Day 5 - first week done

Today I tagged along on a "Dig for a Day" where families can pay to do what I am volunteering to do. My group included a Mom, Dad and two kids (fifth and second grade) from Pennsylvinania. We started at BS a site that I have not dug at, and soon found a nodule. This looks like a round rock. I pulled it out of the waste bucket from the 2nd grader thinking there would be a geode of something neat inside. Nick, a summer staffer, broke it open and found a Camarasaur Toe. These are tough to come by. We gave the kid credit and wrote it in the book, and he took a photo with it. Then, as we were cleaning our site, I swept by something and asked Nick why it had not been cataloged. There was bone sticking out. I had the fifth grader with me, and was so excited when he got credit for that bone. Mom and Dad struck out. Sorry. We then continued to dig and another family found a strange mix of bones ain one rock. Nick and the big boss man Greg (who happened to come up to see how everyone was doing) immediately began looking for crumb sized bone. We had four people on hands and knees looking for tiny bones. We found a "membrane bound" bone, instead of a cartilage one. The only two membrane bound are knees and skulls. We have found more skull material. Usually a bone fragment the size we found I would have not worried about especially if it was loose. But Greg spotted how it formed. Good thing he was there, but the kid didn't get to keep it. At lunch we travelled back to the museum, rehydrated and then went to Sundance. This is dusty hills that look exactly like the breaks from home (only from a different formation and about 200 million years older). In these hills we were looking for bullet type rocks that are hard pieces of old squid called Bellenites, as well as ammonites and crinoids. The ultimate goal is an ammonite. We found lot of bellenites, and some crinoids (tiny), and the temperature was 100 degrees. The dirt was almost too hot to touch. We then took the family on the tour of the museum and the last little bit of their tour, they get to see the prep lab. We even let the boys toothbrush a bone. After they left, I was able to stay in the lab and use a small dremmel tool to work on getting matrix off the bone. I like the airtools.
Tomorrow I have off, but Greg gave me directions to a great hike (14 miles roundtrip). I am going to leave early and try and get up there by 8 to start. My little computer has a hard time uploading pictures, so you will have to wait on that.