ITS A DINOSAUR!!!! (or a fish...)

Hello!
I wanted to update you on whats going on in my dinosaur lab! So in case I forgot to tell you, I've been volunteering in the palentology lab at UQ on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. My friend Kacie has been doing it with me. We were given this huge rock that had all these fragments broken off of it, and Tam, our supervisor (who has blonde dreadlocks with silver beads all through them which looks awesome, and a face full of piercings that I reeealllly had to adjust myself to. bleh!) told us not to expect any kind of bone in the rock. We can easily see some fossilized wood, which is important in itself, and still REALLY cool, but I admit I was kinda bummed about the whole no dino bit.

Well!

We've spent the last few weeks painstakingly glueing the rock back together (and some fingers) and filling the holes with beeswax. Last week we put it in an acid bath. The glue keeps the rock and the fossil together while the outside of the rock is being dissolved by the acid, and the beeswax in the holes keeps the acid from reaching the unprotected parts of the fossil (the main parts were soaked in a plastic composition that basically rebinds the fossil and makes it sturdier). We had to wait a whole week while this sucker was being dissolved, and then yesterday we took it out and had a peek.

There, beautifully preserved within the rock, and just beginning to emerge, is a 95 million year old jawbone. Excuse the terminology, but holy. shit. I literally blacked out for a second I was so excited. Tam who was having caniptions as well, quickly went through her records of the dig site and can pinpoint the exact location and position the fossil was placed at on the site and what other fossils were around it. We have two possible answers. My fossil, in this big ugly rock that is compressed swamp mud from the pleistocene era, was once EITHER- the jawbone of an armoured fish, though it seems unlikely given the other fossil remnants around it, but the bone is kind of flakey, which is (apparently) characteristic of fish bone fossils. OR, it is the jawbone of an ankylosaurus, one of the very last surviving dinosaurs. Not too much is known about the ankylosaurus, except it was an armored plant eater that stood just about as high as a horse. The fossils around the site are from one, so its pretty probable. This is a pretty big deal in terms of discovery too, because apparently jawbones are really rare. skulls are heavy things on thin vertebrae, and over time when a body decomposes the vertebrae snap and the skull tumbles off, usually snapping the jaw. Well, I've got at least one whole side of one sitting pretty in a rock. The best part is, its a huge rock. Who knows what else we've got in there!!!!! It KILLS me that my camera is broken, or else I would have taken thousands of pictures of 'Toby' (yes I know...I named it...). It would have been awesome to photograph the process of uncovering it too...but it doesn't matter much because I get to live it.

I have never been more excited about any project in my life. I feel like I have met an old friend. I have touched history, literally. I've intoduced myself to and am uncovering a creature who lived and breathed and walked (or swam) around before any kind of human scratch upon the surface of time. I feel lightheaded at I write these words. I just keep thinking about little me with my dinosaur figures in the mud outside, imagining a world where these guys were real, pretending I was uncovering them. They were real, and I am. I know I had some ankleosaurus figurines too... had I known what was coming in the future I would have paid more attention to them I'm sure.

Anyway, I just had to get on my soap box for a minute and tell you my super exciting news. At least I think it is.

Somehow I don't think Edward would mind this new dino I've been hanging out with.

Miss you and love you so very much.