Back from Chasing Dinosaurs

["Andy Farke" <andyfarke@hotmail.com>]

Greetings,

After six days and five nights of chasing dinosaurs, I'm finally home 
and ready to report! I was planning to send this off sooner, but for 
some reason I can't access my e-mail account from my home town. So, I've 
driven 20 miles to Dad's office to send this off!

Things started off with a trip to Hill City, South Dakota, home of the 
Black Hills Institute. As always, they were most gracious hosts, letting 
me look at all of the cool ceratopsian things. Hill City remained my 
base of operations for the subsequent days--it's pretty centrally 
located to everything I wanted to see.

Wednesday found me heading to Wyoming to see the Paleon Museum in 
Glenrock. They have a growing collection of dinosaur fossils from the 
Lance formation in that area. Parts of four plus Triceratops skulls are 
there, along with a Torosaurus(!)-looking parietal and lower jaw. Some 
funny characteristics make me question its assignment to Torosaurus, 
including what looks like very small, weird parietal fenestrae, an 
unusually wide parietal bar (twice the width of any I've seen) and a 
funky scoop-shaped surface at the anterior end of the parietal bar on 
the ventral surface. It seems like a contact point for bone, but that 
would mean that the parietal is unusually short. According to Sean 
Smith, curator of the museum, Pete Dodson has looked at this and is 
puzzled by that area also. Oh, and there were some theropod bits and 
pieces there too (claws, teeth, a bone or two).

The following day I headed to northwestern South Dakota to visit a 
rancher in the area and see his collection. (Lots of cool stuff!!!!)  I 
also visited the Timber Lake museum, which had a fine assortment of Hell 
Creek critters. The highlight of their collection is a half-grown 
Triceratops. Parts of the skull include squamosal, epoccipitals and 
maxilla, and the skeleton includes vertebrae, ribs, tibia, ischium, 
ilium and pubis. According to Jim Nelson, one of the head honchos, there 
is probably more back at the site. I'd love to see if more of the skull 
could be found. The epoccipitals are not at all like adult Triceratops 
(which have long, low epoccipitals). In this juvenile specimen, they are 
very pointy and triangular. Also, there are several funky bumps on the 
dorsal surface of the squamosal--these appear to almost disappear in 
adults.

Friday I worked in a small Jurassic quarry in South Dakota and found a 
nice diplodicid tooth, and received my radiation dose for the year (this 
stuff is supposed to be pretty hot). A nice journey into the Morrison. . 
.

Saturday I rode with Pete Larson and some others into Wyoming to help 
Kraig Derstler of the University of New Orleans get some overburden off 
of UNO's T. rex site. Unfortunately, it rained. And rained. And rained. 
We finally called it quits and headed back home. The T. rex is so far 
represented by vertebrae, ribs and other miscellaneous bones (hopefully 
more is under the overburden). They're going to have another go at it 
later this week when things dry up. While stopped at the side of the 
highway, I did find some nice unguals to a road kill deer.

All told, my trip was well worth the time, money and driving invested. I 
have many measurements to use for research purposes, along with photos 
and bits of road kill. While I went looking for ceratopsians, I ended up 
dabbling in sauropods and theropods. As always, measurements and photos 
will be available from myself in awhile (I know I'm slow, but many 
things have happened here in S.D. as of late). My next adventure takes 
me into Minnesota with a polka band. As that doesn't have to do with 
dinosaurs I won't report on that.

Signing off,

Andy Farke,
Professional Ceratopsian Wrangler

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