Part 4: Back in the Trenches, and Back from the Quarry
My last full day at the Snyder Quarry started just before dawn. I woke up at about 5;30, pulled on my boots, and stumbled out of my stuffy tent into the cool, quiet landscape just as the sun was beginning to rise.
Camp cook Rich Wilke had a pot of strong piñon coffee ready. The field crew gradually assembled as he prepared us each a hefty breakfast of fried potatoes, eggs, sausage, and bacon. Once we’d polished off the morning meal, Larry, Justin, Dee and I started up a nearby hill and settled into the morning’s work in the quarry.
By Thursday morning, the big block had been loaded into the truck, and each of us was finishing up our own, smaller blocks, expanding the quarry a couple of feet back into the hillside. Previous days of work searching for the telltale texture and shape of bone culminated in half-a-dozen isolated islands of grey siltstone containing various bits and pieces from northern New Mexico’s Triassic denizens. We carefully widened and deepened the trenches around these blocks, keeping a careful eye out for additional fossils as we scraped through the sediment.
Thursday in the Snyder Quarry. From left to right: Dee Wilke, Larry Rinehart, Justin Spielmann, Mary Moore, and Jim Moore.
Lunchtime came a couple hours after the sun had chased the morning shade from the quarry. We stretched our legs and headed back to camp for sandwiches and limeade. After a civilized break, the crew made their way back up the hill, set up tarps to shade the quarry, and returned to work.
Once the trenches were dug through the fossil-bearing layer, we jacketed the tops of the blocks in burlap and plaster. After the plaster had hardened, we cracked the rock beneath each jacket, flipped them, and loaded them into the truck. By the end of the day on Thursday we had extracted nearly all the blocks, leaving only one with a coat of fresh plaster to dry overnight. We returned to camp for a celebratory steak dinner, tired but satisfied with the results of four days’ work. Following the final night’s feast, we drove into the Ghost Ranch campgrounds, where we had thankfully received approval to use the showers. Being able to scrub away each day’s accumulation of grit and sunscreen was a luxury I greatly appreciated on this trip.
Friday morning we awoke, broke camp, and returned to the quarry after a comparatively light breakfast. We retrieved the last jacket, gathered our tools, and covered the quarry with a layer of dirt so that the scars we had cut into the hillside would be less noticeable.
We drove out of the Snyder Quarry at about 9:00am, our truck groaning under the weight of our haul. Larry estimated we brought back about 3000 pounds of plaster-wrapped rock brimming with Triassic treasures: vertebrae and limb bones from crocodile-like phytosaurs, richly textured scutes from armor-plated aetosaurs, hopefully a few dinosaurian bits, and some other pieces that were, intriguingly, less easy to identify. The fossils we collected that week should keep preparators and researchers at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science busy for years to come.
As mentioned in the first post, the core of the field crew consisted of Sr. Preparator Larry Rinehart, Geoscience Collections Manager Justin Spielmann, Volunteer Preparator Dee Wilke, her husband Rich, and myself. Several other individuals came up during the week, as well. Author Jaenet Guggenheim popped up on Tuesday to snap photos for a project she is working on. Volunteer Preparators Curt Haakenson and Robert Hubbard helped out on Wednesday. And Museum volunteers Jim and Mary Moore lent their talents to the quarrying crew on Thursday and Friday.
Sadly, I missed the one visitor I was looking forward to seeing most. My wife Roxanne joined Christine Ellison (who works with me in the Exhibits Dept.) for a trip up on Friday. Due to a scheduling mix-up, they left the Museum just about the same time we left the Quarry, and we must have passed each other somewhere near Española, New Mexico. Fortunately, the two of them realized what had happened after a quick hike around the campsite, and returned to Albuquerque. I picked Roxanne up at the NMMNHS right around 5:00. We were both exhausted from the day’s travels, but rarely have I seen a more welcome sight than my lovely wife walking out to meet me that Friday afternoon.
Stay tuned for one final installment: Sketches from a Triassic BBQ
—Matt Celeskey.
File under: Dinosaurs, Reptiles, The Day Job, Triassic.
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