Scott’s SVP Conference summary
Add comment October 30th, 2007
By: Scott Williams, Burpee Collections Manager
In 2005 when we finally got Jane our juvenile T.Rex on display one of the concerns I had was, “Will Burpee be a one hit wonder?” ……..in the dinosaur discovery sense?
After the flurry of work we completed during our 2007 field season and what we presented at the annual SVP (Society of Vertebrate Paleontology) convention in
Austin, TX, I know that my fears were unfounded. The SVP convention is the biggest convention in North America for vertebrate paleontology, and all the big names like Jack Horner, Philip Currie, Bob Bakker, Greg Erickson, etc, go there to here talks, see new specimens and network with one another. I am proud to say there were three presentations that involved Burpee specimens and staff.
One of my lab preparators and a Northern Illinois University graduate student, Joshua Matthews, and I did a presentation on “Homer” our juvenile Triceratops. The presentation explained the CSI of the “Homer” site and the evidence that we have to show we have the remains of three different dinosaurs buried at the site.
The presentation was very well received and we plan to turn it into a short scientific paper for publication in a journal. So now we can officially say that the
Burpee Museum of Natural History has found the 1st, bona-fide Triceratops bonebed! This is very significant since although bonebeds have been found for other horned dinosaurs, this is the 1st one ever found for a dinosaur that science has known about for over 120 years. Because of the number of specimens and that they all appear to be juveniles, perhaps this indicates that they grouped together when they were young.
The other presentation was done by Joe Peterson, another NIU grad student and Burpee’s Curator of Earth Science, Michael Henderson on some interesting injuries on Jane’s skull. The injuries appear to be the result of bite marks from another Tyrannosaur. If this is the case, it would show good evidence that tyrannosaurs interacted with one another at some level. Perhaps Jane and another tyrannosaur got into a fight over some food, or perhaps she was playing with another juvenile tyrannosaur and got hurt, the possibilities are endless.
The final presentation was given by me and Mike Henderson on how to prepare these great Permian vertebrate fossils that we have been collecting from a quarry in
Oklahoma. The Permian period (250 million years ago) was a very important time in the evolution of all land vertebrates, all your modern lines of reptiles and the ancestors of mammals can trace their heritage to this period. At the end of this period nearly 90% of everything went extinct. The quarry preserves many cave and fissure fill deposits. No doubt primitive reptiles and amphibians went into these caves looking for food, water or protection from the hot, dry Permian climates and died. Another significant point to this site is that 2-3 new species of primitive amphibians and reptiles a year, are being described from this site, so it is possible that in all the material we collected from this site, there could be some new species to describe.
Of course there was a lot of talk about our new site in the Cow Dung Reservoir
Utah. The BLM (Bureau of Land Management – agency of the federal government)agent forUtah had visited the site prior to the meeting and was very excited. He described the site as a Dinosaur National Monument #2! He is thrilled that Burpee will be starting to work there as soon as next Spring 08. While at the site, he saw two different types of sauropods (big long necked dinosaurs), as well as Camptosaurus and Stegosaurus. While he was talking to me a small crowd formed around us and word of our new bonebed quickly made its way through the convention.
As big of a year that I thought 2007 was for Burpee, I think 2008 is going to be bigger. I hope you can join us for one of our expeditions in Montana or Utah or at a minimum keep up to date via this blog.
Reminder – PaleoFest 2008 is March 1 & 2. We will be unveiling the skull of Homer, our juvenile Triceratops.
