Horses for Susie

Neigh,

Dan

My Life According to Spin Doctors

Instructions: Using only song names from one artist, answer these questions, without repeating songs.

Pick Your Artist. Spin Doctors

Are you a male or female? The Man

Describe yourself. Waiting for the Blow

How do you feel? Off My Line

Describe where you currently live. Someday All This Will Be Road

If you could go anywhere, where would you go? Where Angels Fear to Tread

Favorite method of transportation? Freeway of the Plains

Who is your best friend? Little Miss Can't Be Wrong

Fill in the blank. You and your best friends are _Genuine_.

What's the weather like? Vampires in the Sun

What is your favorite time of day? Tonight You Could Steal Me Away

If your life was a TV show, what would it be called? Beasts in the Woods

What is life to you? Happily Ever After

What is your fear? She Used to Be Mine

What is the best advice you have to give? You Let Your Heart Go Too Fast

Thought for the Day? Tomorrow Can Pay the Rent

How I would like to die? Dodging Assassins

What is your soul's present condition? The Bigger I Laugh, the Harder I Cry

What is your motto? You've Got to Believe in Something

Gone Mad,

Dan

For Work

At work, I've been working on extracting a skull (Sphenocoelus hyognathus?) in a wash for the past few days and my friend and coworker, Garrett, was exploring down the wash and he found another skull (Achaenodon uintense). In the first photo it's above and to the left of the gloves. In the second photo, you can see the teeth and basicranium (bottom and back of the head) poking out of the rock. Piggies at play,

Dan

For School

I just needed a link to this photo for my first assignment in grad school.


Cleaning up spilled milk,

Dan

Dem Bones

Here is a humerus a coworker began and I finished. It was found near the two skulls I prepared. I think it belongs to the Sphenocoelus intermedius but it could be something completely different.This is the humerus that besieged me. It's from a completely different area, but it belongs to an Amynodon advenus.This is an astragalus (ankle bone) which was found practically articulated to the next fossil.
These next two photos are of an atlas (first neck bone after the skull). The astragalus was jammed up right underneath it on the right side. As I prepared it, I had a hard time figuring out what the bone was because I thought the two were one.
I can't get a positive ID on these two, but I suspect that they're also from an Amynodon advenus.
I'm also in the process of preparing two skulls, one at BYU, and another in Vernal. I know the one at BYU is an Amynodon and I'm pretty sure the other one is too. One of my other coworkers prepared another Amynodon skull earlier this year so that's four. I wonder how many more we'll find before the year is out.

Rollin' with the rhinos,

Dan

Sphenocoelus intermedius

I present to you the second skull of which I so recently spoke. This guy was a lot harder to remove from the matrix in the field. It was in a large boulder which had fallen off the main outcrop which we had to reduce to a size we could manually carry out to a vehicle. It's kind of hard to see in this photo from the field, but trust me, it's there.I didn't begin taking photos of the preparation until the third day. This series is from the ventral (bottom looking up) view. Day 3Day 4Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9 (Work Complete!) I left all that matrix (rock) because the only thing holding the front of the skull to the back is the right palatine-pterygoid flange (thin wall of bone in the back of the throat).
Occlusal View (Teeth Detail)
Right Lateral View
For how much of this guy was missing and how battered it looked in the field, I'm very pleased with how well preserved the rest of it is. It's missing whole front top of the skull, incisors, canines, right first and second premolars, left first premolar, both zygomatic arches and a few other small things. The whole back of the skull is complete and in really good shape and all the remaining teeth look fantastic.
There are two leading brontothere researchers, Mader and Milbachler. Mader would call this skull Sphenocoelus intermedius, but Milbachler would call it Dolichorhinus hyognathus. I tend to side with Mader's observations, but Milbachler's name sounds cooler.

Whining,

Dan

Two Things

Thing 1: The other day I bought Pull-Ups for Joy. I didn't realize that, unlike regular diapers, Pull-Ups are gender specific. Unbeknownst to me, I purchased the Boy specific Pull-Ups for Joy. Good thing she doesn't care. They have Cars all over them, she actually likes them.

Thing 2: While fixing the shelves of the girls' new bunkbed, I used this tool quite a bit. Grace was 'helping' me and we had a conversation that went something like this:

Grace: "Wow! This is VERY yellow."
Me: "Yup."
Grace: "What is it?"
Me: "It's a tool called a square."
Grace: "I don't think it's a square. I think it's a triangle."

Try explaining THAT one to a three-year old.

Come on vamonos,

Dan

Amynodon advenus

You may remember this photo from my last post. Jason found this skull last fall and we were finally able to collect it in May.Over the past few weeks, I've been able to prepare it. Here are the day by day photos I took of the left side (best preserved side) at the end of each day of work. Day 1Day 2Day 3
Day 4
Day 5 (Work Complete!)
This is the ventral side (looking at the palate and base of the skull) on the last day.
I'm pretty sure that this skull belonged to a creature called Amynodon advenus which is very closely related to rhinos. It's missing the right zygomatic arch (cheek bone), both nasals (nose bones), the outer bone on the right side of the face (exposed side first found in the field), the labial (outer) side of all the right cheek teeth, all the incisors except one on the left, the right canine, and the first right premolar. I think it belonged to a female because the remaining canine is quite small and males of this species had very large canines.

I'm also working on a second skull found just a few feet from this one so when I finish preparing it, I'll post photos of that.

Rocks in my hair,

Dan