Winter Update

It has been cold. And rainy. But this has not stopped us from accomplishing a lot both outside and inside.

Current matters of the digging kind:

1. Box 7A is almost done!


and volunteer Katlynn Thompson makes excavating the rest of it look easy

2. Box 14 has been exposed down to more levels.

After removing more fill and plastic we have exposed more of the deposit edges and found more boards, metal bands, crumbling sides, buried artifacts from initial excavation (electrical wiring and a tupper-ware lid) and discovered this:


??? A hole in the west side edge of the deposit.

Recent finds of the ancient kind in 14 include:


Dire wolf sacrum found at bottom of level 3


Little Timmy's humeri. Here is the proximal end of one standing exposed. It has an old break that caliche filled. This end was removed at that break and the rest of the bone lies in level 4. We also have its other humerus lying to the west in L4.


A coyote skull, seen under the dark hard asphalt in this picture.

It's molars are in the lower center.


We continue to be captivated in curiosity by box 14 caliche. This is the top of a layer of it that we exposed in grid D-3 L4.


Here is a cross-section of caliche in the D-3 L4 south wall.


And a closer look because we love it so much.

Recent excavator activities of the non-digging kind

Last month excavators and Aisling took some time to make 2 new temporary museum exhibits featuring findings from Project 23. After putting some good use to the many cold rainy days of December, we now have an exhibit about the taphonomy of our box 1 American lion "Fluffy" and an exhibit about how box 5B was excavated and what we found. Come check them out in the Page Museum near the "fishbowl"!

Also, we have been starting to screen-wash non-asphaltic matrix buckets from box 5B to see if they are sterile. Here Michelle and Karin break apart matrix of different soil types within a grid that have been soaking in water.

We are planning on having a larger washing station made for us so we can quickly sort through

the buckets

Stay warm!

Introducing Box 14

Excavation of deposit 14 has been underway for almost 2 months now and has been very fruitful, as expected, due to what we have already seen in the amount of spill-over fossils that were put in buckets when the deposit was removed from the ground, as demonstrated here by Andie in a previous blog. But before we could poke our dental picks in the top asphaltic sugar sand already showing signs of large bone we had to transform the highly awkward box into something we could work with.

This is how it came to us, after protective tarp removed



The actual deposit is the darker colored sediment in the center. It fell apart when they were trying to excavate it and came to us wrapped with a few boards and metal bands, then plastic, and then supported by tons of the sterile "fill" dirt within the space of the tall box.



Box excavation preparation included cutting the metal bands that crossed over the top of the box, assembling scaffolding, removing front top board so the public can see us work, affixing handrails for easier boarding, setting up a shade canopy, and determining grid lines, and then box 14 was ready for digging!



The fossiliferous asphaltic sugar sand midsection of the deposit is relatively easy to dig in. It softly peels and crumbles away from the bone. We never have it completely easy though, as within it there are also spots of hard oxidized asphalt as well as bones that have already been fractured. Given that the deposit was disturbed upon excavation we also have not been taking three point orientation measurements of bones as they are believed to be disrupted from their original position. The only data thus far taken has been the grid and level that the fossil is found in.

Included in what we have found so far:

2 large hervibore vertebrae including sloth

1 coyote skull

1 dire wolf skull, tibia, radius

2 juvenile saber-toothed cat mandibles

lots of bird - including golden eagle skull, teratorn sized limb bones, male
turkey, and hawk

"lots of turtle" - according to Trevor there are at least 3 individuals

pieces of juvenile mastodon skull including a maxilla with teeth that
indicate its young age, possibly younger than any mastodon in the RLB
collection, along with a tibia

Meet "Snuffleupagus" or "Dumbo"

field photo


after some cleaning by Henry


Also, here's an example of what the main fossil deposit in 14 looks like


and the bird beak I found (my first), which is eagle sized


and the perfect furcula from a medium sized hawk that Michelle found


Deposit 14 has been worked down two levels and in order to continue we
have started removing fill dirt so that we can remain excavating from the deposit's side. Last week bucket by bucket we removed over a ton of fill. Literally. Thank you Sunday volunteers Karin Rice, Bruce Fischer, and Katelynn Simpson for being awesome dirt movers!

Now this is 14's current look


In other P23 news the reopening of the rather non-fossiliferous deposit 7a has yielded 3 horse cervical vertebrae and progress has been excellent in box 1. More updates are to come!!!