We have completed another year in the Gobi Desert, and this season we collected more than 80 skeletons of Psittacosaurus bringing our collection up to nearly 200 specimens.  One hundred and seventy seven will be used for a special study to be conducted by our new Mongolian doctoral student Badmaa Zorgit.  Besides the many Psittacosaurus skeletons we also found portions of other dinosaurs including a large meat-eater, and a possible Stegosaurus-like dinosaur.
 
This years Mongolia crew included doctoral students John Scannella, Denver Fowler, and Badmaa Zorgit, our new post-doc for 2008, Bolor Minjin, our new Master's student Bassanjav, Nels Peterson, and myself.  We also had a crew of 4 other Mongolians.

Sometimes its good for a scientist to just sit around and think.  In my preparation for going to Mongolia, I've been thinking alot about Psittacosaurus and why we find so many of them in areas we call "psittco-cities."  So far we have over 100 skeletons from an area less than one square mile in size.  Finding a lot of psittacosaurs is important for the kind of studies we're trying to make, like determining species variation, but it is curious that there are so many skeletons in such a relatively small space, and that few of them are babies, or large adults.  The fact that there are few babies suggests that it's probably not where they raised their young--so what could it be?  It's a very curious puzzle, and this season we will try to find a solution.  We wi ...

Although we officailly ended our Montana field season on the 10th of August, we realized that there was still an important specimen of Triceratops that needed to be collected before winter.  Grad students John Scannella, Denver Fowler, Brian Basiak, Liz Freedman, and I drove out to Hell Creek to excavate what we thought was a partial skull of a subadult Triceratops.  It turned out to be both a skull and front leg.

While John, Denver, and Brian finished that excavation, Liz and I drove to Havre where we met Field Crew Chief Bob Harmon, and we three took a day to search the Judith River Formatio ...

Now that all our Montana crews are out of the field, several of us are preparing for our last expedition of the year to Mongolia to continue collecting specimens of Psittacosaurus.  So far we have more than 100 skeletons that will be used to study species variation, and population histology.  We are working with Bolor Minjin and her father Minjin Chulaan out of the Science and Technology University of Mongolia.  You can check out what we've been up to by reading the cover story in the latest issue of Discover Magazine (September 2007 issue).  The photo shows one of our psittacosaur excavations from last year.  The pole holds a camera for taking time-lapse photography.

This is our last week in the field, as our students have to get back to school, and so we are spending the week getting all our field jackets carried out of sites, packed onto trailers, and sent back to Bozeman. We have made an incredible collection of Triceratops, adults and juveniles, and found many other kinds of dinosaurs as well.  Our final explorations will be by boat this Friday as we collect hadrosaur nest remains along the Milk River.  Then we will do our final task of creating a 3-D topographic image of the Egg Mountain area near Choteau.      

On the morning of Wednesday, August 1st, the Museum of the Rockies was able to successfully broadcast live video from the Snap Creek dig site to both the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana and to a live audience of around 80 people at the Natural History Museum in London (image shows crowd in London)! The event was also webcast live on the London museum's website. During the broadcast Dr. Horner conversed with British paleontologist Angela Milner about Triceratops and T.rex research being done at MOR. Audience members were even able to ask questions for Jack to answer on the spot. Look for more events like this in the future.

Crews out at the Snap Creek Camp are busy excavating two Triceratops skulls.  One, named Joe's Trike, discovered by movie director Joe Johnston appears to be a young adult skull, and the other, named Lauren's Trike is apparently that of a large adult, but the skull is in several chunks.  Lauren is a volunteer from UC Berkeley.  With temperatures in the 100s the crews are working under shade tarps, and swimming in ponds after work.  MOR's Bob Harmon is the Field Crew Chief, and other members of the crew include Brian Basiak (MSU grad student), Becky Schaff and Lee Hall (MSU students), Kari Baker, Liz Johnson, Sara Keenan, Judith Sassoon, and Malorie Snider.  Nels Peterson is the Tech for the crew.

The field season is finally in progress after lots of rain, but is now extremely hot.  Seems like we've gone from drenching rain to 100+ temperatures without any nice weather in-between.  So far I've had 7 field crews out searching for dinosaurs:

1.  Brachylophosaurus (duck-bill) leg from the Judith River Formation near Malta, Montana, excavated for the purpose of looking for soft tissues and biomolecules, for a study to be conducted by Mary Schweitzer.

2.  Two duck-bill skeletons from the Judith River Formation (Redding Field Station), near Rudyard, Montana, being excavated as part of an ongoing project conducted by doctoral student Liz Freedman, to determine the dinosaur fauna of the lower Judith River Formation.

3.  Exploration and collection of dinosaur remains from the Lower Cretaceous Cloverly Formation near Harlowton, Montana conducted by Bill and Kris Parsons, Museum of the Rockies, Museum ...

Hello everyone and welcome to the Bone Blog. Here you can check out regular updates about my research and ask me questions. I'm excited about the successful opening of my new exhibit at the Museum of the Rockies called Dinosaurs under the Big Sky. If you haven't seen it yet I hope you will visit soon! Well, I'm headed off for the start of our summer 2007 field season. Check back here for updates on new discoveries!