Bearpaw Shale
Here's one of the locations I dug to find fossils. It was actually alongside a four wheeler trail. Who knows how many people have passed this site by without knowing what awesomeness it holds!
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Bearpaw ShaleHere's one of the locations I dug to find fossils. It was actually alongside a four wheeler trail. Who knows how many people have passed this site by without knowing what awesomeness it holds!
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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 ParkOn 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! The above picture is a concretion with bone, which we identified as Stygimoloch. Below shows the process of preparing the fossil for transportation. I've also included pictures from the dig. Dan talks to the class about non-avian versus avian dinosaurs as we make a fossil pedestal. Dan and Eric explain the process of jacketing the fossil and why we use foil for fossil protection.
Plaster must be mixed to soak the burlap strips in. The burlap strips will be applied over the paper towel.
Here's Google+'s summary of my photos and video from this portion of the dig. More to come in the next post! The Hell Creek Formation in Makoshika State Park is located in Glendive, MT. The formation, deposited during the Cretaceous, is composed mostly of sandstone, mudstones, and freshwater clays. The formation includes a plethora of dinosaurs and marine reptiles. It's a scientist's dream formation--including areas of study for archaeologist, paleontologists, & geologists. This exposed hillside is part of the Hell Creek Formation. Our class was given permission to go on city land to look for fossils. In this formation we found a stygimoloch which will be cleaned up at MSU and then returned to be displayed by the city. Graduate student Dan, who taught the course, studies turtles. Whenever we found turtle fossils he'd get really excited. I love seeing people passionate about their work! Around the concretion where we found a Stygimoloch we were looking for all the float bone. This video shows the process. Deer Lodge Student, Emma Spears, won the Spring 2014 NASA Cassini Scientist for the Day Essay Contest. She was the second student to win the essay contest from our school this year! Impressive! Press Release from the Montana Standard: http://mtstandard.com/news/local/deer-lodge-student-is-national-essay-winner/article_9521f0d2-de2b-11e3-9086-001a4bcf887a.html Press release from Cassini: Students Chosen as NASA’s Cassini Scientists for a Day May 22, 2014 (Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory) Scientists on NASA’s Cassini mission to Saturn have chosen a fresh crop of outstanding essays from students hoping to share the excitement of exploring the planet Saturn. Many of the eleven students from across the United States who recently won NASA’s Spring 2014 Cassini Scientist for a Day essay contest weren’t even alive yet in 1997 when the Cassini spacecraft launched from Earth on its seven-year trip to Saturn. Contest participants in grades five to twelve chose one of three target areas for Cassini's camera: Saturn's F ring, Saturn’s moon Titan, or the north pole of the planet Saturn itself. The students wrote essays explaining why they thought their chosen picture would yield the most scientific rewards. A panel of Cassini scientists, mission planners and educators at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California judged the essays. The winners and their classes were invited to participate in a videoconference to pose their questions about Saturn to Cassini scientists and engineers. This year's winners come from seven states: New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, California, Virginia, Montana, and Maine. Their essays were chosen from entries written by 1,125 students across the United States. More than 100 teachers in 32 states had their students participate in the essay contest this year. Winners of NASA’s Spring 2014 Cassini Scientist for a Day essay contest are Juliana Yu from New York City, New York; Nicholas Vitebsky from Mendham, New Jersey; Neha K. Aryasomayajula from Acton, Massachusetts; Luca Robinson from Castaic, California; Nidhi Nagireddy from Chantilly, Virginia; Belen Morote from Copiague, New York; Ben Wolman from Pacific Palisades, California; Emma Spears from Deer Lodge, Montana; and Chelsey, Dominick, and Carolyn Frank from Farmington, Maine. The high school winner on the topic of Saturn’s moon Titan is Emma Spears, a tenth grade student at Powell County High School in Deer Lodge, Montana. In Emma’s winning essay, she writes, “When scientists study Titan, we can learn more about Earth as well, because the two bodies are so similar.” More information about the Cassini Scientist for a Day essay contest, including the winning essays, is online at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/scientistforaday/ More information on the Cassini-Huygens mission is at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The physics students wrap up the year by building projectile launchers. There were unique designs this year that I hadn't seen before. Lots of creative ways to apply physics! What's senioritis? We're still busy and ending a great year in physics by designing and building projectile launchers. We launch on Friday! Can't wait to share the students' designs and launches #MakerMovement Sometimes strange things pop up on my Google+ photo backup after students have worn Glass. Some make me smile! For the last few months I've been beta testing Classcraft, a site that helps teachers gamify their classes. So far I've only introduced the site to my astronomy class and one earth science course. I've made the greatest strides with Classcraft in my 9th grade earth science class. As you can see from the below video, they really get into it! Check out Classcraft to see what all the hype is about: http://www.classcraft.com/en/ Astronomy students took on the role of "teacher." As I've already written a blog post about this classroom experiment, I'll post the link here for your reading enjoyment: http://triscicurious.blogspot.com/2014/05/sayonara-mrs-anderson-welcome-to-class.html |