Sharing My Story

From Alpha-Omega #96 January/February 2001 This continues some of my adventures at the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum.

Giants in Texas

Several months ago were had an interview with a rancher
south of Crosbyton who claimed in about 1958 as a young man
that he was a team member of a human burial site in the
nearby foothills. He said that a giant human skeleton was
excavated from the site and the dig was supervised by a
then Texas Tech University professor. The rancher did not
recall the professor's name, but that the giant human remains
were taken to Texas Tech.

After the interview the rancher led us to the burial site.
We succeeded in getting one of our vehicles stuck in the
Brazos River before (we were able to extract it with the
help of a tractor) we arrived at the dig site. We didn't
find anything as this happened over forty years ago. At
this point we are going to be following up on it and see
if the Texas Tech archives have anything that they would
release on this possible interesting find.

My Own Triceratops

In late August a private fossil hunter named Scott Taylor
(no relation to Joe) brought a number of hadrosaur
(duck-billed dinosaur) and Triceratops bones from Montana
into the museum. In October we began opening the field
jackets containing the bones. There were the better part
of a Triceratops skull which took priority in our preparation
efforts. The first thing we did was to remove the field
jackets which was a fairly arduous task as the field jackets
were not properly done. The field jackets usual cover the
clay or rock matrix that surround the bones. In this case
the bones were in a very hard clay which yielded to the
efforts of a wood cutting x-acto knife and the handle of
a normal sized screwdriver. We kept the clay scrappings
and placed them in a water bath to sift out any small bone
fragments. Also we kept the clay for a local pottery maker.

This is interesting in itself. If these bones were really
65 million years old you would think they would have fossilized
into hardened stone such as we found in Colorado. After
the clay was removed we took the bones to the water bath
and let them soak over night. Then we came back the next
day and scrubbed any excess clay/mud off of them. After
the bones dried over night we immersed the bones in a
bath of PVA, a chemical hardener. This toughened up the
bones so they could be handled safely. After that came
the part of trying to fit the bones together. It is a
giant 3-D jigsaw puzzle. At this point Joe is the expert
and fellow worker Andy Hedges and myself are rank neophytes.
However, just to work on this material is a dream come true.
The triceratops was my favorite childhood dinosaur and being
able to work on the fossil remains of one was a great privilege.