Field Catalogue transcription

I just asked a generative AI tool to use OCR and translate a page of our handwritten Field Catalogue into Excel for me.

Here is the output of my first attempt:

I am glad that John W appears to have morphed into a successful author from Dresden, but that does not really help me!

Distracted by a puzzle

This year, Lesley brought a wooden puzzle to the dig house. When it was too dark to work, some of our diggers tried to solve it. Sachi from Week 1 spent longest staring at it, but Astrid from Week 3 was the one who solved it…

Sachi working on the puzzle

Sachi still working on the puzzle

Sachi still working on the puzzle

Sachi still working on the puzzle

Sachi still working on the puzzle

Astrid solves the puzzle

Scorpions

 Each day during the dig, we do a couple of quizzes saved from newspapers throughout the year. We happened upon an older quiz, from The Age in late 2022. There was a question about an Ignoble prize winning study about the effects of constipation on the mating habits of scorpion. This raised a lot of questions and became a topic of conversation for about a day. 

Pat gave Mary a scorpion in celebration.

Mary is surprised by the scorpion

Wendy gets friendly with the scorpion

Friday 21st February - last day at site

 

The crew gaze down at the site

Geordie finds a fossil

Astrid takes notes about the fossils and rocks

An imploded fish

Alan studies the layers

The crew heading back from site

Our permit sign looking worse for wear after 20 days

John, Alan and Tom

John, Tom, Alan and Astrid

Astrid takes notes about the hole crew

Adele finds a lovely fossil

Astrid and Amber excited about blackboards and fossils

Astrid’s whiteboard of the day

Possible vert

Fossil

Amber carries a bucket.

Thursday 20th February - one big turtle

Corrie prints a little person shirt for Alan

Astrid bedazzles again

Marlonique on sponge

The crew

Marlonique on buckets

Marlonique finds a fossil

Mary and John

A pretty centrum

Amber completes a rainbow - photo from Darren

 

What we watch instead of TV - photos from Amber

 

New theropod paper!

We have a new paper on the Victorian theropods! Congratulations to Jake Kotevski and his co-authors.

Read it here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02724634.2024.2441903

Or a less technical Conversation Article: https://theconversation.com/carnivorous-dinosaurs-thrived-in-australia-120-million-years-ago-new-fossils-show-242290

Pretty plant fossil

 Darren found this pretty plant. We think it is Isoetalean (e.g. Isoetes bulbiformis)

Tuesday 18th February - photos from Adele

 

Amber with the most important find - a cup of tea

Wendy, Amber and Tom confer

The hole crew

Amber on rock saw

Alan, Corrie and Darren

Alan and Geordie

Wednesday 19th February - some nice finds

 

The crew works through the shower

Corrie cleaning rocks

Mary has a nice find

Amber squeezes sponges

What.a workspace!

Working hard

Breaking rock

Tom’s little toe

Tom and Mary and the tie

Astrid bedazzles the blackboard

Alan and Geordie

Breaking rock in the back yard

Adele finds a fossil

Corrie finds a tooth

Astrid finds turtle