fossil. Sometimes you never find that missing piece, thus we will use special putty to fill it in, or leave notes for future volunteers and staff to keep searching for the missing link.
Even though the pieces have been bonded together, I will continue to shine it up a bit more, but it’s looking good so far. It’s the ten thousand other pieces that need some more attention now!
