After returning from the field with the jacketed fossil, it's a paleontologists job to remove the fossil from the jacket. The below video shows a glimpse of the process:
When all the bones have been removed from the jacket, it's time to start piecing them together. It's more like a jigsaw puzzle that's been around for a really long time that has lots of missing pieces. The whole goal is to determine the species from the bones and piece together its living history.
Makoshika State Park
On the fourth day of our class we hiked a very small portion of the Kinney Cooley trail in Makoshika State Park. We took strike and dips of the layers, and determined the thickness of each layer. It was a lot of fun seeing history through the rocks! The stratigraphy lover in me was in heaven!