Behind the Scenes in a Dinosaur Fossil Laboratory

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[Researchers excavating dinosaur fossils in desert-like environment]

CARL MEHLING (Senior Museum Specialist, Division of Paleontology): Your gut reaction is the moment something is found, that's when it's discovered.

[MEHLING in field looking at rock through hand lens]

MEHLING: And a lot of the material we collect,

[researcher brushing soil from fossils embedded in rock]

MEHLING: we have a field identification for it.

[MEHLING appears on camera; text appears: Carl Mehling, Senior Museum Specialist, Division of Paleontology]

MEHLING: But often, it's only after a long time in the lab,

[plaster jackets of fossils, labeled by hand with field numbers]

MEHLING: being prepared and stabilized, that you recognize that it's something else. That's often more exciting than-

[hands stuffing padding into a plastic bucket around a plaster field jacket]

MEHLING: the moment you pull it out of the ground or excavate it for the first time, because-

[person lifts the bucket and places it, with fossil jacket, inside large machine]

MEHLING: that's when it gets a face and a name and an identity, and-

[person slides door of machine closed]

MEHLING: you start to understand how it's going to fit into the big picture of what we're doing.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[A title that reads “Back to the Jurassic Part 2: The Lab” appears over footage of many plaster fossil jackets on a long table in a laboratory.]

MEHLING: We put a lot of work into the Morrison-

[A topographical map appears, showing North America from southern Canada to central Mexico with the outlines of states and provinces. A title reading Morrison Formation labels the map from very southern Canada to central New Mexico, as well as from central Utah to central Kansas.]

MEHLING: early in our history. We've decided to go back and start over with-

[person’s hand using computer mouse]

MEHLING: all the new tools and questions-

[person with long hair looking at computer screen that shows scan of cross-section of fossil jacket]

MEHLING: that we have now.

[person stands up to reveal ROGER BENSON sitting at computer, with his hand on the mouse]

ROGER BENSON (Curator, Division of Paleontology): You can see the vertebra. That's the centrum.

[BENSON appears, speaking to camera; text appears: Roger Benson, Macaulay Curator, Division of Paleontology]

BENSON: The Morrison Formation is in the late Jurassic, so everything we find there is around that time interval.

[over-the-shoulder shot of a preparator sorting through plastic baggies labeled with field identifications]

BENSON: We're short on information about some of the smallest animals in the ecosystem like the small mammals and reptiles, amphibians-

[preparator seated, puts on protective, magnifying eyewear]

BENSON: that actually, probably made up most of the species.

[wider shot showing preparator seated at lab bench with fossil preparation materials and microscope]

BENSON: We're particularly excited about our excavation because-

[over-the-shoulder shot of preparator brushing soil from fossil dinosaur tooth]

BENSON: we're finding some of the smaller dinosaurs that people historically really didn't find and have been very rare.

[BENSON appears, speaking to camera]

BENSON: So CT scanning's has been really helpful for Morrison Formation fossils. The matrix can be quite dry and crumbly.  

[a preparator with a plaster jacket that has been cut open, examining chunks of soil from inside it]

BENSON: As it dries out through the preparation process, it gets increasingly difficult to study the fossil.

[preparator continues to examine chunks of soil from jacket; MEHLING walks to table with fossil jacket and looks at what preparator is working on]

[BENSON appears, speaking to camera]

BENSON: And also, that drying process because the matrix is full of clay and can shrink,

[preparator and MEHLING continue to examine soil within the jacket]

BENSON: that tends to split apart parts of the fossil.

[BENSON carrying a plastic bucket containing an entire fossil jacket to CT scanning machine, places in machine, closes door of machine]

BENSON: Right now, I'm CT scanning just one of the field jackets from the field. And we know that it contains a vertebra, but we don't know what it belongs to. And I'm scanning it essentially to make a record of what it was like in the ground-

[BENSON moves from closed door to sit at controller of CT scanner]

BENSON: and also to know if there was anything around the vertebra that we didn't see in the field. So actually, when we do CT scans of our field jackets before they're prepared-

[BENSON appears, speaking to camera]

BENSON: we see the fossil in a more pristine state, then actually we're able to get it out of the jacket in the end.

[MEHLING in laboratory, pulling open flat drawer filing cabinet]

MEHLING: This is some of the material that was recently prepared from our latest excavation, and-

[MEHLING gesturing toward several prepared fossil bones]

MEHLING: this all came from one jacket.

[MEHLING appears, speaking to camera]

MEHLING: It's more of the smaller animals, which are rarer because they're small and rarer because traditionally it wasn't what was being focused on.

[close-up, picking up two prepared bones from small white boxes]

MEHLING: These are two tail bones of a small meat-eating dinosaur.

[medium shot, MEHLING points toward bone that has been pieced together]

MEHLING: This is the humerus or the upper arm bone of an ornithopod.

[close-up, picking up small bone with C-shaped curve along one edge, turning it around]

MEHLING: This bone hasn't even been identified yet. We not only don't know what kind of animal it comes from, we're not even sure what bone it is yet.

[BENSON seated at controller for CT scanner, looking at silhouette of fossil jacket on computer screen]

BENSON: The excavation site that this field jacket is from-

[close-up, CT scanner control screen; artist rendering of dinosaur with small crest, long jaws, short pointy teeth; three long claws on short front legs; long hind legs with long flexible feet; long tail held parallel to ground; body covered with fine light brown feathers; title appears: Guanlong, a relative of the new theropod species]

BENSON: is very exciting to us because it has the bones of a small bodied theropod dinosaur. Those are the predatory dinosaurs. But it also preserves-

[artist rendering of dinosaur with a rounded head, beak-like mouth with no visible teeth; short front legs with five digits; long back legs with three, scaly toes; wrinkly skin; and a row of feathers along its spine from its neck to the tip of its tail; title appears: Dryosaurus, a relative of the new ornithopod species]

BENSON: the bones of a small-bodied ornithopod dinosaur, and those animals are bipedal, herbivorous dinosaurs.

[BENSON at computer looking through cross-section CT scans of fossil jacket]

BENSON: So this vertebra belongs-

[a series of cross-section CT scans of fossil jacket quickly play on screen, revealing the fossil vertebra embedded in the soil within the fossil jacket]

BENSON: to one of at least two new species that we've been excavating.

[MEHLING speaking to camera]

MEHLING: We also have some plant specimens and because most of us work on bones and animals, we don't recognize-

[photo of rock specimen with fossil plant embedded within it, showing a dark central area with another dark area curving around it; a scale bar shows the rock is about 8cm wide]

MEHLING: the importance of the plants that we're seeing. We had a paleobotanist come by and get very excited by some of the stuff we found.

[close-up of a different fossil plant embedded in rock, showing a long thin gray shape]

MEHLING: And I'm pretty sure at least one of them has already turned into a new species.

[BENSON speaking to camera]

BENSON:  In addition to that, in the project team there are geologists who are interested in how environments on Earth were changing around that time and what impacts that had on evolving animals.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[MEHLING in hallway, opens glass door and then another door labeled Entrance to Department of Vertebrate Paleontology

BENSON: So we don't know what we're going to find when we start excavating a site. We just have a few bones generally that have weathered out on the surface through the process of erosion.

[MEHLING approaches lab bench with many prepared specimens covered with plastic]

BENSON: And it may be that site preserves a mixture of different dinosaurs that's quite different to what we expected because-

[MEHLING removes plastic and turns over fossil, check list he is holding]

BENSON: we can't see into the ground.

[BENSON speaking to camera]

BENSON: So even when we're excavating, we're more or less only guessing which dinosaurs we're finding. Really, the actual discovery-

[MEHLING with magnifying eyewear checks off something on his list]

BENSON: and confirmation of what we found goes on in the lab.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[Credits roll: 

The Constantine S. Niarchos Expedition featured here was generously supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF). 

Written, Directed and Produced by

Kate Walker

Edited by

Ben Tudhope

Camera

Lee Stevens

Ben Tudhope 

Title Graphics

Shay Krasinski

Drone Operator

Denis Finnin 

Archive:

© AMNH

NPS Photo/Bob Walters Tess Kissinger

Illustration by Xhao Chuang; courtesy of PNSO PTE LTD

Music:

“Ethereal Waltz” by Tom Haines (PRS)/Warner Chappell Production Music

This video was produced for Seminars on Science.

learn.amnh.org]