Continuing the journey

Hi All! It has been quite a busy couple of months since my last post! I have worked on removing all of the fossils from the jacket (see picture in my last post), then I have been using a microjack to remove the sediments (it is kind of a mini version of a jackhammer that construction workers use) 🙂 During my work on the fossils I have been able to correctly identify what type of creature that they came from, I will have to do more research to see if I can narrow it down to the actual genus but I am happy right now to have just gotten the correct reptile 🙂 Oh, if you are interested, it is a Plesiosaur. What is that?!? Well most of you would probably think of it as Nessie the Loch Ness Monster, but Nessie really isn’t a Plesiosaur. Plesiosaurs are a ocean dwelling reptile (NOT a dinosaur), some had extremely long necks while others in the family had short necks. This one appears to be a long necked variety. There appears to be some debate as to the rigidity of the neck, but everyone agrees that Plesiosaurs could not lift their heads and necks out of the water as is usually depicted in pictures. They ate fish and cephalopds. I don’t have any teeth yet, but I have about 28 vertebrae, some ribs and a few other unidentified as yet pieces that are probably portions of the arm/leg bones and flippers. While doing my research I have been lucky enough to go visit the University of California Museum of Paleonotology at Berkeley and examine their collections as well as visit the lab at UC Fresno. In a couple of weeks, I am going to take a trip to the LA county Museum of Natural History to do research in their collections and chat with the Paleontologists that work in the lab! I love all of the connections that I am able to make while part of this internship as well as the experience that I am gaining toward my career! Keep checking back for more 🙂

Susan Bowman
Paleontology intern
BLM Hollister

Adventures in the Past

Hi All! Well where do I start? After years of watching Jurassic Park and learning about Paleontology, I get to spend my internship actually doing it! I am working with Ryan O’Dell out of the Hollister field office and get to work on excavation and prep of one of the specimens found on BLM land in the Panoche Hills. I had a lot of fun at the beginning of my internship working with Ryan and Kelly to excavate the specimen and transport it to the lab. Now I spend my days slowly removing the sediments from the plaster jacket that we encased the specimen in to reveal what is inside! Some days the work is very slow but it is also rewarding as I uncover new portions of the fossils. As I continue through my internship I will work on identifying each fossil that I remove from the jacket after I clean them up and possibly even write a research paper on the findings! Stay tuned for more information 🙂 I have been having a really good time on my internship and am so grateful that I could be part of this program!

Talk to you soon,

Susan Bowman
Paleontology intern
BLM, Hollister

Here is the jacket in the lab

Here is the jacket in the lab

This is the opened jacket, you can see some fossils on top of the sediments.

This is the opened jacket, you can see some fossils on top of the sediments.

This is a really cool perfectly preserved Ammonite that I found in the sediment.

This is a really cool perfectly preserved Ammonite that I found in the sediment.