The Southern Alberta Dinosaur Research Group is just finishing off the first of four weeks in southern Alberta working in the badlands adjacent to the Milk and Oldman rivers. Dr. Michael Ryan (your palaeoblogger) from the Cleveland Museum of Natural Museum and Dr. David Evans from the Royal Ontario Museum have a crew of about 15 people per week working on a series of projects including the collection of two potentially new duck-billed dinosaurs, and the on-going excavation of a juvenile duck-billed dinosaur bone bed from the Belly River Group and earlier sediments. The crews are made up of collaborators such as Dr. Nick Longrich from the U of Calgary; technician Ian Morrison, undergrad and grad students from the U of Toronto; Technician David Lloyd from the Royal Tyrrell Museum; grad students from U of Calgary and Alberta; with undergrad students from Case Western Reserve U. to arrive later this month (I’m sure that I’ve forgetting someone).
It’s been a busy week and I’ve not taken many photos but here’s a short selection:
The rattler that greeted us as we set up camp.
The red arrow points to the first hadrosaur quarry that we opened this week. Here the crew is removing overburden.
More overburden removal in the same quarry. The specimen is the brown bone exposed in the sandstone under the hard capstone. The specimen was originally reported to Wann Langston, Jr., in 1960.
David Evans takes a break in the quarry.
Ian Morrison (white cap) does the impossible by fixing a broken jackhammer starter spring with a multitool. A week of jack hammering was required to take off the capstone.
U of T undergrad, Jill Gallimore, rocks out in the quarry
A double rainbow seen from camp after a recent evening thunderstorm.
