ROYAL TYRRELL MUSEUM FIELD UPDATE JUNE (1ST HALF), ETC.

[Darren Tanke <dtanke@dns.magtech.ab.ca>]

 The latest:

 1. TROODON "RIPOFF" QUARRY. In my previous posting I noted a possible new
TROODON skeleton having being found in the Drumheller Valley. Excavation of
this proved that other than the jaw pieces noted in my last posting, nothing
more other than "a few scraps" were found, hence the feeling of us being
"ripped off". Such is the life of a paleontologist. Sometimes you win and
sometimes you lose. This find had so much promise of so much more.......

 2. DRUMHELLER EUOPLOCEPHALUS. This quarry has just been started. An ungual
(hoof bone) and a vertebra have been found so far. It appears the skeleton
is disarticulated and in somewhat rough shape on account of it being near
the surface and thus exposed to the actions of groundwater and plant roots.
An excellent well preserved skull with both lower jaws in articulation were
recovered from this site previously. If this site closes earlier than
planned, they can then collect a newly discovered tyrannosaurid, also found
in the Drumheller valley.

 3. BONEBED 47, DINOSAUR PROVINCIAL PARK (DPP). Excavations at this
multigeneric bonebed are now finished with nothing new of especial interest
to report here. Material from the site is currently being prepared by
volunteers and staff at the DPP field station. 

 4. BONEBED 138, DPP. This Oldman Formation CENTROSAURUS bonebed is
continuing, albeit at a slower pace due to increasing hardness of rock
there. A predentary, some ribs and other material including dino eggshell
fragments have been recovered thus far.

 5. GORGOSAURUS QUARRY, DPP. This quarry was started last year and headed by
Phil Currie. A large pelvis and hind leg material were recovered, along with
a rare furculum. Over the past week, a crew has been working their butts off
jackhammering, pickaxing and shoveling away the very hard sandstone in
preparation of Phil's arrival so he can renew excavations of this specimen
in early July. A tail, some more leg bones and ribs are still to be
collected this summer. The skull is probably lost, many busted pieces were
found down the hill when first found. If we're lucky, the skull is
disarticulated and some pieces are still "in situ" (still in the rock). Keep
posted.

 6. CENTROSAURUS BONEBED 41a. This is where I'll be the rest of the summer.
I have just returned from 3 days of grueling pickaxe and shovel work where
my crew moved a huge amount of overburden, all by hand. We'll try to provide
you with an idea of how much rock was moved later on. I'd guess 3-4
dumptruck loads worth of sandstone and damp, heavy clay were cleared and
there is still another days worth of overburden removal to go. In a moment
of madness, we had great fun leaping (swan diving actually) off the quarry
ledge and sliding chest first down the long scree slope of clay we dumped
over the edge. Uncovering of bones in this bone-rich site should start
occurring during my days off. This site is another in a series of mass
mortality CENTROSAURUS bonebeds in DPP. The "a"  in 41a, refers to the fact
that about 2 kms. away, another CENTROSAURUS bonebed (Bonebed 41) is at the
same stratigraphic level, same rock type and the bone erodes out in the same
atypical red color. We think that 41 and 41a might be one and the same bonebed.

 7. NEW FINDS OF THE SUMMER. I've not had much opportunity to wander the
hills and do prospecting. Most of the other crews are too busy and commited
to their respective sites/work projects. I found a new hadrosaur skeleton. A
short string of caudal (tail) vertebrae from the base of the tail are
exposed on a flat outcrop. Other bones eroded on the surface might represent
more of this skeleton, but I can't be sure at this time. It looks good for a
relatively complete tail though. I did find a complete baenid turtle
PLESIOBAENA carapace/plastron (upper and lower shells) that Dr. Don Brinkman
of our institution collected and I showed him a trionychid (softshell
turtle) carapace I found last year. He's to collect this soon. He is also
collecting fossiliferous matrix for wet screening back at Tyrrell. While
showing him the trionychid, I found a possible crocodile skeleton. Not much
showing. There was the front half of a toothless right lower jaw, a
?crocodile limb bone and 2 crocodile scutes all found in a small area. Not
really promising but maybe worth a look some time in the future. I have had
real good luck with baby hadrosaurs this summer, I have found 2 small and
complete femurs that are about 120 mm (about 4 3/4 inches) in length and a
tiny centrum (the round part of the vertebra) from the base of the tail of a
hatchling. This nicely fits on my little fingernail with lots of room to
spare. A large tyrannosaurid metatarsal (long bone in foot) and a shattered
limb bone from a similarly-sized tyrannosaurid nearby could qualify as a
possible skeleton, but more exploratory work will have to be done there if
time permits.

 8. QUARRY 75, DPP. In my last posting I noted having relocated an old
Barnum Brown quarry. I'm still unable to find a date for this quarry, though
we know it is dated just prior to WW I and up to about 1916. Can any of you
help solve a mystery? Paleontology is like detective work and I have some
clues to work from. In the quarry was some very old newspaper fragments. How
they survived Alberta's climate I have no idea, but there they were. A
partial story on one of these newspaper fragments relates to an upcoming
heavyweight boxing match between a FRANK MORAN and a BOB (or ROB) MARTIN,
scheduled for JULY 1st. I figure the chances of these 2 men fighting on the
same day in seperate years highly unlikely. Can anyone on the list find out
the year of this fight for me? Any boxing trivia fans out there? I've tried
the internet without success and due to software problems, I cannot access
relevant chat groups. Once I know the year of this boxing match, I can more
confidently date the age of the quarry, and then go through Brown's field
notes for that year and by process of elimination, narrow down to what was
actually taken from that quarry (other than simply "a hadrosaur" as per my
last update). My gut feeling is that the quarry is 1915, but a date for the
July 1 MORAN/MARTIN fight would settle the matter once and for all. I'd be
grateful for any input on this. Please reply offline. If I get the answer I
need, I'll bring everyone up to speed on this situation in my next update,
or, if I get an answer right away, I'll post something in the next day or two.

 9. ANOTHER OLD DPP QUARRY UPDATE. I forgot to bring my DPP maps home, but
on the 1950 GSC 969A STEVEVILLE Mapsheet, on the east side of the Park,
north bank of Red Deer River, just west of the "OLD MEXICO RANCH" (also
known locally as "HAPPY JACK'S") are two quarries I belive are numbered 100
and 103. One of these is identified as "parts of a plated dinosaur",
collected by Levi Sternberg, 1921. We went back to this site and discovered
more bone in the quarry wall (dorsal vertebra, rib) and on the side of the
same ridge 20+ feet away we saw ankylosaur ribs protruding out of the rock.
There are now some discussions of reopening this site. If so, it will become
one of the largest quarries in DPP. A scute on site, and with an extremely
excavated base suggests this is another EUOPLOCEPHALUS.

 10. KUBAN/OLSHEVSKY DEBATE. While going thru my 100+ emails I could not
help but notice several "progressively warmer" discussions on PALEONET
regarding the dinosaur head-hunting collecting activities by the Sternbergs
in DPP and/or poor documentation. As I know many of you subscribe to this
list too, I thought I'd add my own observations/comments regarding this. 

 a. In some cases, "head-hunting" (ie. the removal of the head and
abandoning the skeleton) was accidental. I'm reminded of the Ottawa
STYRACOSAURUS specimen, where the skull was collected and the nearly
complete skeleton lay nearby undiscovered until 20+ years later when erosion
uncovered more of the skeleton. Exactly the same thing happened to us
recently. I collected a partial ceratopsian skull in 1990, not knowing most
of the skeleton was just 1/2 a metre away. That skeleton was the one we
collected late last fall. In both cases, if we thought only the skulls were
there and collected same, anyone coming back to either of these sites many
years later could, logically (but wrongly) assume we just "head hunted".

 b. There are some cases of obvious head-hunted hadrosaurs. Today we can see
the whole skeleton shattered into countless numbers of pieces and the skull
missing. But can we blame the STERNBERGS in particular? In these quarries
there is no quarry stake, we don't know who uncovered it, so it could just
as easily been any one of the other institutions or collectors who have
worked these badlands for 100 years.

 c. Differential preservation. In my experience, DPP dinosaur skulls and
skull material were evidently better ossified in life and thus better
preserved as fossils. I've seen splendid skulls with a powdery body
attached. In impossible situations such as these (where glue technology was
way behind what it is now) it would seem more prudent to take the skull only.

 d. I used to think that previous collectors were selectively collecting
just the head of hadrosaurs and horned dinosaurs in DPP as the GSC 969A map
lists only the skull as being collected in some quarries. However, when one
goes to these old localities, you can see that there only ever was the head.
It evidently fell away from the rotting carcass and washed downstream to
eventually be buried. We do find hadrosaurs with no heads (I think C.M.
Sternberg called these "headless wonders") and these are not due to
head-hunting, just the head falling off the carcass.

 e. In one case of a Sternberg 1919 quarry, they discovered a headless and
limbless hadrosaur which they had abandoned. However, they did not simply
walk away from it. The skeleton was carefully covered in newspapers and then
reburied. We unknowingly "rediscovered" it in 1980 and reopened the site in
1981. As an interesting aside, the month and day date on the 1919 newspaper
was the same month and day we reopened the quarry in 1981. We did collect
that specimen despite its incompleteness.

 f. Quarry relocation. Olshevsky brought this up in his discussion. Since
1981, I've been in charge of the quarry staking (iron pipe with bronze cast
data-bearing plate attached atop and with the pipe set in drilled hole in
quarry floor with concrete the poured in) of ours and other sites. For more
information on the techniques used for quarry staking see:

 Tanke, D. 1994. Site Documentation. pp. 81-92. In: Vertebrate
Paleontological Techniques Volume 1. Edited by P. Leiggi and P. May.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.  

 The relocating of old Sternberg (and in all fairness, other collectors too)
quarries has only been revitalized most recently by my discovery of the
ability to use my knowledge of DPP topography and compare same to old Black
and White photos in an attempt to identify not only the now lost details of
the photographic scene, but identify the quarry too. C.M. and Ray Sternberg
staked many DPP quarries in 1936. The Royal Ontario Museum did a few in
1955. I've done about 100 in DPP since 1981. Some quarries appear to have
never been staked, especially if C.M.S. and Ray were not certain of who did
the work or what was collected; sensu item #8 above. It is entirely possible
some quarry stakes were simply stolen or buried by slumping action of the
quarry wall or overlying sediments. There are numerous "mystery quarries" in
DPP that I would like to identify. Some no doubt contained nothing
significant. We ourselves have dug huge holes only to discover that there
was nothing significant there. Hopefully future paleontologists won't be
confused by our abandoned quarries where we found little to nothing. A rough
guideline for what gets staked in DPP:

 -Any quarries (dinosaur or otherwise) where the skeleton is relatively
complete (50%+) and has a skull.
 -Any type specimen in any condition.
 -Isolated skulls.
 -Bonebeds or microsites of research interest.
 -Unusual of extremely rare vertebrate fossil occurrences.
 -Any old quarries where stake was never put in, has been stolen, loose or
damaged. 

 g. At Tyrrell we variably document sites by quarry staking, identifying and
collecting fossils from specific bonebeds identified by number and
stratigraphically positioned on large scale topographic maps, GPS, UTM
coordinates, land description, pin pricks on air photos/mylar overlays (made
on site by Phil Currie only to ensure accuracy and continuity), maps, quarry
maps drawn on site, photography. We use most of these together where
possible/applicable. We are using GPS more now that the price of these units
have gone down. I would have to say that in the absence of the quarry stakes
that C.M. Sternberg had the foresight to put in in 1936, we would be in a
lot of trouble trying to establish the whereabouts of the Sternberg family
quarries and those dug by other crews. We have no locality data for any of
the Lawrence Lambe quarries and some of Barnum Browns. For the latter this
includes type material- we have no idea where the type of DROMAEOSAURUS came
from. One of the Sternberg sites we've been unable to find is the
CAENAGNATHUS jaws locality. 

 h. I should state here that Tyrrell has never collected the skull of a
specimen and abandoned the rest of the skeleton to fate. 

 11. BURGESS SHALE. There were plans for our museum to help collect at this
world famous site this summer. However, due to various reasons, this plan
has been shelved for this year at least. 

 12. HADROSAUR CAUDAL VERTEBRAE STUDY. For the past 6 years, I've been
collecting as many isolated caudal vertebrae of DPP hadrosaurs as I can
find. A few others have also helped collecting. Data from these vertebrae
are now being entered onto a database for a paleopathology study. From this
I hope to show/learn about the relative frequency and types of caudal
centrum pathology in juveniles, subadults and adults, vs. base of tail,
middle of tail, end of tail, extreme end of tail position. We've only
entered about 750 vertebrae so far (out of an estimated 5,000), but already
we can see a pattern of fusion sequence between the neural arch and centrum
relative to position on the tail and I can recognize morphotypes of caudal
centra. I hope to someday be able to establish that different genera show
slight differences in caudal centrum morphology. If I can, this would be
quite exciting as I could use my sample to study such things as relative
abundances of the different species of hadrosaurs within DPP and population
dynamics. I thank Allison Tumarkin (Univ. Penn.) for assistance in data
entry and Karl Schiemann of Calgary for processing and cleaning specimens.

 13. "SCOTTY" the T. REX. Tim Tokaryk recently gave a talk at DPP. He stated
that it would take about 2 more years to completely finish preparing this
specimen.  While recently collecting a latest Cretaceous theropod
metatarsus, he found a nearly complete lizard skeleton about 20 cm (8
inches) long. 

 14. HILDA, ALBERTA EXPEDITION. This will start in a week or two. They will
work on an ankylosaur skeleton, CENTROSAURUS bonebed and do some
stratigraphic work. Keep posted for future updates. For those of you not
familiar with this area, it is straight east of DPP on the
Alberta/Sakatchewan border, and in rocks the same age as DPP.

 15. TYRRELL PREP LAB. Those working at the lab this summer are preparing
the postcranial skeleton of DASPLETOSAURUS TMP94.143.1, the skull of which I
was working on last fall/winter (pictures of which are on Jeff Poling's
homepage- www.dinosauria.com). 
 
 The weather here is still unseasonably cool and rainy. Only 2 real nice
days in DPP since work started. Dinolist member Mary Kirkaldy was fortunate
to be here on a Tyrrell-hosted "DINOTOUR" for one of those days. The
Drumheller crews have been unable to get much done on account of rain here.
Between DPP and Drumheller there are hundreds of large ponds and lakes that
are usually not there. It will be a good year for ducks.... 

 I am here in Drumheller on days off until the 29th. Anyone wishing to do so
can email me now or up until about 4 p.m. my time on the 29th. One of you
emailed me details about your "Paleontology Ring" of Internet sites. Please
email this information to me again as I accidently erased it.  

 Darren Tanke

 
Darren Tanke
Technician I, Dinosaur Research Program
Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, Box 7500
Drumheller, Alberta, Canada. T0J 0Y0
             and
Senior Editor on the:
Annotated Bibliography of Paleopathology, Dento-Osteopathy and Related Topics
11,364 citations as of March 7, 1997.
Visit our bibliography homepage at: http://dns.magtech.ab.ca/dtanke
Can you help with this ongoing project? Email me at: dtanke@dns.magtech.ab.ca