Bloodsuckers

Boyne shale at the PVPP.

We went back to Pembina Valley Provincial Park on Monday to look for shale outcrops, and while we met with some success, we mostly found a whole bunch of mosquitoes and woodticks instead. However, we did locate some neat Boyne shale outcrops, including some with iron content, as well as a weird-looking pyrite formation (found by Aaron) and a mosasaur vertebra (discovered by Eric). The backbone is particularly interesting because it's only the second local mosasaur ever found in the Boyne, which represents a time period where sharks like Cretoxyrhina are currently thought to have been more dominant in our part of the Western Interior Seaway. It had been washed down a creek bed and was weathered to the point of resembling a Pembina fossil in its coloring (we've got lots of those, but was determined to be from the Boyne after Joe (our paleontologist) tested it for calcium content by exposing it to hydrochloric acid. Unfortunately, any other bones from that particular mosasaur have likely been washed to random spots downstream (if they were ever fossilized in the first place).

Augen texture at the PVPP.

Our first two-day tour of the season occurred on Tuesday and Wednesday! Here's a shout-out to Ally Chernoff, who uncovered a number of mosasaur ribs, teleost (fish) teeth, and some more obscure fossils that we have yet to identify. From all the Field Techs, we really enjoyed digging for fossils with you in the field and we hope you had a great time. If any of you other readers would like to hunt for fossils with us, now's the time to schedule a tour since the weather's starting to really heat up, so don't wait! There's some cool stuff just waiting for you to uncover it at the CFDC.

Our awesome fort.

Matt Remple
Field Tech