I Dug Up a Camel: Part 2

Last week's blog post was about the history of camels in the American southwest and how I found myself at a prehistoric camel dig in the middle of eastern Arizona. This week I'm excited to show pictures from the dig and explain the process of taking an ancient camel skeleton out of the desert and into the lab. First, a quick summary of our camel. We estimate that it's about 2.2 to 2.4 million years old, it is one of three camels (and a turtle) found in a small area, it's a sub-adult camel, and its skeleton is complete, meaning that almost all of the bones, from the head to the tail, were found at the same time. All of these details make our camel a rare find, so we want to take extra special care of it.

Me in the field out at the camel dig site. The turtle shell is about
200 feet behind me, and the camel is about 15 feet in front of me.
PC: Jessica Noviello, Nov. 2018.

On a bright but cold Saturday morning, we piled into pickup trucks with our rock hammers, flathead screwdrivers, hats, jackets, and sunblock and drove out to the dig site. Our group numbered about 15 people, ranging in age from a young boy of 10 to Larry, our senior expert from the local Bureau of Land Management Office. Most of us were volunteers eager to get experience at a real paleontology dig. Two expert paleontologists from the Arizona Museum of Natural History also came along to supervise and give us geologic context. To go out on a dig like this, everyone needs to have at least some experience working with fossils, and everyone must be able to work together as a team, or else we run the risk of damaging or destroying the bones.

I spent most of my weekend working on excavating the camel. Larry had already spent time uncovering it, and previous volunteer teams had already taken the skull and neck, two of the legs, and the hips out of the field. Our goal for the weekend was to remove the torso, and maybe start on getting another leg out of the rock and sand. Others worked on excavating the turtle shell (carapace), a large dome that was roughly 2 feet in diameter. Still others spent time walking around looking for other bone fragments and maybe teeth, a process called prospecting.

Step 1: We used toilet paper and field "glue" to stabilize the fragile
parts of the camel torso. PC: Jessica Noviello, Nov. 2018.

There's a big difference between reading about digs and actually being on a dig. I think what surprised me most is how many everyday items are used in paleontology, the first example of which was toilet paper. After we removed the surrounding dirt from the torso but before we could wrap the bones in plaster, we first had to stabilize and protect them from the plaster itself. We did this by gently placing toilet paper on the particularly fragile bits of the camel torso and wetting the paper with a liquid mixture of water and acetate, which we called field "glue."

Dipping burlap strips into the plaster to lay on the camel torso.
PC: Jessica Noviello, Nov. 2018.

Next we had to wrap the torso up in plaster to protect it on its journey from desert to museum lab. One volunteer, Emelia, was in charge of making the mixture of plaster and water the exact right consistency, which she called "pancake batter." Another volunteer, Alex, was in charge of ripping up burlap cloth. These burlap strips were dragged through the plaster mix and laid on the torso. We applied at least two layers of burlap and plaster to the entire torso, taking special care around the fragile bits. Finally, we put two wood planks onto the top of the torso, which makes the torso easier to carry and move.

The camel torso ready to be flipped! Rock hammer and blue
stuffed dinosaur for scale. PC: Jessica Noviello, Nov. 2018.

Removing the torso wasn't as easy as just picking it up from the dirt, however. There was still half the torso connected to the dirt underneath the bit we had already excavated. The only solution, therefore, was to flip the torso over. We did this by literally hammering a long rod underneath the torso and using it as a lever. I left the more experienced volunteers to the flipping so I could film it. I was surprised at how quickly it happened. We spent hours preparing the torso, but the actual act of flipping only took about 3 seconds. It was as easy as lifting up on the lever, catching the torso, and lowering it down onto the tarp we had laid out. The tarp allowed us to pick up the entire torso without directly touching it, potentially putting pressure on a weak point in the plaster. Speaking from experience, the tarp made it much easier to carry the torso back out to the cars, though we still needed 4 people to do it.

After we flipped the torso, we were relieved to see that the rod hadn't hit any of the remaining bones, particularly the two legs that were wedged underneath the torso. We were basically drilling blind, so we got really lucky! Unfortunately, the entire torso didn't survive the flip, and some bits and pieces were left behind. We spent the rest of that Saturday closely examining the dirt that was left behind, searching for bone fragments or even some skin impressions. The biggest pieces that were left behind were the ribs, which needed their own plaster jacket before they were moved. You saw these in Part 1 of this blog post.

Bone fragments I picked up while prospecting. Notice the
slight purple tinge and the shiny nature of the bones.
PC: Jessica Noviello, Nov. 2018.

By Sunday there wasn't much left to do on the camel, so I jumped between excavating the turtle shell and prospecting. At first I had a terrible time prospecting. The bone fragments were small and fragmented, so they camouflaged perfectly with the surrounding gravel. I quickly grew frustrated. Thankfully, another member of the Southwest Paleontological Society, Jenny, found a small area that had a bunch of bone fragments, so she called me over to help. I always thought that people exaggerated when they say "once I found one, I easily found tons more," but that's exactly what happened. The bone shards had a slightly purple tinge and a shiny luster that the dull gravel lacked. Once I knew what I was looking for, I couldn't walk two steps without finding more. We carefully put all the fragments into Ziploc bags and labeled them clearly so we had a good record of our data. These bones and bone fragments are true data, evidence of ancient life and a world that doesn't exist anymore. We don't get a second chance to find these if they are lost or destroyed, so we take the process seriously.

Soon after we packed up and covered the remainder of the camel with sand, to be dug up by future groups. The rest of the camel and the turtle headed back to Mesa, where more volunteers would remove the plastic and clean up the bones. I had a great time going out on my first paleontology dig, and if I wasn't in a desperate rush to finish my PhD this spring, I'd be going out again to finish the job. If you are interested in participating in a paleontology dig, I'd first suggest reading up on the subject, and then reaching out to a local museum to get experience working with fossils or in a lab. It is definitely a special experience, and one I am so thankful to have. At the very least, it makes for a great adventure story!

Me digging out the camel torso and preparing it to be flipped.
This is why we use flathead screwdrivers!
PC: Jessica Noviello, Nov. 2018.

I Dug Up a Camel: Part 1

Sometimes the best science opportunities suddenly appear in front of you. In those instances, the best thing to do is say yes and embrace the experience that will one day make a grand adventure story. In November 2018, one of these opportunities knocked me off my feet, literally.

I was training in my Krav Maga class with my partner, an older man named Sherman, and a fellow graduate student, Mariah. We were working on defending against aggressive knife techniques, and one of the defenses ends up with the attacker on the ground, which is how I found myself looking up at my partners with the wind knocked out of me. As I stood up and caught my breath, Sherman asked Mariah and me if we liked paleontology. Turns out Sherman is the President of the Southwest Paleontological Society (SPS), and because he knew that Mariah and I are geology graduate students, he invited us both out to a paleontology dig in eastern Arizona in mid-November. A little over a week later I was in a car driving out to a campground in Safford, Arizona. The hunt for bones was on! Our quarry: a prehistoric camel.

The view from our campground on this dig near Safford, AZ.
PC: Jessica Noviello, 2018.

Our housing at the campground. I was prepared for a tent, but this works too!
PC: Jessica Noviello, 2018.

 Camels have a long history in Arizona that begins 45 million years ago in the Eocene period. Back then, Arizona was a rainforest, and the place where a small, deer-like animal made its appearance in the fossil record: Protylopus. This is the earliest known camel, and its discovery surprised paleontologists. Modern camels, and even most fossil camels, have cushioned, wide feet to help them move over unstable terrain like sand and grassland gravel. But Protylopus walked on four dainty toes on each foot. As southwest North America changed from rainforests to grasslands, these feet put the Protylopus at a mobility disadvantage, and they couldn't overcome it. They eventually died out, but not before starting the lineages that would eventually lead to modern camels.

Artist's reconstruction of Protylopus in its habitat.
PC: WILLEMSVDMERWE and PBS: Eons.

Ancient camels eventually traveled north and west across the landbridge that spanned the Bering Strait, into Asia and Europe, where they became the modern camels we know today. North America and South America finally connected to form the isthmus of Panama around 3 million years ago, leading to a significant migration event called the Great American Interchange. Species that had evolved on one continent quickly moved to the other, including some camels. The camels that migrated south would eventually evolve into the ancestors of llamas and alpacas.

Our camel died after this Interchange event, sometime between 2.2 and 2.4 million years ago. It belonged to the Camelops genus, enormous animals that stood 11.5 feet tall as adults, almost twice as tall as today's camels. Camel skeletons and bones are fairly common throughout the American west, but our camel was unusual for a few reasons. One, our camel was a sub-adult, or a camel teenager; two, our camel was one of three found within a 200 span of an ancient river bed; and three, our camel was complete.

Rib bones of our camel. PC: Jessica Noviello, 2018.

In paleontology, a complete skeleton is one where all of the bones from the skull to the tail are found together, including the small bones found at the ends of the limbs. Turning a dead animal into a fossil takes a long time that ranges from thousands to millions of years depending on the environment. During this time period, scavengers can take bones away from the rest of the skeleton, and natural catastrophes like floods and mudslides can wash bones away.

Finding an entire skeleton is rare. Our camel is only the third complete camel discovered so far in the entire southwest! For this camel to also be a sub-adult makes it even more valuable, as it shows us exactly what that animal looked like at its stage in development as it grew from baby to adult. Its completeness indicates it was buried quickly, before anything could move the bones away. The fact that it was found with two other camels (and an ancient turtle too!) in an old riverbed points to a sudden event, like a flash flood, as the cause of death.

What was it like to dig up the camel? What are the steps involved? Who does stuff like that on their weekends? Find out in Part 2 of this blog post, coming next week!

Additional source:
"When Camels Roamed North America." PBS: Eons. November 20, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJNoAE0UHzY

Naming a Dinosaur

Most people know about dinosaurs, the “terrible lizards” that dominated the Mesozoic Era from about 252 million years ago until an asteroid hit the Yucatán Peninsula at the end of the Cretaceous period 65 million years ago. At last count there are at least 700 distinct species of dinosaurs discovered and written about in scientific journals. They range in size from the miniscule Compsognathus longipes to the massive (and recently discovered) Dreadnoughtus schrani. Their names often trip the most practiced tongues because of their lengths and their syllabic complexities.

So how do dinosaurs get these names anyway?

First, it’s important to remember that the field of paleontology itself is fairly young; Sir Isaac Newton had invented calculus about 150 years before fossils were recognized as something that belonged to ancient creatures! Even before paleontology emerged as a new scientific field, many people realized that there was something different about these rocks. U.S. President Thomas Jefferson thought the fossils were from animals that could be found elsewhere on the North American continent, so he instructed Lewis and Clark to pick up any fossils they found to bring back. They only found one during their expedition up the Missouri River, but in 1807 and 1808, Jefferson commissioned Clark to collect mastodon bones and teeth, which is now called the Jefferson Collection. It and other fossils are now housed at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, where they are still used for modern scientific study.

Prof. Ted Daeschler (Drexel University) showing off the Jefferson Collection of mastodon bones and teeth at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, PA.

The second thing to remember is that all dinosaurs have two names, according to the Linnaean system of classification devised in the 1750s. The first part of a name is the genus, which is analogous to a surname in English. That first informs the reader what small and specialized group of animals the author is writing about. The second name is their species name, which is the specific animal within that group, analogous to a given name. These names are italicized to note that they are special names, and often the genus name is omitted when talking about multiple species within that group. When that happens, the species name is not capitalized. This is why it is correct to write T. rex, but not T. Rex!

Many of the first dinosaurs described in scientific literature were named simply for their basic  characteristics, translated into either Greek or Latin to distinguish a species name from its description in English. For example, the very first dinosaur described, Megalosaurus bucklandii, literally means “great lizard” in Greek. The second dinosaur described, Iguanodon bernissartensis, simply means “iguana tooth,” reflecting that the first part of its skeleton discovered, the tooth, was initially thought to be from a large iguana. Of course, Tyrannosaurus rex means “tyrant lizard king,” even though recent evidence shows that dinosaurs are likely not lizards at all!

The genus names come from a dinosaur’s general features, but what about the second name? Those are often used to denote the place of the animal’s discovery or where it lived or lives (in the case of extant, or modern, animals). A good example is Velociraptor mongoliensis, which means “swift thief of Mongolia” in Latin.

Another way to name a dinosaur is to honor a paleontologist or another person. For example, Megalosaurus bucklandii is named for William Buckland, Professor of Geology at the University at Oxford and the first scientist to describe Megalosaurus in scientific literature. Today, it is not considered good etiquette to name a dinosaur after yourself, and it is a great honor to have a dinosaur species named after you. Some are named after musicians (Masiakasaurus knopfleri), and some are named after the person who discovered the bones, even if that person didn’t describe them to science (Vectidraco daisymorrisae).

Of course, there are some names that come out of pop culture. Dracorex hogwartsia was discovered by three amateur paleontologists in South Dakota, and was named after the school from the Harry Potter series. Another dinosaur, Zuul crurivastator, is named for the monstrous deity from the original Ghostbusters movie.

New dinosaurs are discovered every year all over the world, so it is possible to one day get the chance to name your own. What would you call yours?

Sources: Behind the Bones documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8wySyiynHk

https://www.rom.on.ca/en/collections-research/research-community-projects/zuul

https://phys.org/news/2006-05-dinosaur-hogwarts-school.html