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79322
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FACT
Dinosaur Dig in Montana Was Great
Ten new comers met on July 20th, in
Glendive, Montana near the Yelowstone River and Lewis and Clark trail, to
continue the excavation on a Triceratops discovered by Otis Kline in early
2004. After an orientation on dig proceedures, Joel Peck with Otis and I got everyone
started removing the clay around the bones, each in their own one meter square
grid. All the bone material appeared to be parts of a very large skull of a
ceratopsian. Otis and I agreed that there was reason to believe it might even be a
Torosaurus. These were triceratops with two holes in their wide skulls.
Parts of the tooth rows of probably the maxilla, the upper jaw teeth, were
recovered three feet apart. Indeed the skull appeared broken and dissasociated after
burial. I suspect that an earthquake caused the earth here to heave up and
down. This would leave the strata still in their flat positions, but it would leave
the bones broken and jumbled. I saw several places where the strata had slid
against itself. This is called "slick and slide" indicating upheaval.
There are plants in almost
every layer here and it is estimated that 90% of the Hell Creek formation is found here
on Otis's property. Seeds of different plants and cones of seqouia are
mixed with whole figs, leaves of the willow tree and giant horse tail reeds and
ocasionally closed clams. The important thing to note here, is that one does not
expect to find these different plants growing together. The figs here are
just like they were on the tree, except that they are turned to stone and are
rusty brown. Reading in Revelation recently, I was struck by verse 6:13, "And
the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely
figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind." Geologist John MacKay pointed
out that young unripe figs are hard to get off the tree and that it takes a strong
wind to tear them off when green. This is exactly what it looks like happened
here. These dinosaurs were buried during a terriffic wind storm which was
strong enough to rip green figs off the tree.
We also sawed in half two
large femur bones that Otis had found. This nerve-wracking task was done so Hugh
Miller and Bill White could collect samples from the inner core. They plan to do the
chemical tests to search for soft tissue and perform C-14 tests.
Otis had the walls up on his
new museum. Opening is scheduled for summer 2006. It should be a tremendous
museum and a stimulus to the local economy. Glendive is a cattle ranch and coal mining
town with a colorful history going back to the Old West days when American Indians
set up their teepees in the streets of Glendive during celebrations.
Joe Taylor
Owner/Curator
Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum