fossil of the weekend! #33 and palaeo challenge #4

a fossil snail shell, from the new layer i'd "discovered". little did i realize that these little things were THE KEY clue in the whole ongoing poaching crisis around drumheller!

this leads to the latest palaeo challenge people of the innerweb. complete with a cool prize from prehistoric insanity for any correct guesses!

it was right in front of my snout the whole time (and anyone who reads my blog!). i'd stumbled on the answer to this already in my trip. the hordes of snail and clam shells that lined this specific layer turning up throughout the horseshoe canyon formation were telling me what the poachers were after. only i hadn't thought of it!

can you figure out what a huge number or snail and clams in a mudstone layer left by a slow moving river could indicate? (hint i talked about it in a previous post during my homecoming, i just hadn't connected the two!)

the mounting problems

the pack of the primordial feather was still one step ahead of me in their scheme to poach fossils from around alberta's badland. however today i could tell i was closing in on them!

i was going to try and retrace the pack's break into the tyrrell museum's collections today(hopefully without having to resort to breaking in myself!). they'd been after the geologic samples in the horseshoe canyon cabinets. obviously there was some sort of clue in these rock samples that was leading them to whatever type of fossil they were stealing... if i could figure out what the clue was then i could figure out what they were poaching.

as i walked through the museum towards collections, i found that i was being overwhelmed by nervousness.

you ever get that people of the innerweb? limbs going all numb. at the same time your chest tightens up and it feels a giant python has crept into your ribcage and is tightening up in there keeping you from breathing? well that's what it felt like to me anyways!

to try and calm myself down... as i was possibly going to have to play it "cool" if i ran into collections staff... i tried to pop into familiar and calming places throughout the museum.

my first stop was the auditorium...

man this spot in the tyrrell had a lot of memories. the most prevalent of which was my job interview that got me my job here at the museum all those years ago... here is a link to movie video that includes that interview!

many other cool things had happened here though. way too many for me to talk about today. maybe another time if people are interested.

a side effect of my small brain is that when i'm confronted with a powerful memory it tends to overlay reality. meaning i can have events from the past play out in front of me while the present is going on... which is weird.

today i thought i was having another one of those merging events. i could hear distant voices (for some reason the past always plays back in echophonic sound... you ever get that?), and i assumed i was having a flashback moment. only this time there was no picture.

then i realized the conversation was not one i'd ever heard before... which didn't make sense! till it dawned on me, it was happening right then in front of me behind the stage!

sadly my t-rex hearing isn't anything special. not that its bad mind you, i can hear a bit better then a human, but its nothing compared to my sense of smell (i have one of the best noses to have EVER evolved!). however i'm sure i heard one of the two voices mention "they're starting to talk an awful lot about poached quarries".

as i approached the stage the voices suddenly hushed in a startled manner, my presence had been noticed.

emerging from the stage was education staffer megan, who you might recall i'd met when i first got to the museum for this trip home. with her was another woman . i couldn't help but notice this still unknown (to me) museum staff member had a labcoat on that was covered in dried plaster of paris... the sort sort used in field jacketing.

there were education programs at the museum that used plaster, mind you. i'd just never seen a education staff get so covered in it before. typically you only get that covered when you're out at a real dig...

"why hello traumador," megan greeted me. she introduced her friend as being jo... which struck me as odd, i thought that was a human boy's name? oh well, you learn something everyday!

i greeted them back. i couldn't help but ask. "i'm sorry, i couldn't help but overhear you mention poached quarries. what were you talking about?" i asked trying to pretend i didn't know what was going on.

i had two reasons not to let on i knew anything. the biggest was i was under the impression the whole poaching "situation" was being kept secret, and people around the museum weren't supposed to know about it. that alone being talking about it... in the auditorium while it was deserted. something about megan and jo discussing it here bugged me reason... but i couldn't put my claw on why.

second of all, if it got around i was talking to people about the poachings, word could get to professor paradigm. he had threatened to do some meanish things to me if i didn't keep my snout out of the whole affair... which to be fair, i now had my snout in it to the point my neck was engulfed now! so it was best not to alert paradigm to this fact!

both megan and jo looked very uncomfortable for a moment upon hearing my question. however that was replaced quickly by devious smiles. "don't lie to us traumador," jo said. "we've heard the stories going around. you were the one who found the poachings in the first place, aren't you?"

oh oh, was it common knowledge i was involved? not that i was worried about paradigm being upset, as he already knew i was the one who found them. however it just gave the pack of the primordial feather that much more reason to be angry with me!

they both wrapped their arms around each other in a jovial manner when i hesitated in responding. "come on traumador, we're all friends here, museum staff and former staff alike," megan assured me. well i liked to feel that way. all of my best human friends (outside of new zealand) were all tyrrell staff members of one time or another. against my instincts i confirmed i had been the one to find the poachings.

for some reason they shifted their stance, which was outwardly friendly, but somehow gave me a funny vib. "do you know who they are and what they are after?" megan pointedly asked.

the incredibly cheerfulness about (our all being "friends" rather than) the poaching, was starting to creep me out. i told them it was the pack, and both megan and jo reacted in a bizarre manner.

i can't tell you what that manner was exactly, not in words. just something deep within my predatory tyrannosaur instincts didn't like the minor shifts they both made in the body posture at hearing of the pack's involvement.

they both laughed, and wanted to know more about my theory. almost as though it were a joke or something... i had to get away from the overly chummy twins, so i excused myself saying. "sorry i have something important i need to do."

okay that was bizarre, and definitely wasn't helping me collect myself. that was the first weird thing that had happened to me in the auditorium. bad things had happened there, mostly creationists (man those people and their make belief history scare me! but that's another story for another time), but never anything bizarre like that.

i decided that of the new staff i'd met, megan and this jo were my least favourite so far!

fortunately leaving the auditorium i found myself in the museum's learning centre. another place i had many fond memories. some of the best were my teaching at badland's science camp.

helping me chill, as planned, were some cool new decorations they'd added to the learning centre since i'd left the museum.

a flock of cool wooden pterosaurs.

man, they were neat. just like the skeleton play sets made of balsa wood i used to play with as a hatchling.

i enjoyed the simulated pterosaur swarm for several minutes. all the while walking slowly towards collections. i should taken momentary breaks from staring up at the ceiling though. had i bothered to watch where i was going i might not have had my second run in of the day!

thankfully i have my previously mentioned super smell. suddenly i was aware of a very not human smell in the hallway (i can smell things for a REALLY long time after they've been a place... especially in enclosed none open places like buildings! so usually anywhere inside a building just "stinks" of human). it was a dinosaurian smell, but not a dinosaur type i was very used to...

i was startled to find myself face to face with an oviraptor!

somehow its smell didn't travel as far or as strong and any other dinosaur i'd ever encountered. just must be something about them... point is it was there, and i'd had no early warning.

my fight or flight instincts flared up to red alert. oviraptors were coelurosaurs just like me... meaning there was no way this one won't be part of the pack... which considering the pack's heightened presence around here lately was no surprise.

"you!" she hissed, i could tell she was a female the instant i heard her 'voice'. more to the point she knew who i was, and clearly didn't like me...

i wanted to match the resentment and anger she displayed towards me, but curiosity overcame me. "who are you?" i kind of dumbly asked, which in hindsight probably was way more insulting then a cliche reply like 'you!' back or 'we meet again'.

the oviraptor was caught off guard by my removed from the situation question. instinctively she answered "layla," followed by nothing more. somehow based on who she answered i could tell she was someone important within the pack. had i just met one of the big wigs in larry's little club?

i jumped on the lull my question had caused, and decided to have a show of force. "you should just give up on your little scheme here in town layla. i know all about it, and once i get into collections it'll be all over. go back to the rest of the pack and tell them to never show themselves in this museum again!"

as if my exaggerated threat wasn't enough to try and upset the oviraptor, my mention of the museum's collections clearly hit a weak spot. she visibly winced in the form a of a neck twitch. oviraptors communicate a lot through their necks.

"i dare you to try to enter collections," she threatened back, though the curve in her neck betrayed she was slightly nervous. i was onto something with the collections angle! though layla had no doubts about her next threat. "not show ourselves in this museum," she laughed, a horrible sound from a oviraptor i assure you. "we are this museum, runt! nothing happens here without our knowing or say so. if i were you, i'd consider the rest of your time here with great care, or we might remind you of just how much we do control it!"

okay so that last bit was of the normal pack melodramatic variety.

i decided i'd spent enough time in close range to a primordial, and sprinted past layla towards collections... though the oviraptorids may look similar to our common relative the ornithomimids they certainly didn't have their leg build and thus the same speed. there was no way layla was going to catch me at my top speed. which i used all the way to collections... i'd given up on a relaxing walk through the museum.

i was going to bust the poaching case wide opening!

that is till i nearly burst straight into unprepared collections (read this link to learn what unprepared collections is), which was crawling with raptors!

i could now see why layla had so eagerly dared me to try and enter collections in her first threat. the pack had positioned the crimson talons in the tyrrell's collections to clearly guard the clues it held about their activities...

this was not good! this was SO not good!!!

i'd barely survived my last run in with the crimson talons! (see here and here) this time i couldn't count on a rescue though...

i was going to have to sneak into collections (as opposed to break in).

the good news was that unprepared collections wasn't the only way into prepared collections. there was no way i was going to be able to sneak through unprepared though, there were even raptors patrolling the shelving!

i had expected prepared collections to be worse... but to my surprise it was empty!

that was bizarre... the raptors must have been expecting most people to use the obvious path of unprepared to get into prepared collections. which just seemed dumb. even to a peanut brained peace loving t-rex like me! the backdoor to prepared was easy enough to access. better yet from their point of view it was a tighter space, ideal for an ambush...

why would the pack put all their guards on the wrong collections space?

it didn't matter i guess. prepared collections appeared to be completely safe.

so what is the difference between unprepared collections and prepared collections you might ask?

the first and foremost, prepared collections is a lot more impressive to visit than unprepared... this is where all the cleaned off and studied specimens of the museum are stored (unless they are out on display for the public in the museum's galleries). so it is a giant warehouse-like room full of all things palaeontologic and geologic!

sadly i was going to have to skip the fossil shelves, the coolest section in my opinion, and make my way to the more boring looking (but equally informative and important) cabinets...

i made it to the geology collection aisle. the answer to the poaching mystery was contained in here, and i intended to find out what it was!!!

to be continued: with the target of the poaching!!!

my cousin of the week #11

an australian waterhen i saw at the melbourne zoo.

palaeontologist to the left of me, palaeontologist to the right of me, sorted and identified...

i had a problem. well more to the point the palaeontologic community of drumheller had a problem. the pack of the primordial feather was poaching fossils, and so far no one was putting a stop to it! that is till now...

i was going to figure out what the pack was up to. to do so i needed to identify what kind of fossils they were stealing.

`

to help me do this, i'd JUST collected a bunch of sample microfossils from around the various poaching sites. i had now brought them back to the royal tyrrell museum, where i hoped one of the museum's curators could help me figure out something vital to solving the poaching mystery.

i ended up super lucky! there was a good chance i was about to save the day.

not only did i managed to get an audience with an expert willing to help me out... i got TWO! both were very keen to see if they could help with the poaching case, which hadn't been officially announced around the museum, but rumours of it had starting making the rounds. if there's one thing that scares palaeontologists its people stealing fossils before they can be studied!

on my left was dr. donald brinkman, director of preservation & research here at the museum. what his job title means is that he is THE head scientist at the museum, and he has to make all the tough calls when it comes to research and studies here at the museum.

dr. brinkman specializes in fossil turtles and, of more importantly to me today, microfossils. with both dr. brinkman attempts to find out why and how the environments during the late cretaceous were changing to help us understand climate change today.

you may remember dr. brinkman from when i still worked at the tyrrell. i went on a dig with with him and tony to collect microfossils. he also appears in my movie on microfossils (which i recommend watching, that way you'll totally understand what we were looking for here today).

on my right was dr. françois therrien, curator of dinosaur palaeoecology of the tyrrell. palaeoecology is the study of ancient environments, and dr. therrien uses every clue available to him to try and not only reconstruct the world of us dinosaurs, but us dinos as well.

to do this he studies everything from macro fossils, to micro fossils, and even (his main speciality) prehistoric dirt which we call paleosols.

between these two great experts on reconstructing prehistoric environments, i was sure to find out everything there was to know about the layers the pack had been poaching.

within moments of looking at the fossils i'd collected, there was a lot of promise in them.

many of my specimens not only recorded animals that lived in this environment, but also some of the interactions these creatures had with each other.

`

this small bit of hadrosaur tendon for example, told us not only was there duckbills in the poached era (not doubt edmontosaurus) but those marks you see all over it were left by a raptor's teeth! a dromaeosaur had eaten my duckbill (most likely after it was dead... based on what i'd seen it was hard for raptors to take down a living duckbill!)

`

both palaeontologists were engrossed with my specimens for a good couple of hours.

though they were nice enough to take quick breaks and tell me what i'd found, and what they were thinking about the specimens.

the funniest of these asides had to be when dr. therrien found a tyrannosaurid tooth (most likely an albertosaur) in the mix. he picked it up and held up close to my mouth. "you aren't missing a one of these are you?" he joked. "because it'd be pretty easy for us to replace it."

we both laughed, and i tried to follow up his joke with my own. "fossil bling! instead of gold, i could have a permineralized tooth!"

`

françois laughed, but in a really annoyed way. he suddenly jabbed the tooth into my snout. ouch i have to say! it may have been 70 millions of years old but it was still sharp! "only i may joke!" dr. therrien proclaimed.

`

he was kidding mind you, but the tooth had been sharper then he'd thought. he said sorry, and we got back to investigating.

`

after 2 hours both palaeontologists had come to a conclusion. my fossils were definitely telling a story.

both poached layers had been deposited by during brief floods of otherwise calm meandering rivers.

dr. brinkman was certain of this due to the fish bones i'd collected. fish are very preferential on the type of water system they live in... so their always a great indicator.

the samples of rock i'd grabbed from each site were both a fine grain clay based mudstone, which dr. therrien found to be a dead give away.

yet this didn't tell any of us anything more. it explained why i'd found so many clams and snails in the layers, but not what was being poached.

both scientists said they'd think on it when they could, however they had their own projects to get back too. i didn't mind, i'd wasted enough of their time.

it was just too bad i couldn't take them out to the site (i was pretty sure professor paradigm would have gotten word of my taking two of the world's top micro fossil experts into the field) as they no doubt would have spotted things out there i hadn't been able to tell them or bring back to the museum.

they also had permission to do more then surface collect. so we could have dug into the situation. i wasn't about to be as bad as the poachers and illegally dig myself... even if it meant i could catch them.

so some how i'd ended up at yet another dead end...

though there was something bugging me about those clams and snails. it occurred to me i forget mention their over abundance at the site to either dr. brinkman or therrien. i'd do it tomorrow i thought to myself, if my next plan was a bust.

i had one more angle. the one other place the poachers had hit.

the museum's geology collections... and as i'd found the "crime" scene before anyone else, i knew exactly which drawers they'd been after. i suspected the pack had been looking for clues on more spots to dig at. if i could figure out the clue they were looking for in the drawer, then i could use it to catch them!

to be continued: with a break in of my own!

poaching samples

okay, so as far as i can tell, the pack of the primordial feather had been poaching fossils. the question was which kind and why?

so far my attempts at figuring this out haven't produced many answers (only more questions really...), but hampering myself i'd been trying to not "actively" poke around the situation.

for my stumbling into events in the first place had not gone unnoticed. it had made professor paradigm unhappy with me, and worse the primordials had sent their raptor squad (the crimson talons) to try and kill me!

so i didn't feel safe now, whether i was actively investigating the case or not. if i was going to get the pack to leave me alone while i was in canada, i was going to have to blow the lid off whatever they were up too... assuming it had a lid. which come to think of it, i don't think it would or could...

since i'd exhausted the information i already had, i was going to have to gather more...

which meant rechecking the poached sites. meaning i was now once again actively back in the case... PLEASE don't tell professor paradigm!

the instant i hit the field i was in for some shocks. i realized i hadn't investigated the poachings as thoroughly as i should have...

at the first site, while checking the surrounding hills for possible geologic clues, i stumbled on a most distressing sight.

broken bones lying on the ground, but not broken by normal erosion. no sir, these bones had clearly been broken by being thrown down the hill... not only were they in pieces, but surrounded by chunks of rock that they'd been in till being hurled down here...

the big quarry pit was a trick! whoever had done this, had simply been digging a big hole for appearance's sake. they wanted someone (like this small tyrannosaur) to think there had been a big excavation here!...

in reality they'd simply dug out a huge pile of rock, moved it a hill over and dumped it.

along the way it appears they'd accidentally hit a few bones (which these rocks are full of!), but as the fossils were nothing specular, so the poachers just heaved them over the hill with the rock...

i could tell the bones had been hit later in the dig, as they were towards the top of the "slag" pile. the rule of super position clearly indicated that for the bones to be on top they must have been thrown here last. any earlier and they'd have been at the bottom of the pile.

of and slag if you are wondering is a palaeontologists word for the excess rock that gets removed during a dig and thrown away.

i was suspicious now!

checking the third site, after wandering a few of the hills behind this "dig", i found another slag pile. the exact same thing except no fossils at all. it was enough rock to perfectly fill back in the dig pit.

so the poachers were digging decoy quarries, to make it look like they were stealing big specimens... but why?

the answer must have been the plenty of small dig pits scattered around the first and second sites.

these i discovered had been field jacketed. meaning something had defiantly been taken out of these very small quarries properly (unlike the decoy pits!).

i'd been so preoccupied with the bigger looking digs, i hadn't noticed these clear small fossil thefts... the question was what would be so valuable to the pack and yet be so small?

i noticed something about the rock layers these fossils had been dug out of at both sites. there were a ton of fossil clam and snail shells amongst the specific layers... i didn't know what to make of this.

normally you find the clams in marine (ocean) deposits towards the east end of the valley, but i was well up the valley from there. the inland sea of the cretaceous had drained by the time of the rocks i was looking at... or had it? i guess these could have been fresh water clams from one of the lakes of the time.

the snail shells made more sense in a way, as they often wash down the hill from the glacial lake drumheller layer on the top of the valley. however that meant this layer was heavily altered since the cretaceous, and nothing valuable should come from it.

it made no sense no matter how i tried to explain it...

were these layers a very late (and probably the last ever) intrusion by the draining bearpaw sea? what shallow oceanic fossils could the pack possibly want?

was it a bad layer for collecting run off from the top of the valley, and thus be full of fossils from anywhere between 70 million years ago to 15 thousand? why would anyone want fossils from such a contaminated section?

or was it the deposit of a freshwater lake or river from the cretaceous? again what living at the bottom of a lake or river would interest coelurosaurs?

i couldn't see any of these producing unique or particularly desirable fossils...

fortunately for me i hit pay dirt exploring further along both layers... i for both localities micro fossil sites!

if you want to know more about micro fossils check out the video i did about them here.

i collected as many of the surface ones as i could (i didn't have either the equipment, or more importantly permission to dig for more out of the ground properly), and brought them back to the museum!

though i could tell what many of the fossils were themselves, i didn't have the expertise to get much beyond this. all of them together properly identified were no doubt key clues to the mystery...

several palaeontologists at the museum, on the other hand, were nothing BUT micro fossil gurus! with these fossils hopefully these scientists could tell me not only what type of an environment those poached layers were, but through that insight potentially what the stolen fossils were!

to be continued... with special palaeontologist guest stars!

fossil of the weekend! #32

a cast skeleton of amargasaurus at melbourne museum in australia.

my cousin of the week #10

a female paradise shelduck of new zealand

the BIG missing alberta dinosaur...

the pack of the primordial feather was poaching fossils around drumheller. my discovering this had ticked them off enough that they'd tried to kill me. i'd been told to stop worrying about the whole affair, and get back to my vacation.

however, would you feel safe after a raptor attack?

adding to this uneasiness, i got an eee-mail from a disgruntled pack member who warned me i could be in bigger danger. this "ruffled feather" told me that i might be the only person who could stop the pack from profiting from their thefts, and more to the point if i didn't try they would certainly come after me...

though what they're stealing i'm not sure... which was my goal for today, try and figure out what they are after!

i'd already reviewed what i knew of the case.

to me quarries 1 and 3 were most likely the main goals of the poaching. both sites had very large excavation pits from which something huge had been taken out. in particular, the 3rd site was of a scale i'd never seen before. if the skeleton taken out of this dig matched the pit, that made the animal 20% bigger then the biggest edmontosaurus ever found in alberta! edmontosaurus was the BIGGEST dinosaur so far found in alberta!

being right at the tyrrell museum of palaeontology, however , i had access to world class experts who could help me get to the bottom of this mystery... best of all without directly getting involved in it!

my top pick from these experts for IDing the possible fossil was dr. donald henderson, curator of dinosaurs at the tyrrell. if anyone here was going to be able to help me sort out what large unknown dinosaurs were being discovered it was dr. henderson. after all there was next to no chance something 17 meters long was NOT going to be a dinosaur!

`

the first thing we did was reference the photos i'd taken of the poachings and examine the measurements of the dig pits. dr. henderson's first concern was whether the skeletons taken out of the sites were articulated, associated, or completely disarticulated. depending on which it was, this would change the nature of the problem.

i hear some of you asking, "articulated, associated, and disarticulated, what does that mean?" a perfect topic for a Palaeo FACT!

`

these are terms we use to refer to the state of a fossil when we find it in the ground. typically these terms describe vertebrate fossils, as their skeletons have so many pieces. many invertebrates tend to have only a few parts at most so we don't have to worry about its state is other than how broken it is.

`

skeletons and their hundreds of individual bones, on the other hand, tend to fall apart once the animal is dead because in life all the soft parts around the bone were holding the bones together. once the animal passes away these soft parts start to decompose leaving the skeleton unsupported and so easier to separate.

`

articulate skeletons are those fossil skeletons where we are lucky enough to find bones together as they would have been in real life. this is of course a rarity, and typically means the animal was buried under extreme circumstances. normally through the processes of decomposition, scavenging, and burial, bones tend to get jumbled up. an articulate skeleton usually means the poor animal was buried pretty much right around its death (in fact more often than not, being buried is what killed it!).

`

despite the fact that we can sometimes get complete skeletons in articulate form, usually this is not the case. not all of an animal may get buried, meaning we can get articulated parts of a skeleton missing whole chunks. sometimes we get lucky and find them scattered elsewhere around the body, but of course this is not always the case.

`

if you are wanting to study individual dinosaurs (whether it be skeletons or species) articulated is the way you want to find them.

`

associated skeletons: again there are a lot of factors that can break a skeleton apart once the animal has died. many of these (though not all) often don't have the power to move the bones far from the body, whether this be the action of predatory scavengers tearing the body apart to eat it, or the force of water or wind that slowly pushes the bones apart from each other (typically burying them along the way).

we can find a complete associated skeleton , but it will be scattered and in need of serious reassembly. typically, associated skeletons tend to be incomplete as many bones will have been removed from the spot before burial or fossilization.

you can get parts of a skeleton "associated" with other parts of the same animal that are completely articulated . it is important to remember which is which as both articulated and associated refer to a single animal whose parts are still "together". the difference being articulated means the pieces are still together, associated simply means the pieces are all mixed up but at least in the same general area.

to be honest associated skeletons aren't ideal for any type of study. i can't think of any researcher who hopes to find associated material above articulated. though if you're into individual study (again single animal or species or genus etc.) then associated is still preferable to...

disarticulated is where the bones are not only scattered, but not necessarily from the same animal!

when we find a site of random bones that do not clearly belong to each other (ie. associated) one has to assume they do not come from the same animal. in some cases the bones could very likely be from the same individual animal, but due to the incompleteness or bones from another animal being mixed in you don't want to make a mistake through wishful thinking.

often disarticulated material is found in bonebeds (which you can read about it here) which are a spot in an environment in which material from many different animals build up.

though disarticulated fossils might sound like a waste of time, this is only if you are interested in individual animals. if you are into studying environments or communities, disarticulated fossils, especially in bonebeds, are ideal as you can get a sample of the types of animals all living in a region.

granted it helps to have found articulated or associated skeletons of these critters before, so you know what you are looking at in a bonebed...


after looking at the poached dig sites carefully dr. henderson and i determined that the poachers had removed both pits as entire blocks, meaning that whatever fossils they took out had all been clustered together. this ruled out an associated skeleton. these tended to be spread out, and require only small chunks of rock to be taken out throughout the pit.

that left us with either an articulated skeleton or a large bonebed of disarticulated material.
i had checked around the site, and saw no evidence of any more bones. typically bonebeds tend to be much bigger then these excavation sites (sometimes kilometres wide!). moreover there wasn't much to be gained by excavating it without properly mapping it. it probably wasn't properly mapped as these digs were clearly as fast as they could be. mapping can take a lot of time to do right...

that left us with an articulated skeleton...

dr. henderson did not need any time to think of a single 17 meter long candidate to fill those quarries. the only animals that ever got to that size, that lived on land anyway, were sauropod dinosaurs.

despite this obvious answer dr. hendersion was a little hesitant to accept it as the only explanation. after all there was no guarantee that they'd dug out only a single animal. for all we knew it was a site with multiple articulate skeletons together, a rarity in alberta normally.

however in face of the information i could give him, it made the most sense to dr. henderson that the poachings were of long necked dinosaurs. no sauropods were known from alberta, let alone from the drumheller region, and thus represented not only a wealth of information but probably a lot of money too. most fossil theft tends to have something to do with making money, and so finding a previously unknown dinosaur could be worth a lot potentially, especially if it is the biggest animal known from an area...

i thanked dr. henderson for his time. he'd certainly given me something to think about.

though alberta certainly enjoyed a diversity and wealth of dinosaurs, sauropods were not among them. not that it wasn't possible.

the titanosaurs, later relatives of the tyrrell's camarosaur, would carry the long necked dinosaur lineage right up to the end of the dinosaur's reign. some of the most famous and common late cretaceous titanosaurs come from the southern united states, which was not cut off from alberta by the time of drumheller's fossil record, meaning there is a slight possibility they could have been wandering around here back then.

yet no previous evidence of them in alberta had been found. studies of the environments in the united states versus those here in canada showed that long necks preferred dry highlands. texas and new mexico were a lot drier and higher in elevation then alberta 70 million years ago, which itself was a lowland swamp at that time.

it makes sense that an animal that weighed as much as a small herd of elephants would need stable footing to live day to day. the coastal floodplains of alberta certainly would not have had much of that to offer! it was nothing but swamps, lakes, and rivers, as well as large tyrannosaurids who would have loved to eat a bogged down long neck!

no, it wasn't a sauropod i thought to myself looking at the camarosaurus skeleton.

it made no sense... at least from the pack's point of view.

what did they have to gain from stealing the only evidence of titanosaurs in alberta? they couldn't eat it, and its not like it would have made them that much money... many of the pack members are big multi million dollar movie stars. why would they need to steal fossils to offset that kind of income?

that and the scientific evidence for albertan titanosaurs wasn't really there. just circumstantial evidence someone had dug something "big"...

no, i was going to need to look into this a little more closely.

so much for my idea of having the experts solve it for me... though i was still going to need their help.

looked like i was going to have to stick my snout into the situation after all...

to be continued...

fossil of the weekend! #31

a cast skeleton of pteranodon from the auckland war memorial museum.

in honour of the brand new pterosaur art gallery at ART Evolved. go check it out!

ruffled feather

i thought this trip back to drumheller was supposed to be fun!?!

over the last little while it has taken a few dark dark turns... whether it be someone stealing fossils, a break into the tyrrell museum's collections, coming under attack by a pack of raptors, and getting in trouble from professor paradigm... the fun of the trip has departed.

just when things couldn't seem to get any crazier, today as i was checking my eee-mail i got the most puzzling (and worrying) instant message.

instantly i knew it could only mean trouble, because whoever was trying to talk to me had this symbol as their icon... this was the seal of the pack of the primordial feather, the very same group of dinosaurs who'd just tried to kill by velociraptor (and several other species of raptor)!!!
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before i could react and close the window, thinking the pack was simply trying to cyber stalk me, suddenly the window chirped as whoever was on the other end sent me a message.

Traumador the Tyrannosaur, your current actions have put you in grave danger!

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thank you captain obvious of the noticing things league!

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uh thanks for the heads up, but i kinda noticed when you sent the crimson talons to come and kill me!

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these were pretty sad scare tactics i thought. maybe the pack should just stick to sending killer theropods to try and get me.

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The pack hasn't gotten started yet, I assure you. Unless you hurry up in your efforts to hinder the Pack of the Primordial Feather's current plans they'll send a lot more than the Crimson Talons!

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I offer you information that could help.

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right "information", which would what, led me into a new trap.

sure you do... do you really think i'm THAT stupid!

who is this exactly?!?

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actually it doesn't matter.

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just tell my cousin to leave me alone, and that you should quit you're little operation in drumheller. i know what you're doing, and if you don't stop i'm going to make sure professor paradigm and palaeo-central shuts it down!

okay so that last part was a lie. paradigm had in fact told me if i didn't leave the whole pack and poached fossil thing alone he'd personally see to it that something bad happened to me (my guess was the theropod killing lance the lambeosaur and sternberg styracosaur would be involved).

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i however was not wanting to give the impression i was on my own, and thus weak. otherwise the crimson talons might try another jurassic park re-enactment on me.

Of course I know, that you know! Why else would I contact you?!?

It is all the pack's matriarchs can talk about at moment. You have the pack worried, and it is about time someone did!

As for who I am, that is not important.

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Let us just say you have friends inside the pack. Not all of us willingly joined. However most do not have your bravery when it came to saying no to the offer.

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You just saw the other day what can happen to those who oppose the pack's will... Yet you have faced it and prevailed. I was beginning to wonder if you were worthy of seeking out.

this sounded to good to be true.

if this is true then i'd very much like to know who you are!

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i'm not risking another pack trap...


I can understand you're concern, but understand mine. If I am discovered, I am dead. The royals would execute me on the spot!

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You have become a very taboo subject within the pack. Anyone caught even sympathizing with you, that alone directly helping you, is getting harshly disciplined!

So you will either have to trust me based on what I have just told you, or be on your own!

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i almost felt bad about being so distrusting, considering the risks this dinosaur was taking in trying to help me. that is if they were being truthful.

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it was just as easy to make up a story like this and try and lull me into a false sense of security.

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alright let's say i buy this story of yours for now.

what can i at least call you?


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i still wanted something to identify this dinosaur as.

For now you can call me Ruffled Feather.






alright ruffled feather.

why are you helping me, and not say paradigm?



You and I have a united enemy, that Paradigm does not share. The Primordials are very much an equal threat to both of our freedoms. Something the Professor will never have to worry about.

Besides the "good" doctor has a reputation, you may have encountered, of having as self serving of motives as the Pack's.

I can't trust him to act against the pack in a way that benefits me (and by extension you) as much as another coelurosaur. As one of the only successful dissenters you're among my only hopes. Especially as you're the only none loyalist anywhere near the Tyrrell!

okay that sounded fair enough. i had been finding the professor was very cagey about everything, and never up front.

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that STILL didn't mean i should trust this ruffled feather... which i guess was the point. no matter what questions i asked on my part or answers they gave on theirs, i was not going to be able to be completely sure.

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interrupting this ongoing concern on my part suddenly ruffled feather messaged me...

Oh no! I think someone is coming towards me!

There isn't much time...

Keep probing as you have been.

what am i looking for exactly?




i asked. though i knew the pack was stealing fossils, i didn't know what kinds or more to the point why?

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What do you mean?

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You do know what they are doing at the museum right?

How could you not, as they've stolen something very dear to you all in drumheller, especially yourself. It is...

ruffled feathers suddenly cut off and was displayed as offline. i frantically typed a few messages hoping there'd just been a hick up in the innerweb. no good. ruffled feather had shut off their end of the conversation.

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whether it was due to being discovered or simply to make the charade the pack had just played on me seem more real, ruffled feather was gone...

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yet thinking about what had just been said, i started to realize there wasn't much danger in what i'd just been told. this couldn't have been a set up for a trap. other then perhaps telling me to look into events as a whole, there were no specifics (times or locations) that could be a trick.

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besides the crimson talons had attacked me at a random moment. we weren't closing on them stealing fossils. heck we weren't even in the field. what was stopping them from attacking me whilst i chilled out for the rest of my trip as paradigm had told me too?

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no, there was something to this ruffled feathers that made me want to trust them. if even just about the part of me upsetting the pack.

the question was how had i done that?

that only clue ruffled feather had managed to tell me before being cut off though was "they've stolen something very dear to you all in drumheller, especially yourself." what could that possibly be?

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as far as i could tell everything that they'd stolen was so far undiscovered, especially by me! how could the area, and i for that matter, hold something dear of we hadn't known of its existence...

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i guess ruffled feather was speaking of the right of us all to know about fossils, which was something i did real hold dear. i think no one should be allowed to own fossils, but rather that we should all have a right to see and learn from them, but sadly not everyone else feels this way.

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fortunantely here in alberta the law supports my feelings here. so if i could catch the pack stealing fossils, i'd get them in a LOT of trouble!!!

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so i needed to review what i knew to start hunting them down (in a sense)!

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i found the first poached quarry was while searching for the lost quarrys of francis slate.

the biggest find at this site we'd made here was that the poachers had abandoned a lot of substandard equipment. this indicated to us (tony, myself, and yumi) that this was the FIRST poached site of them all. the poachers found some of their gear to be faulty and discarded it. afterall why would they realize this during a later dig and not their first?

there'd been a lot of quarry pits scattered around the dump spot (probably their camp for a week based on the trash left in the otherwise lovely badlands). it was hard to tell which were test digs (to check out their equipment performance) and which were to take out fossils.

these dig pits varied in size from small little meter by meter holes in the hill, to one that was huge. this singular giant dig site was big enough for a full grown hadrosaur or tyrannosaurid at about 11 or 12 meters long and 4 meters wide.

the second poaching i'd found was a few smaller pits. this looked like a days worth of work by the poachers. if i had to guess these were just to test their replacement equipment. which now seemed to be working fine.

the third site was much more likely to be the real target of the pack's efforts. as just like the first site this one had a very large single quarry pit.

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however unlike the first, this one was bigger then any single dinosaur ever found in alberta! though this implied an exciting discovery, it was also a little worrying that it had been nabbed away before scientists could look at it!

then the strangest act of all on the part of the poachers. they had broken into the museum's geology collections and ransacked the drawers with the specimens of horseshoe canyon formation rocks.

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i can only assume they were looking for clues in these sample rocks to try and find more of whatever they were poaching. sadly before i could try and find clues as to what, i was interupted and kicked out of the "crime" scene...

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so in the end i don't know a whole lot other then the pack is digging for some sort of fossil (based on the tools and materials getting left at the sites).

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i'm thinking the large pits at sites 1 and 3 are the key clues. if i can figure out what the primordials dug up there, then i stand a better chance to expose what they are doing, and more importantly try and recover the fossils they are stealing!

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to be continued