Finished with two "Text Book" bones

I have finally finished preparing two bones that could be in a textbook if any was ever written about Bernie. One is the forth braincase - a great bone. It is 30% larger than the previous one, and in great shape. I prepared out the rock that is in the center of the bone as much as possible. This illustrates how that branch of the brain looked. I also prepared out two of the larger nerve passages (one on each side) though I don't know which nerve it would be. The Occipital Condyle (where the backbone attaches to the skull)  and the Foramen Magnum (here the spinal cord comes out of the skull) are very strange. The OC is round with a depression in the middle. It is like a ball-and-socket joint found in a lot of reptiles, but it's reversed! the socket is on the skull side, not the backbone side. Huh?  And the FM is very large and not round out all. Double Huh??

The second bone is a centrum with the attached neural arch. This is only the second bone pair we have found, as normally the neural arches separate from the centrums at the cartilage joint. This bone pair is not only complete, it has the bumps on the side where the ribs connect to the backbone [diapophysis and parapophysis] and the bumps where the neural arch connects to the ones before and behind [anterior and posterior zygapophyses]. Very nice bumps - I really need to know how to pronounce the names. Both of these bones will be scanned next at Century High school after spring break.
So here are some pictures, the result of six weeks of work, 3 days per week:
 First the forth braincase by itself:

Next, the third and forth braincases side-by-side

 Last of all the Centrum-Neural Arch pair:

Little Big Bones - Baby makes Five???

While preparing the 4th braincase I have encountered several small bones that appear to be from an infant Thalattosaur. They are two centrums (one from last year), what could be a leg bone and what could be a pelvic girdle bone. Here are some pictures:

Here is a plain centrum recovered in 2013. It shows the 'hour glass' scar where the neural arch connects, but no neural arch was found. In most cases the arches separate from the centrums at the cartilage joint. Without the neural arch it wasn't clear if this was just a bone at the end of the tail (from a larger animal) or a bone from a very small animal.

 Here is the recently found centrum with a partial neural arch attached. With the neural arch it must be one of the body backbones (instead of the tail). Thus it must be from a  very small individual = our 5th  animal! I hope we can find the skull for this one.

 Here's a top view of the small one and a normal sized one.

 Here is a different bone. It may be part of the pelvic girdle, though I'm not sure. The bones have 'growth areas' in three sides and a smooth saddle-curved surface on the side furthest from the camera. However, the nerve holes in the two bones don't correspond, so they may not be the same bone.

 Sincerely, Greg Carr

3D Printing Bones on my Printer!

I finally have my 3D printer working! It is a home-designed and built unit. The printing head moves in the X-Y plane at the top of the unit, and the build platform drops down as the build progresses. Many printers are like this. like the Ultimaker (r). Mine has a build volume of 8"x 8"x 17" (200mm x 200mm x 425mm for those of you who think rationally). This will let me print out and of Bernie's bones full size, including the whole skull.

Since this blog is about Bernie (and Bernice and Bernard and Beatrice and...) some of the first items I've been printing are copies of Bernie's bones. I've got a couple of brain cases, palate, etc. I'm considering a full skull, but the printer is not reliable enough to print the 60+ hours it will take to do a full skull. In fact right now after about 40 hours of printing the extruder barrel is broken. That's because it is inherently a poor mechanical design. I'm improving it and I'm waiting for some parts to get it running again.

There is an interesting balance required to print out these 'organic' parts. They don't have nice flat planes or straight edges - they are all curves, holes, overhangs, swells and shrinks. To do an overhang you need to have cool extruding temperatures and quick cooking of the extruded plastic so that it doesn't sag; to get good adhesion between layers you need slow cooling and  hot extrude temperatures.  And it really is true that different colors of the plastic need different conditions - mostly because the fillers change the physical characteristics of the plastic. Black is particularly hard to work with. So I think I'll mostly work with white and clear.

So here's some pictures. Here's the printer itself with the control panel in front.

 Here it is printing out part of a Teratorn Humerous. The Teratorn is an extinct eagle with a 15 foot wing span. This bone was excavated at Woodburn (Oregon) high school. It was CAT scanned and translated into .stl files by the University of Oregon where the original is displayed. it is quite a challenge to get this printed - I haven't succeeded yet, but I'm close.

 Here it is printing out Bernie's Scapula

Here is a printed copy of the most complete brain case next to the original. Guess which is which!

Here's a hint - it is the one with the catalog number and the better underside (overhangs are difficult).

Here is a print with the raft (the flat base that goes on the printer bed) and the supports added to hold up the overhangs as they are being made.

 Here's the built-in control panel.

 Here's the base of the Teratorn bones, showing the intricate internal structure captured by the CAT scan. No other copying technique can reproduce this intricate texture.

 And here's the Distal end of the Humerus of the teratorn printed in white ABS. I'll be trying clear PLA so that the inside structure can be seen (somewhat) without slicing it open.

And here is how you do this process. Brown outlines are the traditional fossil prep steps. Green is the scanning steps. Blue are software steps. Red is finishing it up as desired. Lots of complicated steps to this process if you want to do it right!


Finally, here is a video of the printer in action:

Sincerely, Greg Carr

Four and Counting!

Things have gotten weird in the last couple of weeks. Jerry Dodson is starting to work on another big block, Block 1, where we have identified two skull parts exposed on the surface. They won't be full skulls, of course, since they are broken where the block broke. So here is Jerry's current project. We've run out of table space so it's on a wheeled hydraulic lift table.

I don't know if these holes in the bones are semi-circular canals for ear balance, but they certainly could be.

Here's the block after a large section came off. There are skull bones at the upper end and lower end of the removed block.

I continue to work on good 'ol block 2 which I've been slaving away for two+ years.  I started chasing a small bone cluster on the surface of the break plane between block 1 and block 2 - hah!

I know the bone to the right is part of a centrum. The one in the middle was interesting, and I thought the small bone to the upper right was part of a rib - wrong! There actually were  four bones on this cluster - 2 centrums and two others. The 'others' are the interesting ones. So here I have cut away around the outside of the ones somewhat, digging my normal trench to remove them. They actually went quite deep and when I tried to knock them off....

 This is what happened! The end of the entire block broke off, exposing a beautiful Nautiloid!  It's really quite big.

And it's a species we haven't seen before. The sutures look like a nautiloid, but the sides of the animal don't have the typical indented whorls. Instead, they resemble some of the more globular ammonites. It is a lower priority (and shells are difficult to prepare) but it's still going to be interesting. A new species, perhaps?

So here's the cluster of bones. I think one is a section of mandible while the other one is a thin part of a skull, maybe around the orbit. Full identification will have to wait until they are fully prepped. 

Last of all, when the block broke off it exposed yet another bone clustered with the ones I originally started with. However, preparing this bone revealed a wonderful surprise - it's ANOTHER BRAINCASE!!!! This makes 4 total now - so we have at least four animals!!!!

And to be even more interesting it's about 30% LARGER than the largest one we had (which was the previous largest one) - so we have a growth sequence of four individuals all different sizes! It will take another 3-4 weeks to get this one out as most of it is still in the main block buried deeply. However it's really worth pursuing. 

 Here it is back on the block, with the other full braincase for comparison.

Like I said, it's been a crazy couple of weeks. 

Sincerely, Greg Carr

Chasing out more Skull Fragments and an unexpected Bonus

Since the last post we have been actively taking off the large blocks three pieces of what look like more skull fragments. Since they are still embedded we don't know how large they are, but we have hopes.

Two of the fragments are located on block 1, which we haven't done much work on. Almost all the work over the last two years have been on block 2. I've had to reduce the hour I spend actively scribing due to tendonitus. So I started by pulling out block 1 and removing the plaster. It is as big as block 2 and shares a common cleavage plane so it should be just as productive. Lo and Behold after cleaning we find two skull fragments showing on the surface. Jerry has been given the opportunity to dig them out. Here is a closeup of one of them. There appears to be some large holes in the bones right in the center of this picture. These may be semi-circular canals, though they are much too large to fit in the brain case bone where you'd expect them. We have another scrap with holes like this showing. It will be great to compare the two.

Here's an overview of the block 1 with the part shown above directly in the middle and another skull fragment above it (shown to the left as the picture is turned).

Here is a closeup of possible skull fragments on block 2 / block 1 cleavage plane. Some of this may be centrums, but part is definitely more skull fragments.

Here is block 2 after the end was knocked off to access the skull fragments better. To the right you can see a wonderful invertebrate shell. The sutures look like a nautiloid, but the overall shape is that of a spherical ammonite. We'll just have to see what is is after removal.

 Here is a closeup of the shell. It is really big - over 3 inches across - and will be complete! The lip of the opening is visible, so we have the entire shell.

 Last of all, I have made an archival cradle for the large left side skull roof fragment. I followed the same steps as making the full skull cradle. First, prepare an oversized plywood bottom to be the base.

 Next, wrap the bone in aluminum foil to keep it clan, and apply a layer of clay about 1/8 inch thick tomimic the future foam padding.

Then make up plaster re-enforced with chopped glass, and embed the bone clay-side down into the plaster. You have to work fast as the plaster sets in about 6-10 minutes!

 Last, after the plaster sets remove the clay and aluminum foil and add the padding. Good for a hundred years!

Another Month, More Skull Parts

We have been focusing on bones that appear to be skull parts since they tell us so much about new animals, and are generally very descriptive and unique. We know from having three brain cases that we have parts of three skulls in this first block we are excavating. We now have as well three specimens of the left side of the skull roof that include the pineal gland. I believe these are found in the parietal and frontal bones.

Here is the latest bone - the anterior part (front part) is toward the left with the midline running along the top of the piece. This piece has a very delicate part left on the rear-projecting spur on the lower left in this picture. I believe it is the supratemporal and the squamosal. These are missing from the other two pieces.

Here are a couple of closeups of the posterior projection of the spur. The fin is only about 1 mm thick and (of course) it was difficult to prepare. 

This one shows the interior of the braincase and the pineal gland as well. 

Here is the one before that. I can't seem to find it totally prepared in this same position, so here it is with the anterior end (front end) pointing up. The pineal is the notch on the right side, the brain case in the lower projection on the right. 

 And here is the third one. It is the most broken piece, but the pineal and some of the midline suture rugosity is evident upon inspection.

When we get these all together we will compare sizes. It is my impression that the largest piece is actually from the largest skull, but it awaits accurate dimensioning. Two of these fragments are already in Alaska so I can't do it right now. I have begun scanning parts with two new students at Century High School. After all the skull bones that are here in Oregon are scanned they will be sent to the U of Alaska, Fairbanks, to join the rest of the skull parts. 

Sincerely, Greg Carr