March 2011 Dig

3-10-11
First day of the Spring Break dig in Seymour, Texas. Arrived Thursday and Dr. Bakker and Kathy are with us (my mom and I) We went out prospecting for bones. I found a fossilized fern tree and got to name the site! I did not know what to call it but it became known as “Apple”.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
My mom found the first two bones of the day and named her new site “Nutmeg” (After our dog). We went back to the cars for lunch and spent some time skipping rocks across a small lake. Dr. Bakker taught me how to pick and skip rocks!
 
 
 
The four of us went to a new area we had never been before. I found part of a dimetrodon rib that resembled porcelain. Dr. Bakker found more of the porcelain bone while I found a bit of neural spine (porcelain style). It was a specific kind of dimetrodon because the spine was shaped like a figure 8. Kathy helped with the name of the site and it was decided to be called the “Lazy 8”








 






Eve's Rib found at the Alana site.
3-11-11  Alana Site


My mom found a flat slightly curved rib.

I found bones of one of the ranch cows. 
The vert was chewed by coyotes


-Found fragments of an amphibian called Captorhinus
-Found three shed teeth (of Dimetrodon)
- One xenacanth tooth
- Discovered a strange wasp species that seemed to mimic a lady bug

Kathy Zoehfeld














3-12-11

Woke up for the New Maverick @ 7:30... western omelet as usual. On the T.V. there was a tsunami and earthquakes in Japan. After breakfast we went to the Tuffy site. Mom and Kathy went to mail my Doodle for Google and to close Nancy’s garage. Dr. Bakker and I found 5 head spines of xenacanthus while they were gone. Around 2:30 we decided to go eat lunch @ Subway. Dr. Bakker suggested we go walk around and prospect for fossils. Kathy stayed in town while Dr. Bakker, my mom, and I went to a part of the ranch we have never been before.
We prospected for quite a while  until I decided to stray away. On my way back to Dr. Bakker, I saw on the ground was a gorgeous bone! Now the whole time we had been looking there we did not find any bones whatsoever. I picked it up and licked it (An easy way to tell between dirt and bone, bone sticks to your tongue because it is porous) It was a definite bone, it stuck right on my tongue! The bone was a beautiful red and purple color. Immediately I called Dr. Bakker to inspect it and it turned out to be either diadectes or eryops. It was my turn again to name the site. But little did we know that right behind us was a rock with a skeleton! But wait....it wasn’t alone....there were literally thousands of rocks with little skeletons all bundled up in these semi-circle rocks and everywhere! At this new site, there was more bone than rock! Turns out that most of these little skeletons were from a burrowing pinhead amphibian called lysorophus, and there, still estivating, tens of thousands of them! This site, which I named Area 51 after the once burrowing little aliens, is according to Dr. Bakker the world’s largest pocket of lysorophus yet. 
Knowing that David and the rest of the crew would be back this afternoon, I brought back many of the lysorophus specimens. As we got back to Head Quarters (Nancy’s) the others began to show up.

See the next post - Lysorophus at Area 51 Field Notes

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