- [Voiceover] Despite popular
culture and the public image,
paleontology can be
difficult, unglamorous,
and at times, seemingly boring.
But, with a good dose of patience,
paleontology can be rewarding,
fun, and very exciting.
Carthage College paleontologist,
Doctor Thomas Carr,
along with student crews and
museum curator of education
Chris DeSantis, have traveled out
to the Hell Creek formation in Montana.
This short film captures
part of the real life
search for dinosaur fossils
and shares what a day
of paleontology is really like.
(simple western music)
Paleontology is the
scientific study of life
in the geologic past, especially
through the examination
of animal and plant fossils.
- We have been waiting
a full year to go back.
- [Voiceover] To go about
understanding fossils,
we need to first dig
them up out of the ground
so that we can study them.
- [Voiceover] Normally,
this is a very long
and tiring process,
but lucky for you, I've
been able to join Dr. Carr
and 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 on to 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.
- [Voiceover] And because
the dinosaur discovery museum
is so focused on dinosaur evolution,
you'll see those are the
fossils we are after.
(pot clanging)
- [Voiceover] I have
learned a number of things
from Dr. Carr on these digs.
One is that we have to
start our day early,
because it gets way too hot
to work in the afternoon.
- Do you want coffee?
- Please.
- Black?
- [Voiceover] 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.
- [Voiceover] There are
three major parts of a dig.
The first is prospecting.
- Hey, look at that.
Look.
- [Voiceover] Prospecting
is looking around
or carefully observing your
area for bone-like objects.
Walking around the hillside,
we look for scattered
or possibly just a
single bone or fragment.
- This is what I consider scatter,
and what we do is we follow it up,
and there's more going
up there so who knows,
it may continue further up.
- [Voiceover] 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 rock.
- Yeah, that's sandstone.
- That's rock.
- I might've found something else.
It looks exactly the same.
Usually, this growth won't
be hanging on to a rock,
it will be hanging on to a bone.
So I'm not sure, I think I
should ask Eric to come over
and take a look at this.
- Yes?
- Maybe?
- Yeah I think so.
- This is usually an indication to me.
This is growth on here.
- Yeah, that's a piece of bone.
Definitely a piece of bone.
- [Voiceover] Once something
is identified as a bone,
we start a process called quarrying.
- [Voiceover] Quarrying is
digging around the fossil
to expose it and to see if
there are other bones around.
There are very important
parts to this process,
including first marking the
object's 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
liquid plastic called Vinac
to stabilize the fossil.
The site is also mapped
before removing any bones,
which helps pinpoint the
relationship to one another.
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 gonna take up some notes
on what we did yesterday.
- [Voiceover] After the
fossils are stabilized,
GPS-ed and mapped,
they are wrapped in a messy
but sort of fun process
called jacketing.
- [Voiceover] 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 fossil's rolled over
and the jacket is completed.
The jacketed fossil bakes
for about a day in the sun,
and is then ready for transport.
- [Voiceover] Some jackets get very heavy.
We had to carry this
one back in the evening
to avoid the heat of the day.
- [Voiceover] This step-by-step procedure
of a typical find, prospecting,
quarrying, Vinac-ing,
mapping, jacketing,
and finally extraction,
it's not only preserving the bones,
but preserving and
understanding what the bones
and their location can mean.
- So I'm definitely ending on a good note.
It's pretty exciting, I
mean any time you find
any little thing it's exciting
but being in the same
grid with the portion
of the femur we found last
year, this is pretty exciting.
Pretty exciting.
(simple western music)
- [Voiceover] 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 from where we left off.
We grab our personal items
and head back to camp.
- [Voiceover] Like any
important undertaking,
patience is key.
And experiencing paleontology for a day
hopefully demonstrates that
patience has its own reward.
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.
(simple western music)
