Dinosaur excavation 2009.

Last summer I took a trip up to the plains of Wyoming to excavate dinosaur fossils, in this picture is a tooth from an edmontosaurus, (a type of duck-billed dinosaur), now I'm not that interested in dinosaurs as I am in marine vertebrates, but when I get a chance like this, I'll make an exception. I went on this trip with South Western Adventist University or SWAU. Info on how you can go on this trip is at http://dinodig.swau.edu/dig.swau.edu/. Back to the picture, the teeth from the edmontosaurus is definitely the most common tooth found. Here in the Lance Formation of Wyoming you can find anything from a shark tooth, to a tyrannosaurus rex tooth! Also found is the Nanotyrannosaur, a smaller t-rex like theropod.

Speaking of theropods, here is a picture of a nanotyrannosaur tooth,You may see the anomaly in the tooth, they believe this was most likely from when the animal was feeding.They believe that all of these tens of thousands of dinosaurs died from yearly river crossings where weak dinosaurs were swept away and drowned, the dead bodies stopped at a river bend, they're bodies decayed and there scavenged by theropods, crocodiles and other carnivores from the late Cretaceous.

Here is a really cool picture of a partially excavated edmontosaur chevron on top of a maxillary, a dentary, and a ossified tendon. Ossified tendons are the most common fossil found at the site! Despite their common occurrence, they're pretty cool. The reason they can fossilize is because they have a more bone-like build up. You might wonder what HRS in the picture means, well it stands for Hanson Research Station. Named after the Hanson family who allows the university to recover material from their land.

Here is a very nice example of a small vertebra, they didn't know what species it was from so they took it for study. And this was just found lying in a dump pile of an abandoned quarry.

Sorry the pictures a little blurred, but here is a picture of the mandable and maxillary of a nanotyrannosaur. They had found this the year before, but they brought it to show us. Never thought I'd see a nanotyrannosaur partal skull so up close before! And it is one of only three in the whole world!

Here is a really cool find! This is a crocodile tooth, and if that's not cool enough, they (SWAU) have never found this species of crocodile with a root on it! Personally, when I first saw it I thought it kind of looked like a seed. really cool find!