Dinosaur Dig - Day One cont. and Day 2

When I arrived from Toronto in Edmonton the flight was delayed due to thunderstorms.
So I got something to eat. While I was waiting Eva came down to get me from the lounge I went up and met Phillip and another Grad Student named Steve from Phoneix everybody was really friendly and we got to know each over a drink while we waited for our filght to Grand Prairie. When we arrived at Grand Praire we drove to the college and we were greated with a special treat even though it was after 9:00 the sun was still out and there was a double rainbow (ne arching the outside of the other). We also met the other members of the team Michael and Derek, and Robin who are students of Dr. Currie Bill who has been my mentor for the last 2 days and Jim a recently retired BP employee. Our dorm rooms are really great pretty much they are like town houses and are a pleasant surprise.

Day2: The 1st day at the dig Site.
We all got together for breakfast this morning followed by a meeting where Philip and Eva gave a safety talk and explained what we should expect for the day. We received our dig kits which consisted of a Small Hammer some brushes an Awl, safety goggles, Gloves, and some dental tools for the finer work.
We drove out to the site entrance about 30 min from the school but the actual quarry is a 2 km hike from there, most of which was down some pretty steep loose cliffs. We make our way down using ropes so if we loose our footing we dont go tumbling down the side of the Mountain.


The quarry (dig site) is marked off every meter and the bed is about 7 or 8 meters. When we find a fossil it is mapped using a homemade grid that is made up of a 10X10cm squares the fossil location and orientation is then scetched on a paper grid for later reference. Everything is mapped, if the dinosaur that the fossil came from can be identified then they are tagged as well and brought back for later prep and study. I found numerous fossils fragments today but only one was tagged (a jawbone). If a fossil is too small to determine what it is from then the fossil is mapped and removed from the quarry. We dug till lunch with everyone finding some fossils including some troodon teeth.
After lunch we dug some more I put my fossil in a cast for transport out of the field at the end of the day.

Dinosaur Dig