May/June 2013 - Casper College

Miner als • Dinosaur s • F ossils
Tate Geological Museum
Geological Times
May - June 2013• Vol 19, No. 6
casp er co l l ege. ed u/ t a t e
3 0 7 - 2 6 8 - 2 4 47
Fossil of the Month –
Juvenile Brontosaur Humerus
By J.P. Cavigelli, Tate Geological Museum Collections Specialist
©Drawing by Zack Pullen.
A few
years ago, Brent
Breithaupt, the
Bureau of Land
Mangement
paleontologist
for the state
of Wyoming
approached
us with some
dinosaur bones. He was looking for a home for
some Morrison Formation bones that were part
of a legal case. It seems someone had been
arrested for collecting dinosaur bones on BLM
land without a permit. The bones he had collected
were recollected by BLM law enforcement and
needed to be reposited somewhere. As the Tate
Geological Museum is a BLM repository, Brent
asked if we would house them. I said “yes.”
These bones are now in our collections with
BLM evidence tags on them. Later, with the
BLM’s blessing, Concordia College in Minnesota
collected briefly at the site exploited by the fossil
poacher. As Concordia is not a BLM Repository,
we arranged for the material they collected to
come here to the Tate. Some of the bones were
taken back to Minnesota, prepared there and
eventually brought to the Tate, but mostly we
got a collection of field jackets. Some of our
volunteers have been working on both prepared
bones and jackets.
The featured humerus had been mostly
prepared by Concordia people, but Tate
volunteer Debbie Strong finished the job here.
Melissa Connely, our local Morrison Formation
expert, has identified this as a humerus from a
young Brontosaurus. The name Brontosaurus
has actually been replaced with the name
Apatosaurus, but I am old school and like the
word Brontosaurus, which was a key part of
my second grade dinosaur fascination. Steven
Director’s Note
Exhibits Update
Page 2
Page 5
J. Gould once wrote an essay called “Bully for
Brontosaurus” in which he explains why the
name should indeed be retained. I vote with
Steven J. (The essay can be found in his book
of the same name). While Brontosaurus is a
common animal in the Morrison Formation, it is
pretty exciting to have a bone of a juvenile animal.
The humerus is 24 inches long (61 cm); the cast
we have on display of an adult Brontosaurus
humerus is 39 inches (1 meter) long. The second
photo shows Russell Hawley holding the juvenile
bone up next to the cast of the adult arm in the
museum.
It is a multi-year project to prepare these
bones, but it may be put on hold for a while.
Melissa has also been instrumental in getting
the Tate Geological Museum back on the Carlin
Ranch near Medicine Bow, Wyo. This is the
ranch where the Tate used to dig at Como Bluff
years ago. Starting this summer we will be
digging again in the Morrison Formation at Como
Bluff. We will have our own Morrison Formation
bones to prepare, so preparing the Concordia
Collection may be put on hold for a while. Stay
What’s inside
Volunteer Spotlight Page 6
? and Answers
Page 7
2
Director’s Note Correction:
©Drawing by Zak Pullen.
Two out of
three’s not bad. We
gave a date for the
Members’ Only Dig
three different places
in our last newsletter,
and only one of
them was wrong.
We apologize and
want to confirm that the Members’ Only Dig is
actually June 22, NOT July 22.
Africa Talks:
Our last talk of the series by Kent Sundell,
Ph.D., was postponed by a snowstorm and
ended up being given on April 30. The talk
was well attended.
Author Talk
and Book
Signing:
Tuesday, May
14, 2013 we will
host a talk and
book signing by
Larry HaydenWing, Ph.D., who
recently released
In the Footprints
of Elephants.
The event begins
at 6:30 p.m. with a talk by Larry and time for
questions at the end. Then he will be available
for book signings until 8:30 p.m.
He has a doctorate in wildlife science and
management from the University of Idaho. He
spent over 42 years as a research scientist,
university professor, and owner/principal
scientist of Hayden-Wing Associates. Larry
retired in 2009 to write books and short
stories.
by Deanna Schaff
Funding for Patti:
I have some good news to report: We have
found funding for Patti Wood Finkle to stay
here until June 30, 2014. By then we will have
information on the Institute of Museum and
Library Services grant that we wrote and see
what happens next. THIS IS GREAT NEWS!
JUNE IS MEMBERSHIP MONTH!
It doesn’t make any difference when you
became a member of the Tate Geological
Museum; your membership is due during
the month of June. If you are a new member
we invite you to join in June 2013. Individual
memberships are $18, family memberships
are $36 and a sponsor membership is $1000.
A form is included in this newsletter, or you
can get one at the Tate gift shop or online.
We are continuing to add events designed
for members. There will be a Members’ Only
Kid’s Expedition on Saturday, June 15 and a
Members’ Only Dig on Saturday, June 22. It is
possible the adults’ expedition will be to Como
Bluff, which is a famous paleontological site.
Look it up on the Internet.
As plans are finalized you will be notified via
E-mail. If you do not have an E-mail address,
please call the museum for more details, as
we get closer to those dates. You will need to
stop by the museum gift shop desk to sign up.
Please bring your membership card along.
We are planning a second Museum Peep
Show for members at a later date. Plus you
will get a 10 percent discount on all purchases
in the gift shop, bimonthly newsletter delivered
to your home address, and E-mail notification
of other events at the museum.
Raffle for Amethyst Cathedral:
Raffle tickets are on sale for a 30” (76cm)
amethyst cathedral. The cathedral is on
display in the central cube in the lobby at the
Tate. Tickets are available at the front desk
for $10 each or six for $50. The drawing for
the raffle will take place on Monday, June 3
during the ice cream social. You do not need
to be present to win. It only takes ONE ticket
to win! All proceeds will be used for the Tate
Geological Museum Support Fund. Get yours
now at the museum.
Tater Travels:
Over spring break J.P. Cavigelli was part
of a Casper College contingent that went to
our sister university in Guatemala. While there
J.P. gave three talks about paleontology in
Wyoming and Guatamala.
Our very own Zabdi Lopez, an exchange
student from last summer, organized the very
first Paleontology Day at the Universidad de
Valle de Guatemala around J.P.’s visit and
apparently the event was a great success.
Summer Digs – Pay to Dig
Our summer digs are filling up fast. Here are
the current statistics:
• June 10-14, full
• July 9-13, full
• Sept. 9-13, lots of room. This is the time
to go, as it is cooler in September
See all details on the Tate Geological
Museum website at caspercollege.edu/tate
or contact J.P. Cavigelli at 307-268-3008 or
307-268-2447.
Tate Museum
Geological Times
3
Cretaceous Conference: Evolution
& Revolution June 1-4, 2013
The Casper College webpage
(caspercollege.edu/tate/conference) has the
complete schedule, list of speakers, etc. I’ll
just hit a few of the highlights. This year it is
a joint conference with Wyoming Geological
Association and Society of Petroleum
Engineers.
• A field trip to the western Powder River
Basin on June 1.
• The first day of talks will be about
paleontology featuring some popular
returning speakers including Neal
Larson, Torrey Nyborg, Josh Slattery,
and Marron Bingle-Davis. Lisa Fujita
will again be cooking a tasty treat for
attendees.
• At 7 p.m. on Sunday, we will have
an ice cream social and our keynote
speaker Pat Druckenmiller, University of
Alaska-Fairbanks, will speak on Alaskan
dinosaurs.
• Our second day of talks will be on the
extractive resources and engineering
fields on June 3. The keynote speaker
will be Christopher Fielding, Ph.D.,
Department of Earth and Atmospheric
Sciences, University of NebraskaLincoln.
• The second field trip will take us to
Eastern Wyoming to hunt Cretaceous
ammonites on June 4.
Melissa Stahley-Cummings:
Our entire staff is sorry to announce the
departure of Melissa Stahley-Cummings. We
hired Melissa on a grant in March 2012 as a
museums curriculum specialist. Although her
time with us is now done and she has had to
move on, I could not have asked for a better
person to work with.
Melissa is a brilliant researcher and had a
lot of resources here at the Tate Geological
Museum, especially Russell Hawley, J.P.
Cavigelli, and Kent Sundell. She absorbed the
information like a sponge and transferred that
knowledge into educational curriculum topics
that are now available on our website. This
curriculum covers pre-K to eighth grade for some
topics. Most curriculum covers the grades that
are stressed in the core Natrona County School
District curriculum.
Melissa also was asked to write curriculum for
the Werner Wildlife Museum and was successful
there as well. She wrote a total of 47 lessons
that she researched, designed, and placed
on our websites. In order to do so she had to
overcome a lot of technology problems and learn
how to use the program that allowed her to put
curriculum on the website. All of this was quite
time consuming. She not only did her job well,
she was always helping out in both museums
whenever we had open houses, activites,
presentations, outreach missions, or whatever
came up.
I cannot thank Melissa enough for all she has
done for both the Tate Geological Museum and
the Werner Wildlife Museum.
Tate Museum
Geological Times
4
Museum Passport to Adventure Program
By Anne Holman – Fort Casper Museum
2013 is the 11th annual “Passport to
Adventure Hunt” offered by the Casper
Museum Consortium.
From May 15 through August 31, you
are invited to pick up your free passport
booklet at any Casper-area museum
and visit six of the 13 sites listed in the
passport. Answer a question at each
museum, get your passport stamped,
and turn in your answer sheet at the last
museum you visit.
Correctly completed answer sheets will
be entered into a drawing to win prizes
featuring all the best things to do in and
around Casper: a fishing trip, tickets to
concerts, plays, and sporting events, and
more! All prizes include Pepsi products.
Bring along the whole family and
support your local museums!
Participating museums:
• Audubon Center
• The Bishop House
• Casper Planetarium
• Crimson Dawn Museum
• Fort Caspar Museum
• Mormon Handcart Center
• National Historic Trails Interpretive
Center
• Nicolaysen Art Museum
• Salt Creek Oilfield Museum
• The Science Zone
• Tate Geological Museum
• Werner Wildlife Museum
• Wyoming Veterans’ Memorial
Museum
Visit caspermuseums.org
2013 Museum Adventure Quest Camp for Kids
By Anne Holman – Fort Casper Museum
July 22-26, 2013, 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
4th-6th graders
Visit 10 Casper Museums
COST: $75; $65 for siblings
(includes snacks and transportation)
This summer activity is specially
designed for children entering 4th through
6th grades and will be held at 10 local
museums throughout the week. Preregistration is required and space is
limited.
To register for camp online using
PayPal, please visit the Casper Museum
Consortium website:
caspermuseums.org.
For other payment methods and for
more information, call or visit the Casper
Planetarium,
307-577-0310.
Particating museums:
• Audubon Center
• The Bishop House
• Casper Planetarium
• Fort Caspar Museum
• National Historic Trails Interpretive
Center
• Nicolaysen Art Museum
• The Science Zone
• Tate Geological Museum
• Werner Wildlife Museum
• Wyoming Veterans’ Memorial
Museum
Visit caspermuseums.org
Tate Museum
Geological Times
©Drawing by Zak Pullen.
5
Exhibits Update
By Patti Wood Finkle, Museum Exhibits Specialist
Recently the exhibits staff, (ok me, but with input from the rest of the
staff) have turned their attention to the extractive resources wall for the
next exhibit update.
We have completed the oil and gas exhibit and are working on the
uranium and coal case. The third case, bentonite and trona will be next.
Earth and Fire Art
Show at the Tate:
Earth and Fire is our
newest, temporary
exhibit of ceramic
artwork inspired by
the Tate Geological
Museum. Mike Olson’s
advanced ceramics
classes contributed
to the show, and
the pieces are truly
amazing. The 21 works
include bowls, vases,
free form, and true to
life ceramics. The opening of the show was held
April 19, 2013. We had about 80 people attend
and interestingly, many of them were not our
regular folks. We had several new people who had
never even been to the Tate! If you were unable
to attend, you can still see these beautiful pieces
until Wednesday, May 29, 2013.
Tate Museum
Geological Times
Again, we didn’t want to reinvent the wheel with these exhibits, but we
did want to update the cases and add some new objects. Additionally
we added new text explaining the history of oil and gas in the state and
touched on the economic impact here.
As Wyoming depends heavily on extractive resources, we also
wanted to cover what the resources are used for and how they are
extracted. We re-used many of the samples that were in the exhibit
before, so thank you to Lynne Swank and associates for gathering
those resources for the original oil and gas exhibit!
6
Volunteer Spotlight
Who is that man who quietly signs in, goes to
one of the prep labs and starts prepping fossils?
His name is Ken Anderer. Ken hasn’t always
worked on fossils – he didn’t even live in the
western part of the United States until 2010 –
but we have him here now and are very glad he
made the decisions he did.
By Deanna Schaff
Ken was born and raised in the New York
City suburbs and spent most of his adult
years in the Washington, D.C. area. With an
architectural engineering degree from Penn
State he went to work as an engineering
designer and project manager for varied historic
preservation, medical, institutional, and military
building projects across the US and around the
world. Because of his extensive travel for both
business and pleasure, he became familiar
with and especially enjoyed the American West
and selected Casper, Wyo. as a great place to
retire. He moved permanently to Casper in the
summer of 2010. At this point in time he had no
background in paleontology other than the usual
boyhood fascination with dinosaurs through
childhood visits to the Museum of Natural
History in New York and design projects at the
Smithsonian museums in Washington where he
said “Most of the Wyoming dinosaurs seemed
to have wound up.”
In Casper, Ken discovered the Tate Geological
Museum after taking one of J.P.’s “Older Than
Dirt” OLLI classes in the summer of 2011. The
class included a field trip hunting ammonites
near Medicine Bow, Wyo. When J.P. mentioned
the need for volunteers at the Tate, Ken jumped
at the chance. He said, “Under J.P.’s tutelage, I
have been spending the last 24 months learning
the ropes of fossil preparation and a little bit
of geology and paleontology along the way. I
especially enjoy the various field trips, which
I have been able to attend. For the past few
months I have had the opportunity to help out on
Lee Rex”
Ken has four children and three grandchildren
currently spread across the county from Los
Angeles to Baltimore. In June his youngest
son is participating in the 100 mile Big Horn
Mountain Run near Sheridan, Wyo. and most of
the family is planning to attend. When Ken is not
helping out at the Tate, he is spending most of
his time and resources slowing restoring a 100
year old historic home in Casper, “which, he
says, “may take another 50 years or so.”
Geology Club Corner
The quarries hadn’t been worked for 10 years.
An old pipe frame of a canopy had fallen into the
pit, while the canvas that once covered it was
lying in scraps on the ground. A few large white
plaster jackets lay half-finished in scattered pits.
One jacket had a young sagebrush growing out
of it.
“This is ‘Blueberry,’” Melissa Connely,
Casper College geology instructor, informed us,
pointing out the jackets, “and that’s ‘Muffin.’”
Blueberry and Muffin were two finds that had
been left behind when paleontologist Robert
Bakker. Ph.D. lost his lease to collect dinosaur
bones from the Morrison Formation on a ranch
near Medicine Bow, Wyo. Now, a crew of Tate
Geological Museum volunteers and geology
students were visiting the property to clean up
the old quarries. It seemed a good way to begin
the Tate’s new relationship with the landowners,
and it certainly made an interesting day for the
crew.
The drive in took us along back roads
that wound up and down steep hillsides and
across gullies. When we got to the quarries,
the wind was (very) strong. It flung clouds of
dust from the skid-steer loader in everyone’s
eyes as we collected old lumber or bits of tarp
and piled them in a trailer. A crew of students
with shovels helped spread the dirt as the
skid-steer dumped it into the old pits. Melissa
and J.P. Cavigelli, Tate Geological Museum
collections specialist, put up markers to locate
the jackets later. When we were finished, the
site looked much better – a few patches of bare
ground with tire tracks were all that showed
disturbance.
After the clean up, we went to a nearby
micro-site to look for fossils like lungfish teeth
or turtle plates. Several people found some
nice pieces, but for me, a long crawl back
and forth across the exposure didn’t produce
anything but bruised knees and a few scraps of
“chunkosaurus.” The real adventure began on
the way back when Melissa’s pickup suddenly
stopped running. Her alternator had failed, and
the sky looked like it might start raining at any
minute.
Luckily, we had plenty of car parts along,
in the shape of bungee cords and old two-byfours. The battery from the Tate’s Suburban
was made to fit in the pickup, so it could run
while the Suburban charged the dead battery.
By Annette Hein
This worked long enough to get the pickup
back to the trailer which had hauled in the
skid-steer. Each vehicle squeezed in a few more
passengers, the pickup was put on the skidsteer’s trailer, and we were on our way leaving
the skid steer and trash trailer behind – some
15 miles back to the highway. As somebody
commented, “It’s lucky this didn’t happen in
a really isolated spot.” J.P., Brian, (Melissa’s
husband) and Melissa returned the next day to
retrieve the abandoned trailer and skid-steer.
Who wouldn’t want to spend the day
driving out on back roads, hunting for fossils,
reinforcing the Tate’s good reputation, and
helping the landscape look a little nicer?
Tate Museum
Geological Times
7
©Drawing by Zak Pullen.
? and Answers
A:
Q:
How many species of Apatosaurus were there? And what were the
differences between them?
Apatosaurus excelsus is the most
common species. Its bones have been
found at Como Bluff, at the Sheep
Creek and Bone Cabin quarries (see
stratigraphic diagram below), and in
Colorado. The first Apatosaurus excelsus mount
was assembled in the Yale Peabody Museum
in New Haven. This specimen was missing the
skull, hands, feet and the distal half of the tail;
the mount was completed by using bones from
other Apatosaurus specimens and sculpting the
remaining bones in plaster. The A. excelsus at
the American Museum of Natural History in New
York was found by Walter Granger at the 9-Mile
Quarry in Wyoming. The Field Museum of Natural
History in Chicago has an A. excelsus, too.
The neural spines on the cervical and anterior
thoracic vertebrae were bifurcated, forming a
series of U-Shaped brackets. Since vertebrae
Tate Museum
Geological Times
By Russell J. Hawley, Tate Geological Museum Education Specialist
– Donna Hunter, Casper, Wyo.
are among the most commonly found bones
of sauropod dinosaurs, this is a very useful
diagnostic. A. excelsus reached a length of
almost 22 meters and a mass of over 15 tons.
Apatosaurus louisae has only been found at
Dinosaur National Monument in Utah. Ironically,
this rarest Apatosaurus species is also the most
well-known, being the only species for which
a complete skeleton is known, and the only
species for which we have an associated skull.
A. louisae is very similar to A. excelsus, although
the bifurcated neural spines form a V-shape
rather than a ‘U.’
Apatosaurus ajax was the last and largest
Apatosaurus species, found at Morrison Quarry
10 and in the Breakfast Bench fauna. A. ajax had
a longer, thinner neck than the earlier species,
and longer legs and smaller hips. No skull has
been found. In spite of its slender build, this
was the heaviest Apatosaurus species. Large A.
ajax individuals were over 23 meters long and
massed almost 20 tons.
‘Bertha’ is a partial skeleton that was
described as a new species of Apatosaurus
by Jim Filla and Pat Redman. In 1998 Robert
Bakker, Ph.D., re-described it as a separate
genus, Eobrontosaurus.
‘Brian’ is the most complete Apatosaurus
skull, found by Melissa Connely at the Nail
Quarry. Unfortunately, without associated
postcranial bones Brian cannot be assigned to a
particular species.
Elosaurus parvus was based on a partial
skeleton missing the feet, ribs, much of the
vertebral column and (of course) the skull.
Elosaurus is probably just a gracile individual of
A. excelsus.
Casper College
Tate Geological Museum
125 College Drive
Casper, WY 82601
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Casper, WY 82601
2013 Tate Museum Event Calendar
May
Geological Times
14
Tate Museum
Minerals • Dinosaurs • Fossils
CHANGE SERVICE REQUESTED
Members’ Only Dig
Larry Hayden-Wing talk
6:30-8:30 p.m.
June MEMBERSHIP MONTH
1-30
1-4
10-14
15
22
Renew Your Membership Now….
Tate Conference
Summer Dig – Como Bluff
Members’ Only Kids’ Expedition
Members’ Only Dig
July
June 22, 2013
The Tate Geological Museum
is planning a full day “Members’
Only” dig to the Como Bluff site in
the Medicine Bow area. The fossils
found in this area are from the
Jurassic and are about 150 million
years old. Details will be E-mailed
to members the first week of June.
Transportation will be furnished by
the Tate Geological Museum.
9-13 Summer Dig – Lusk
22-26 Consortium Camp
September
9-13 Dino Dig
Scan to find out
more about the Tate
Geological Museum!