Palate Recovery Initiated

Friday, August 24, 2012

The team met at Farmer John's house at 9AM.  Dave and Jim Roberson returned with Lee Wymore, Indian Hills Community College, along with biology and nursing student Kylie Ratzloff and her husband Dustin.  John used the Titan Machinery backhoe to widen the shelf at the west side of the pit and cleared away approximately five ft. of overburden running the full length of the pit.  This gave the team more room to work around the skull safely and a place to throw the ever-growing pile of clay they were removing.

The immediate goal was to uncover the maxillary or upper jaw/tooth #2 as well as the adjoining tusk and skull portions.  To accomplish this, the team determined that the first priority was removing the tree stump which was accomplished in several large pieces which were saved topside.  The second step was extracting upper jaw/tooth #1.  Using a tile probe, Lee located a bone-free plane between maxilla #1 and #2.  Kylie applied a plaster bandage to #1.  The bone/plaster mass proved heavier than expected and the team used a 6 ft. length of 2X8 provided by Farmer John as a "stretcher" to carry the bone out of the pit and up to Jim's truck. Specimen #1 was wrapped in plastic bags and stored in Farmer John's pole barn to await transport to Iowa City.  Leanne Van Donselaar (UNI Earth Science grad) arrived after lunch to reinforce the crew.   A large number of small bone fragments were discovered sitting on top of #2, presumably fallen from #1.  They were collected in a bag.  A separate pile of large fragments was found to the west between #2 and the tusk and other skull masses.  These were photographed and bagged and labeled "#1."

As the team dug deeper under #2 they encountered several ribs resting in and on a thick (~6 in.) bed of gravel.  To the north (downstream?), larger cobble-sized rocks were encountered.  Diggers widened the hole and eventually found at least eight (8) ribs. The ribs are much deeper than we have previously dug in the Discovery Pit. Do we have to go back and look under the gravel layer we encountered underlying everything there?

Osky Herald reporter Duane Nollen came to the site mid-afternoon and took some notes and photos for a story to be published Saturday. Maureen and Jason returned to film for CRI.  The team departed about 7:30 PM.  At the end of the day maxillary #2 remained in the ground as well as the tusk and ribs 1-8.