Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
the quarry. This meant that at least four separate layers contained eggs,
which was an important clue for us in our attempts to understand the
nesting behavior of the gigantic sauropods, as we will discuss later in
more detail. Gerald collected samples of the eggshell from each layer.
By studying the patterns of ornamentation and chemical composition
of the shell in the lab, he hoped to determine whether more than one
kind of sauropod had laid the eggs in the different layers.
On March 9, some of the crew members took a long drive to
Neuquen to buy supplies and take care of some bureaucratic tasks, but
Rodolfo's crew worked on in the dinosaur quarry. More and more frus-
tratingly, we had yet to discover the skull, or even any evidence that a
well-preserved skull was present. The small bits and pieces of skull
bones found up to this point suggested that the skull might have been
badly damaged either before or during fossilization. But it was also
possible that the skull had become detached from the neck and was
buried somewhere close by. When Marilyn Fox arrived at the site, she
assumed the job of digging carefully through the mudstone to find
out, but despite several days of painstaking excavation, she could still
not find a large piece of it.
On the tenth, a sense of tedium descended over our operation,
mixed with a growing sense of anxiety. We were about halfway
through the field season now, and our wealth of success began to seem
like a mixed blessing. It seemed impossible to get both the eggs and
the large new dinosaur skeleton collected and analyzed. The work at
the egg quarry seemed interminable; there were eggs everywhere we
dug. Our hopes for a fairly complete abelisaur skeleton had been real-
ized, but to excavate such a large skeleton would require more than a
week of intense digging and plastering by Rodolfo's crew. And once the
plaster jackets had been constructed around the bones, the heavy jack-
ets would have to be rolled over, plastered on the bottom, and lifted
onto a vehicle that could transport them back to the museum in Plaza
Huincul. Some sort of heavy equipment, such as a bulldozer or a
crane, would be required for the lifting. But where would we find that
in the middle of the desert? Rodolfo left camp for Plaza Huincul to see
what kind of arrangements he could make.
To make matters worse, the recent rains had triggered a totally
unexpected population explosion among the insects of the area.
Clouds of mosquitoes began to hatch from the small ponds and
