The Collections

Once upon a time, I had an internship doing paleontology at Dinosaur National Monument. This year, I had cause to correspond this year with the new park paleontologist regarding that long-ago summer, and she invited me to stop by if I was ever in the area. So when I went back for my vacation this summer, I did indeed stop in to meet her.

We had a very nice conversation. She said she would love to arrange a tour for me of the park's collections in Vernal, so one day I went down to see them.

Entering the warehouse was like walking into that hangar at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, where crates of mysteries are stacked in rows as far as the eye can see. In this case it was row after row of shelves and tall white metal cabinets. Unlike in a (mythical) top-secret government hangar, I was allowed to take pictures. I did not take notes because it was bad enough juggling the camera. I meant to write the blog entry immediately after, but many things intervened. I am writing it for you now having forgotten most of the detail, like the terrible chronicler I am.

Turtle bones.

So... I have a terrible confession to make. Though I did not one but two internships in paleontology, I'm really more interested in geology aspect of the science, in the reconstruction of ancient landscapes, than in the animals. I suppose I have always been more of a landscape person than an animal person, the human animal included. Unless you count when I was quite young and was gifted a subscription Cat Fancy magazine that I pored over with intense interest.

But even then, what I liked about cats was that you could pet them, not their bones.

So. The man who gave me the tour spoke to me without any condescension whatsoever, treating me as a fellow professional, and reeling off names of various ancient reptiles as if I understood any of it. I nodded along, too ashamed to admit that I wasn't that into dinosaurs. In fact I didn't realize we were going to be looking at so many bones. I was relieved when he pulled these out:

But to my dismay I found they were gastroliths. These are rocks that many animals, including dinosaurs, have swallowed for addition to their gizzard or stomach, to help grind or digest food.

Here are teeth from a thing:

Below, more teeth, possibly from a... camptosaurus? (If they see this, they're going to go back in time and fire me from my internship. Which, by the way, was a summer of looking for tracks fossilized in the sediment, not for bones.)

We are learning that I am not much of a paleontologist. But since I have worked a certain number of hours in fossil preparation (the art of removing fossils from rock and getting them ready for storage or display), fossil prep became the focus of most of my questions. It was about the only subject I could ask intelligent questions on.

We spoke of how the customs of fossil preparation have changed over time. The bone at center, below, has uniform gray areas where it was filled in, to give the bone its original shape back.

This is no longer the favored practice. Now, bones are left as they are.

Here, tiny teeth are glued to the undersides of corks in vials for ease of study:

These bones had housings lovingly carved out of styrofoam and padded with what is possibly toilet paper:

They had a good number of specimens that had been dug up by teams from many years ago, and had been shored up with plaster and burlap and even door screen material to both keep the bones intact and fill them out to their original, unbroken shapes. This is no longer how things are done, and in fact it made me wince a bit to see the bones so adulterated, but the specimens are now so old that some question has arisen of whether they ought to be left as they are, preserved as they are, as an example of how paleontology was conducted in "the old days," rather than being... well, restored to naked-and-broken condition.

This idea, that a thing could last long enough to become wrong and a candidate for undoing, and then last long enough again to become an artifact and a candidate for preserving, has a fascination to it.

But bones were not the only thing housed in the collections. Here are the tools used by paleontologist Earl Douglass, who from 1909 -1924 managed the famous Carnegie Quarry that is now within the boundaries of the park.

The first thing I think upon seeing these is how wonderfully sturdy and useful everything looks, unlike the various plastic tools and implements that fill stores nowadays.

We did eventually come upon some samples of various rock formations within the park. Look how colorful!

That was it for the rocks. But rocks and bones were not the only things the warehouse housed. It also held what seemed to be the largest part of a collection of paintings by Ernest Untermann, Sr.

Untermann was a German-born renaissance man... sailor, author, geologist, artist... who donated many paintings to the Monument. Some of his paintings remain on display in the museum of Vernal, but the rest may have been relegated to the warehouse, presumably due not only to lack of museum space, but to the fact that time has rendered some of his details scientifically inaccurate.

For instance, this painting shows several adversarial species of dinosaur chumming together.

In truth, I liked Untermann's landscapes of the modern-day Monument, and have considered getting a print. But there is no doubt that a few of his paintings probably should not be on display anywhere.

But I've saved the best for last! Before I finished my tour, I was shown the wonder of wonders: the radioactive allosaurus.

Or at least, its cabinet. You will notice that the cabinet must be vented before being "used." This process involves the entire warehouse so it was not performed for me.

Why is there a radioactive allosaurus? Radioactive elements are a common component of bedrock and soils, so it's no wonder fossils end up absorbing radiation. Usually the amount of radioactivity in the rock beneath our feet (or the granite in our countertop) isn't enough to harm us, but sometimes it's more. In this case, the amount of radiation absorbed by the fossil turned out to helpful. The skeleton was originally found in 1990, but the skull was missing. Six years later, use of a radiation detector turned up the skull, and head and body were reunited.

And we can't see them. Given that tragedy, and despite the ridiculousness of the idea, I prefer to imagine them aglow inside their cabinet.

Stay tuned for more adventures in Utah!