this project we have a large section of
rock that’s full of very sensitive
fossils and organization that we can’t
really angular cut up individually and
so what they’re have to do is we have to
take this down a very steep slope as
you’ll be able to see and to move such a
large section of rock without breaking
it up it’s quite a challenge
we are just north arches nat’l park on a
section of state land which bears all
nice assemblage of dinosaurs that we
discovered about ten years ago we got a
grad student to do a study of that big
sandstone ledge behind me as he was
working I told him keep your eyes open
for dinosaurs and he reported back to me
that he found what the only thing he did
find was what looked like a human arm
bone sticking out of the rabe something
about this big around and Hollow
turned out to be a foot of the
Utahraptor we also had parts of a plant
eating dinosaur iguanodons
basically we think that was the
attractor to bring these animals in and
we ended up finding 10 different jaws
every one of them with all the teeth on
them we now interpret this it’s probably
the first good site where we have a lot
of dinosaur skeletons that were trapped
in quicksand the preservation is
exceptional
every time we’d go in we find springs in
order to rub we’d find feed leg bones
realizing we can’t split it up and
that’s when we made the decision we got
to take out a mammoth block there are
other people who have dug up really big
blocks but typically you can drive some
big piece of machinery up closer to it
and take advantage of it this there was
hardly any place to stand and so the
difficulty now is getting a frame around
this thing and getting a drag down the
hill to a flatbed so we can get out of
here and remove them as well well my big
thing in terms of removing the base is
you know we clean it up get the frame
put on and the frame on that it’s gonna
be like to the ground in the back
paleontologists look real hard for years
and years to get all this set up the way
they needed it to be and actually this
rock is exactly where they found it and
it hasn’t moved at all
so they actually built the framework
around it and then had to remove rock
underneath it to get it to set down on
the sled so then last fall we were able
to actually dig a tunnel underneath and
so that enabled us to put these big
Timbers in and that was a little bit
scary because you were just on these
pillars and you have this probably 10
ton block of rock under and you’re
underneath there plastering it’s a
pretty solid frame here some major bolts
and hardware so we’re hoping that once
we give it a little pull here it’ll all
hold together pretty well
well we block off the Mesa one more mile
of flat dirt and hopefully we can load
this thing up onto a semi-truck right
now what we’re going to do is bring in
we have a couple of guardrails Baltimore
guardrail boots that we have on the
front because the wood has been wearing
off the bottom and if we go much farther
like this we wouldn’t have anything
holding it together at all
once we get into lab the preparation
will be done under three microscopes on
home mounts by my team which has 120
years of experience between the group of
us finally getting this thing after 10
years down off the mountain this is huge
progress
you
rock that’s full of very sensitive
fossils and organization that we can’t
really angular cut up individually and
so what they’re have to do is we have to
take this down a very steep slope as
you’ll be able to see and to move such a
large section of rock without breaking
it up it’s quite a challenge
we are just north arches nat’l park on a
section of state land which bears all
nice assemblage of dinosaurs that we
discovered about ten years ago we got a
grad student to do a study of that big
sandstone ledge behind me as he was
working I told him keep your eyes open
for dinosaurs and he reported back to me
that he found what the only thing he did
find was what looked like a human arm
bone sticking out of the rabe something
about this big around and Hollow
turned out to be a foot of the
Utahraptor we also had parts of a plant
eating dinosaur iguanodons
basically we think that was the
attractor to bring these animals in and
we ended up finding 10 different jaws
every one of them with all the teeth on
them we now interpret this it’s probably
the first good site where we have a lot
of dinosaur skeletons that were trapped
in quicksand the preservation is
exceptional
every time we’d go in we find springs in
order to rub we’d find feed leg bones
realizing we can’t split it up and
that’s when we made the decision we got
to take out a mammoth block there are
other people who have dug up really big
blocks but typically you can drive some
big piece of machinery up closer to it
and take advantage of it this there was
hardly any place to stand and so the
difficulty now is getting a frame around
this thing and getting a drag down the
hill to a flatbed so we can get out of
here and remove them as well well my big
thing in terms of removing the base is
you know we clean it up get the frame
put on and the frame on that it’s gonna
be like to the ground in the back
paleontologists look real hard for years
and years to get all this set up the way
they needed it to be and actually this
rock is exactly where they found it and
it hasn’t moved at all
so they actually built the framework
around it and then had to remove rock
underneath it to get it to set down on
the sled so then last fall we were able
to actually dig a tunnel underneath and
so that enabled us to put these big
Timbers in and that was a little bit
scary because you were just on these
pillars and you have this probably 10
ton block of rock under and you’re
underneath there plastering it’s a
pretty solid frame here some major bolts
and hardware so we’re hoping that once
we give it a little pull here it’ll all
hold together pretty well
well we block off the Mesa one more mile
of flat dirt and hopefully we can load
this thing up onto a semi-truck right
now what we’re going to do is bring in
we have a couple of guardrails Baltimore
guardrail boots that we have on the
front because the wood has been wearing
off the bottom and if we go much farther
like this we wouldn’t have anything
holding it together at all
once we get into lab the preparation
will be done under three microscopes on
home mounts by my team which has 120
years of experience between the group of
us finally getting this thing after 10
years down off the mountain this is huge
progress
you
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