For more than 150 million years, the leg bone from the long-necked sauropod had been buried underneath the rocky landscape of northern Wyoming.
The bones of the 80-foot-long plant-eating dinosaur were joined by thousands of other fossils from the Jurassic period — ferocious meat-eating dinosaurs, preserved ferns and other plants, dolphin-like creatures with eyes as large as dinner plates, and strange creatures known as Devil’s Toenails.
Scientists from the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis spent three months over the summer carefully locating these fossils and removing them from the ground.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]
“It’s like anything with exploration: You have periods of clearing away rock over and over and over again, then you have periods where, oh my gosh, you’ve just unearthed this thing. I’m the first living thing to see it in 150 million years,” said Jennifer Anné, vertebrate paleontologist for the Children’s Museum.
Now visitors to the museum here in central Indiana can watch as these treasures are studied, cleaned and examined before their eyes.
The haul of fossils from Wyoming has allowed the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis to expand its Polly H. Hix Paleo Prep Lab, a working laboratory located inside the museum’s Dinosphere. The new Jurassic Paleo Prep Lab will allow museum scientists to have the room to work with these new specimens, while families watch, ask questions and learn about what was found.
“This summer’s Mission Jurassic dig season was an extraordinary example of how real science can reveal the stories of how giant, ancient beasts lived so long ago. It provides real-life examples of the scientific processes we can share with children and families in our Dinosphere exhibit and throughout the world,” said Jeffrey H. Patchen, president and CEO of the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis.
The dig is first part of Mission Jurassic, a $27.5 million project of the Children’s Museum working in the so-called Jurassic Mile, named for its abundance of fossils from that era. The museum led the project, while working with scientists from the University of Manchester in England, the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, Netherlands and the Natural History Museum in London, England.
The goal was to update the museum’s collection of fossils, Anné said.
“We have very good coverage of North American dinosaurs from the Cretaceous, your typical tyrannosaurus rex and triceratops. But when you ask kids and adults the dinosaurs they know, one of the big ones we were lacking were the sauropods, the long-necks,” she said. “We thought it would be really nice if we could start adding to our haul and having some from this other time period that’s known in North America.”
Around 100 scientists traveled out to the dig site, which was located outside of the town of Cody, Wyoming. Starting in June, they spent hours every day chipping away at the underlying rock and dirt searching for any kind of fossils.
From the start, the excitement was electric.
“For a lot of us, this is the part that got us interested in paleo, the exploration and finding new things,” Anné said. “You get out there, and you hit the ground running. You have three months, and you have to get as much done in those three months as you can.”
Scientists worked long hours every day at the site, often going into the evening in order to finish up a particular section. The work was easy to get lost in; often, Anné forgot how remote the dig site was until she stopped for a moment.
“It was really the middle of nowhere. The only thing that’s really making noise is your hammer, and the occasional insect,” she said. “You have this beautiful landscape around you, and then you’re uncovering this beautiful landscape beneath your feet, basically.”
Not only was the team able to unearth more than 14,000 pounds of fossils from a variety of dinosaurs, but scientists were able to find plant material such as ferns, conifers and ginkgos, fossil tracks and a petrified log, which helped them piece together what this landscape looked like millions of years ago at this ancient sea.
The jumble of bones and logs in the deposit suggest a pond site, where dinosaurs of all kinds came together in a thriving ecosystem. The items uncovered paint a picture of life, and death, in the Jurassic period.
“Using information that has been locked in the sands of time, we are able to reconstruct those last moments of each corner of the site,” said Phil Manning, scientist-in-residence at the Children’s Museum and lead scientist for Mission Jurassic.
Once the items were uncovered, the dig team took great care to remove them from the surrounding rock, package them and protect them in preparation for transportation back to Indianapolis.
Scientists left rock on around the fossil, to protect the delicate features it until in the lab. Then the fossils were given a field jacket — a protective case of aluminum foil, burlap and plaster that provided a case around the item.
“You’re really trying to package these guys. You want to be able for them to make it on the three-day drive back. At the same time, you don’t want to make it so difficult to open in the lab that you end up damaging something,” Anné said. “It’s almost like shipping really nice antiques.”
Once the fossils arrived at the Children’s Museum, the pieces were taken to the Jurassic Paleo Prep Lab and further worked on. New hydraulic tables can hold up to 3,000 pounds, providing a steady surface to work on some of these massive bones.
Equipped with special tools, the museum’s staff can work on the fossils in front of visitors, giving a sense to the children and adults as to the work they do.
The experience is a surreal one for the scientists at the museum, who are doing serious scientific work while also interacting with visitors.
“Once they’re in that lab, they’re on display. For the past two days, I’ve had people watch me saw into a jacket and use a hammer,” Anné said. “We joke that once you’re in the lab, it doesn’t matter what you’re doing, you’re on display.”
The Jurassic Paleo Prep Lab opened on Sept. 10 inside the Dinosphere, and will continue to be an attraction as staff works through its collected specimens.
The Children’s Museum has secured a 20-year lease on the site at the Jurassic Mile, and will be returning over several years to continue digging for fossils. That provides ample opportunities not only for museum scientists to make discoveries, but for the general public to understand more about how science works and what this dig truly means, Anné said.
“You get to talk to people actually doing the science. It’s really nice to say that these people in this lab collected the fossils, they’re cleaning the fossils, they’re helping with the display, they’re doing research,” she said. “And you get to talk to the kids. You’re watching science happen. It’s making science accessible.”
[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”If you go” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
Jurassic Paleo Prep Lab
What: A new working paleontology lab at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis’ Polly H. Hix Paleo Prep Lab. Scientists will be examining bones recently unearthed from the museum’s Mission Jurassic project dig in Wyoming, while visitors can watch and interact with them.
Where: 3000 N. Meridian St., Indianapolis
Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, closed Mondays except Oct. 14 and 21.
Admission: Prices vary depending on the day, ranging between $15 and $30 for adults, $12 and $21 for youth. Kids under 2 are free.
Information and to buy tickets: childrensmuseum.org
[sc:pullout-text-end]
