Livvi's mammal jaw

Diggers may recall that Livvi found a mammal jaw on her first day back at the dig (Saturday 7th March).  Following Lesley's tradition of giving the most promising fossils easy to remember numbers, it is #200 in the Field Catalogue.  Diggers may also recall that Livvi and her friends looked for half an hour before locating the other half.  I can report that her mammal jaw does indeed have a tooth - just one, towards the back of the jaw.  The crown is in that "other half", and so delicate that Dave expects it will not be extracted and have to be scanned.  Cool.

The thing that Tim found...

Crew attending week 3 will know that Tim found something quite interesting on the last day at site (Friday 20th March).  He walked the stable half  (mainly imprint since the other half splintered) around to show the diggers.  It was way too big for one of our mammal jaws so I labelled it "possible ornithopod maxilla" in order not to get anyone's hopes up (but I did put it in the priority box for Dave to look at as soon as possible, and took photos to show Tom and Lesley in the meantime!).  I am now hearing reports from the lab that it is every bit as exciting as we hoped.  Possibly so exciting, in fact, that I'm not a liberty to give away too much.  It will get micro-scanned soon, and hopefully give up some more of its secrets.

Dinosaurs Dig Paleontologists Who Do Math

A paper written by Tom Rich et al using statistical analyses to confirm that Serendipaceratops arthurcclarkei is a ceratopsian was recently celebrated in Math Horizons, an American high school and university mathematics magazine.
Some of you know that my first (academic) love was mathematics, so it's great to see a math journal talking about our dinos.

Check it out at Math Horizons.

Friends' Day crew photo

A bunch of the Friends' Day diggers

Fun with an australovenator claw

Dave has a claw...

John is impressed by Dave's claw

Oof!

A tibia from the shore platform

Ben delivers a fossil from the shore platform

The tibia

Friends' day

Caitlin finds a small fossil

Bronnie finds the first of many fossils

Dean finds a fossil (and Fotini photo-bombs)

A curvy fossil John found

A small friend searches for fossils under the sand

Nicola and Dale visit the dig

Alan studies the sediments

Fossil finds March 14

Wendy finds a fossil

Fotini checks to see if she has a fossil

Mike finds a tooth

Mikes' tooth (probably pterosaur)

Friends' Day

Our annual Friends' Day is scheduled for this Sunday.

Besides watching diggers, we are expecting:

1. Nicole to show people our newspaper article and give away a few "shoulder bones" (fossils confirmed to have little scientific value)
2. Some diggers to point a lot, explain where we dig and what the landscape was like 120 million years ago.
3. A table full of fossil finds from this year or prepared since last year (some real, a few important or fragile ones might be photographs only)
4. Mike to lead a prospecting meander (probably to the "Honey Locality" - so called because of the colour of the bones he finds there).

If there is demand, we might even run a geology tour or rock-pooling stroll.

Video from The Age

http://media.theage.com.au/news/national-news/the-dinosaurs-on-our-doorstep-6303668.html

Check out Tom and Mike and me in speaking roles and lovely cameos from Mary and Norman and Nick!  A few of the younger photogenic diggers get to be background scenery so if you were there week 1 check it out.

We're in The Age!

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/dinosaur-dream-team-from-melbourne-museum-are-slowly-chipping-away-at-the-next-big-thing-20150228-137tvm.html

Great photos of Norman and Mary and Tom (and quotes from me and Miklos!)