A TYPICAL DAY

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Afternoon

Click the ( + ) signs to explore the items in our scrapbook.

Mike Novacek

The afternoon is all about gathering fossils to carefully get them back to camp before the sun goes down.

Mark Norell
scrapbook page with labels and pictures

3 p.m.

Since time and space are limited and shipping is expensive, the team doesn’t take back just any fossil. In order to make the cut, the fossil needs to give scientists new information about the fossil record.

Amy sitting on red rocks applying plaster of Paris to a section

Preparators often help other people “jacket” their fossils with plaster and burlap.

4 p.m.

Often the scientists don’t really know what’s inside a rock until the preparators clean the specimens back at the Museum or the Mongolian Academy of Sciences. The fossils are carefully stored in labeled specimen bags. We keep track of all the specimens in a logbook.

open log box with many entries written in pen
team member holding up small chunk of red rocks with little bones showing on surface

5 p.m.

Everyone heads back to camp for a Show-and-Tell of the day’s discoveries. Many of the things people find are “nodules”–small chunks of sandstone that contain fossils.

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Credits

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Credits:

3pm image, courtesy of AMNH; all other photos, courtesy Discovery Channel Online