Fall project updates

As the weather outside gives way to the short, crisp days of winter it's a good time to reflect on everything we've accomplished this Fall due to your support. While we never manage to accomplish as much as we set out to do, it's been overall a satisfying and productive few months. So, on with the show...

SVP Meeting Much was afoot at this year's Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Annual Meeting, held in Salt Lake City UT. We had two presentations on the AAS: Chris presented a poster on the theropod dinosaur material known from the Woodbine Formation (including recent discoveries from the AAS), and long-time volunteer Ronnie Colvin presented a poster describing for educators how to integrate information from the AAS into school science curricula, with examples from her own experience.

 

Chris Noto with his Woodbine theropods poster.

We also used this time to get together and plan for the next several months work, some more of which I will detail below. Meetings such as this are vital opportunities to coordinate work in face to face meetings and build new contacts for future collaborations

 

AAS Researchers Thomas, Stephanie, and Chris in front a wicked mount of the tyrannosaur Daspletosaurus.

We Submitted a Paper! Back in October, Thomas, Stephanie, and I submitted a paper to the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology naming and describing the new species of large crocodilian found at the AAS. This animal was originally described by Derek Main in his dissertation, but due to the scientific requirements for naming new species, the name was not technically official. This paper will fix that, and officially establish the new species that Derek had erected. We can't share the name right now, because the paper is not published yet. We'll let you know as soon as we can. In the meantime we'll be building a new full-sized reconstruction of the animal's skull, hopefully to be finished when the paper is finally published (which is still many months away).

Palynology Analysis Sediment samples were sent for analysis back in August. There were many more samples than originally planned for, so it is taking a bit more time than anticipated. We expect to have results for the analysis by late December or January. I'll share and update on that when it all comes in.

CT Scanning The climate gods have not been kind to Florida on the two occasions this year when Stephanie had made plans to travel to the St. Augustine Alligator Farm to collect turtles with healed bite marks on their shells and those with shell disease. These would be CT-scanned to compared what each looks like inside the bone, and provide data to help tell the two apart when found on fossil turtle shell, such as what we have at the AAS. She's working hard to find a way to do this. We'll keep you posted of progress!

Fossil Preparation Things in the fossil prep lab continue humming along and much progress has been made on AAS fossils found this year and in years past. At this rate we should make significant headway reducing the sizeable backlog of fossil material that needs to be prepped by the end of the spring.

 

A Parkside student piecing together some turtle shell.

Well, there you have it. Everything that's fit to print for now. We here at the AAS hope you all have a joyous holiday season.

~~Chris