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Palaeontology! Mark 2
- Thread starter Morm
- Start date
You'd get manly points but it'd be you and your girlfriend against a bear. It's not exactly fair is it?
Of course if you won, you'd pretty much be manlier than maddox.
I chose the name based on ggfan, I don't really know why I did it and I regretted it immediately afterwards. Maybe when I've garnered more posts I'll post in that "change your name thread".
Tyranitar is the dragonzord.
Of course if you won, you'd pretty much be manlier than maddox.
I chose the name based on ggfan, I don't really know why I did it and I regretted it immediately afterwards. Maybe when I've garnered more posts I'll post in that "change your name thread".
Tyranitar is the dragonzord.
So as to keep myself busy in the wasteland of unemployment, I am a volunteer snake monitor for a local park here in Calgary. It's not a big deal; any idiot can do it (and trust me, they are doing it). What you do is simple- once a week you and your team go to the snake hibernaculum and check 10 traps. We got 14 red sided garter snakes and found a wandering at the top of the hill, near the bobcat video traps.
The hibernaculum is basically a mound of the local bedrock covered in soil and vegetation. In this case it's the blocky Paskapoo sandstone that is so typical for the Calgary area, but I digress talking about geology once again.
Not a big deal or anything, but here's some pics from my first trip out. The gloves are for their protection cause I'm a filthy E.coli covered mammal.
The hibernaculum is basically a mound of the local bedrock covered in soil and vegetation. In this case it's the blocky Paskapoo sandstone that is so typical for the Calgary area, but I digress talking about geology once again.
Not a big deal or anything, but here's some pics from my first trip out. The gloves are for their protection cause I'm a filthy E.coli covered mammal.
Okay, so I'm out in the middle of a 50, 000 population town. The only noteworthy thing here is the Alaska Highway which, as you can likely guess, takes people to alaska. I'm about 1 hour and 15 minutes away from the place where user Pokeguy claims to live and this place is fucking desolate, filled with people who can't use turn signals and a place called "Prairie Sushi". No thanks, I'll avoid that place I think.
So, naturally, I went to the local college and inquired about local fossil sites. I got four, one in each direction (of course). We hit the smallest today and found some ammonite bitties and some lobster bitties...until my girlfriend rolls up with a virtually complete lobster and said "Is this something?"
I was floored, but it turns out I found a bigger one that I kinda just grabbed and chucked in a bag; when I realized, I went to look and sure enough, it was a crappier and larger specimen. This is, as it turns out, her second palaeontology trip ever. Pretty good for someone who's got no training! It turns out we were scooped though; had we been just 2 or 3 years earlier, we woulda been the discoverers of this species!
Tomorrow we're checking out a somewhat deeply incised river about 2 hours away that has some waterfalls you can jump from. It has reported Tyrannosaur teeth coming out in droves, as well as ammonites and the usual stuff; it's actually on the K/t boundary, 65 MYA smack on the nose when the dinosaurs disappeared. Neat. We have 2 other sites, but we dunno if we'll get to them. I'll post pics when I can!!
Funny enough, a friend of mine from Edmonton was just on the front page of the Grande Prairie newspaper- him and another dude discovered a new species of dinosaur out here very recently (I think) in the same rocks we're looking at tomorrow!
So, naturally, I went to the local college and inquired about local fossil sites. I got four, one in each direction (of course). We hit the smallest today and found some ammonite bitties and some lobster bitties...until my girlfriend rolls up with a virtually complete lobster and said "Is this something?"
I was floored, but it turns out I found a bigger one that I kinda just grabbed and chucked in a bag; when I realized, I went to look and sure enough, it was a crappier and larger specimen. This is, as it turns out, her second palaeontology trip ever. Pretty good for someone who's got no training! It turns out we were scooped though; had we been just 2 or 3 years earlier, we woulda been the discoverers of this species!
Tomorrow we're checking out a somewhat deeply incised river about 2 hours away that has some waterfalls you can jump from. It has reported Tyrannosaur teeth coming out in droves, as well as ammonites and the usual stuff; it's actually on the K/t boundary, 65 MYA smack on the nose when the dinosaurs disappeared. Neat. We have 2 other sites, but we dunno if we'll get to them. I'll post pics when I can!!
Funny enough, a friend of mine from Edmonton was just on the front page of the Grande Prairie newspaper- him and another dude discovered a new species of dinosaur out here very recently (I think) in the same rocks we're looking at tomorrow!
Wait, you guys found a virtually new specie just by chance? What are the chances of that, I mean, what are the chances of that happening? Professionals usually need years of research and thousands of dollars in equipment to find the things that you found on accident, that must be fking hilarious(and quite annoying for them). Oh, and about the snakes, those are beautiful, by the way, how could you tell if they were poisonous or not? I remember a song about the order of the color on their skins, but I dont remember the correct order, it had something to do with 2 very similar kinds of snakes.
Garter snakes are virtually harmless. They only thing they can really do is just bite you and inflict a small wound, but I've handled tons of them and I've yet to be bitten. You have to piss them off a lot to make them mad enough to do so. I think I've heard that they may have some bacteria in their saliva that can poison smaller creatures, kind of like how Komodo Dragons have it, but I am likely wrong. If anything, you're more likely to get salmonella.
Morm, I remember when I was a little kid I went to this lake with some people and I found a decent sized tooth (like 1/2 inch) fossilized in a rock. it was jet-black colored and had serrated edges, so I took it home and kept it. I even emailed some expert on shark teeth about it to find out what it was from (since I was at that time very obsessed with dinosaurs and all things passed, and assumed that it just had to be from a shark, even though from what I remember of its shape it obviously wasn't). Anyways, I lost it forever ago, but the story of you and your girlfriend finding the lobsters just jerked my memory and I thought I'd share :P.
edit: also, notice the spiffy name change. My name no longer mars the forum with every post I make!
Morm, I remember when I was a little kid I went to this lake with some people and I found a decent sized tooth (like 1/2 inch) fossilized in a rock. it was jet-black colored and had serrated edges, so I took it home and kept it. I even emailed some expert on shark teeth about it to find out what it was from (since I was at that time very obsessed with dinosaurs and all things passed, and assumed that it just had to be from a shark, even though from what I remember of its shape it obviously wasn't). Anyways, I lost it forever ago, but the story of you and your girlfriend finding the lobsters just jerked my memory and I thought I'd share :P.
edit: also, notice the spiffy name change. My name no longer mars the forum with every post I make!
I said someone scooped us- It means they beat us to it.
Not that unlikely, given the geology and stratigraphy of the area has only recently been explored in depth.
Uncountable numbers of specimens and species have been discovered by amateurs- as an ex professional, I'd say it's not that unheard of. All it takes is to look; hell I took part in finding like 6 new species this summer alone!
No snakes are poisonous, some snakes are venomous. In Alberta, if it has a rattle it's venomous, other than that they really aren't a worry. In places like Australia, I'd suggest just avoiding snakes altogether. It's all about knowing the local species.
Uhh I'm assuming you mean milk snakes and other venomous snake mimics? Yeah there's some rhyme, but I can't remember it. Let me know if you remember it!
Pretty much, they don't really hurt either. They may musk you though, which can be a rather unfavorable smell.
The only way you're getting salmonella from them is if you put them in your mouth and maybe let them poop in there a little. Honestly, they have as much chance of getting E. Coli from you! They don't have rancid saliva like the dragons, for the record, that's only Varanids as far as I know.
Thanks for the story Bam, I appreciate when people share their stories in this thread; it becomes almost like a blog or the morm show otherwise. It was probably a theropod tooth you found.
Hah, people tell me I should get one as my name is hideous/awkward/stupid. Little do they realize that with it I am the forums bat man!
Red touch black:Friend of jack.
Red touch yellow: Kill a fellow
A scarlet king snake and a coral snake are an example of this.
AHHH no pics from our first adventure; if people bother me, I'll take good pics of the complete lobsters we found from the first day, if not, tough luck!
Here is the second day:
It seems even the wildlife don't do well here. This was a mangled deer carcass, a juvenile, that we ran across. My girlfriend and her sister were not terribly impressed that I pulled over to look, but it was a warning that this site was CURSED.
We got lost. CURSE not over! After talking to a man that I insist was brain damaged but my girlfriend insists "the locals just talk that way" (and was later proved right), we found the site. It seems this place wasn't some pull-up road cut after all, so we geared up
only to find a sheer drop into a strangely colored river
That is a far fall! Don't let it's deceptive beauty deceive you; this canyon had surprises beyond rednecks that drank heavily and then drove down poorly graded roads with 3 year olds in tow. Though, despite the challenges, we got a few breaks:
STEPS
there was a rope here to help you down the next phase, thankfully rednecks have a sense of practicality. Unfortunately, the path from there was unmarked and trecherous.
Actually, if you saw this before the edit, I checked the other pictures. This IS the first outcrop that we climbed to! YEAH! We climbed like 20m up poorly consolidated rock bitties and soil to find nothing at all! Yeah, it's not plesant. I have videos, if you bug me about them I'll post them, but they are all of our descent and how rapid and bruising it was.
THE CURSE was that there was nothing of value. It turns out, just a few days before, a good friend of mine scooped us! Him and his friend made a dinosaur dicovery less than 1km from where we were. It's okay, I'm not in it to make discoveries that shake the world, I'm here to make discoveries for myself.
Here's the stuff we found:
A clam or two
A bone or two
some pretty waterfalls
and that's the end of our journey!
for good measure, an Eastern collard lizard that likes to recline, apparently
he's sleeping no more than 3m from me right now.
Also, I stand corrected about something. This is why I love biology. I once said, in this thread, that nothing in morphology will every surprise me again and I think it was phantasia who's life was ruined by this disillusioning; my apologies. I love being wrong:
A FISH WITH MIRRORS TO HELP IT SEE
go figure the teleosts bring their A-game again!
Here is the second day:
It seems even the wildlife don't do well here. This was a mangled deer carcass, a juvenile, that we ran across. My girlfriend and her sister were not terribly impressed that I pulled over to look, but it was a warning that this site was CURSED.
We got lost. CURSE not over! After talking to a man that I insist was brain damaged but my girlfriend insists "the locals just talk that way" (and was later proved right), we found the site. It seems this place wasn't some pull-up road cut after all, so we geared up
only to find a sheer drop into a strangely colored river
That is a far fall! Don't let it's deceptive beauty deceive you; this canyon had surprises beyond rednecks that drank heavily and then drove down poorly graded roads with 3 year olds in tow. Though, despite the challenges, we got a few breaks:
STEPS
there was a rope here to help you down the next phase, thankfully rednecks have a sense of practicality. Unfortunately, the path from there was unmarked and trecherous.
Actually, if you saw this before the edit, I checked the other pictures. This IS the first outcrop that we climbed to! YEAH! We climbed like 20m up poorly consolidated rock bitties and soil to find nothing at all! Yeah, it's not plesant. I have videos, if you bug me about them I'll post them, but they are all of our descent and how rapid and bruising it was.
THE CURSE was that there was nothing of value. It turns out, just a few days before, a good friend of mine scooped us! Him and his friend made a dinosaur dicovery less than 1km from where we were. It's okay, I'm not in it to make discoveries that shake the world, I'm here to make discoveries for myself.
Here's the stuff we found:
A clam or two
A bone or two
some pretty waterfalls
and that's the end of our journey!
for good measure, an Eastern collard lizard that likes to recline, apparently
he's sleeping no more than 3m from me right now.
Also, I stand corrected about something. This is why I love biology. I once said, in this thread, that nothing in morphology will every surprise me again and I think it was phantasia who's life was ruined by this disillusioning; my apologies. I love being wrong:
A FISH WITH MIRRORS TO HELP IT SEE
go figure the teleosts bring their A-game again!
Poison is ingestion only, venom is injection only. They can work either way sometimes (like ingesting a venom wouldn't be wise), but it's really all about the mode of delivery within nature.
Phantasia: It appears to link lemurs and 'lower' simians with monkies and apes, as if it wasn't already abundantly clear. This is another member of the missing link club, it's just too bad that naysayers will continue to either refute it's status as a transitional form (by way of dodging the definition, usually) or just ask for more transitional forms. It's been overhyped. No worries though, I've only just heard of it since you posted that message. I'm pretty sure the generic name, Darwinus, is more a gouge to evolutions opposition than it is to actually honor Darwin.
Phantasia: It appears to link lemurs and 'lower' simians with monkies and apes, as if it wasn't already abundantly clear. This is another member of the missing link club, it's just too bad that naysayers will continue to either refute it's status as a transitional form (by way of dodging the definition, usually) or just ask for more transitional forms. It's been overhyped. No worries though, I've only just heard of it since you posted that message. I'm pretty sure the generic name, Darwinus, is more a gouge to evolutions opposition than it is to actually honor Darwin.
Wow dude, just took a look at this thread and damn quite interesting! I think I'm going to study Archaeology and Anthro in college. The pictures and logs and whatnot are awesome, thanks for sharing!
oh oops, i didn't mean to post that link all by itself, i was saving it to use as a reference in a longer post but mustve hit send by accident
anyway, just found this thread (and its predecessor) and its been a lot of fun following your stories. though im studying to become a psychiatrist, paleontology has always been a passion of mine. i love studying prehistoric creatures, but it always frustrates at the same time. i always think of what we might think a peacock looked like if we only had its skeleton to go by, or how similar a lion and a tiger would appear if we only had bones. from an artistic viewpoint, it is both liberating and heartbreaking. (not to mention the chances of a fossil being created at all, let alone being discovered millions of years later... what a huge wealth of knowledge forever sealed away...)
i also sometimes think about how so many people find the topic of prehistoric creatures so inaccessible, especially compared with modern animals. obviously, not knowing exactly how the skeletons appeared in real life (every recreation of an iguanadon, for instance, will have different markings) but most importantly the actual names of the animals. Not many people can think of the name Ambulocetus and imagine what it looks like, because it is a scientific name. Nowadays we have StarFish and Red-Tailed Hawks. (who came up with the more common names to things? i think it'd be wonderful if prehistoric animals were given more common names so that more people could talk about them)
anyway, what am I rambling about...
You mentioned somewhere back there some of the classes you had to take in school, I think there was a vertebrate anatomy course or something similar? Would you happen to remember or still have access to the textbooks involved? What are some of the most important text resources you use in your work? I am interested in familiarizing myself with as much of the prehistoric world as I can (meaning, obviously, not just dinosaurs) but im not very confident when it comes to finding good books on prehistoric entomology, for instance. Its also hard to find good studies of ancient mammals, heck I can't even find many dinosaur books outside of the childrens section. :-[ These guys need more exposure! That, or I need to improve my searching methods!
anyways, thanks for sharing your experiences. cant remember if this was from a while ago, but I hope your back makes a full recovery! :-)
anyway, just found this thread (and its predecessor) and its been a lot of fun following your stories. though im studying to become a psychiatrist, paleontology has always been a passion of mine. i love studying prehistoric creatures, but it always frustrates at the same time. i always think of what we might think a peacock looked like if we only had its skeleton to go by, or how similar a lion and a tiger would appear if we only had bones. from an artistic viewpoint, it is both liberating and heartbreaking. (not to mention the chances of a fossil being created at all, let alone being discovered millions of years later... what a huge wealth of knowledge forever sealed away...)
i also sometimes think about how so many people find the topic of prehistoric creatures so inaccessible, especially compared with modern animals. obviously, not knowing exactly how the skeletons appeared in real life (every recreation of an iguanadon, for instance, will have different markings) but most importantly the actual names of the animals. Not many people can think of the name Ambulocetus and imagine what it looks like, because it is a scientific name. Nowadays we have StarFish and Red-Tailed Hawks. (who came up with the more common names to things? i think it'd be wonderful if prehistoric animals were given more common names so that more people could talk about them)
anyway, what am I rambling about...
You mentioned somewhere back there some of the classes you had to take in school, I think there was a vertebrate anatomy course or something similar? Would you happen to remember or still have access to the textbooks involved? What are some of the most important text resources you use in your work? I am interested in familiarizing myself with as much of the prehistoric world as I can (meaning, obviously, not just dinosaurs) but im not very confident when it comes to finding good books on prehistoric entomology, for instance. Its also hard to find good studies of ancient mammals, heck I can't even find many dinosaur books outside of the childrens section. :-[ These guys need more exposure! That, or I need to improve my searching methods!
anyways, thanks for sharing your experiences. cant remember if this was from a while ago, but I hope your back makes a full recovery! :-)
Vertebrate Palaeontology by Bob Carroll is pretty much THE text to get, but I'd hold off a few years as it's being completely overhauled at this point. The one by Michael Benton is okay but I'm under the impression that Carroll is the best. They are tought read without any point of reference though and Bentons is probably more accessible to you from a reading standpoint.
Other than that, I can't help you much. I never really read my textbooks in school if I even bought them and I most certainly do not actually use many texts outside of primary literature (ie articles) for any work.
Other than that, I can't help you much. I never really read my textbooks in school if I even bought them and I most certainly do not actually use many texts outside of primary literature (ie articles) for any work.
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Small_Evolutionary_Shifts_Make_Big_Impacts_999.html
Seems like small mutations can make HUGE impacts after all. Yet ANOTHER piece of compelling evidence in support of evolution.
Seems like small mutations can make HUGE impacts after all. Yet ANOTHER piece of compelling evidence in support of evolution.
The photo of the Eastern collard lizard that is using your hand as a lazy boy is amazingly cool.
I'm thinking in doing medicine, but paleontology has massive attractions too. My mother's friend was a professional, as well as illustrating dinosaur books as a hobby. Tony Winburgh I think is his name.
What do you know about New Zealand's fossil yield?
I'm thinking in doing medicine, but paleontology has massive attractions too. My mother's friend was a professional, as well as illustrating dinosaur books as a hobby. Tony Winburgh I think is his name.
What do you know about New Zealand's fossil yield?