Am I crazy? Am I the only one? I'm absolutely serious about the following ...
I'd love to have a full size T. Rex skull in the middle of my Living Room. Of course I couldn't afford to buy a real one, so it would have to be a reproduction. But it would be totally awesome as a graphic reminder of our planet's amazing history. (And besides, we spend much of our time in the Family Room, not the Living Room; it's not like it would really interfere with anything.)
My wife didn't think it was such a good idea when I suggested it while we were visiting the dinosaur exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC.
Is this still a dig until you find something or accidentally find something process or is there some "x-ray - sonar-whatever" that can see below the ground?
I remember some cool shops in Montana where you could buy slabs for $20. Awesome for science class
I asked a paleontologist about this recently, and their answer was that the density of fossils is too similar to the surrounding material for ground-penetrating radar to be useful. I wonder whether the challenges couldn't be addressed with the right technology-- maybe borrowing from radio telescopes.
That said, "dig until you find something" is not really the way it's done. You find bits of bone on the surface, or sticking out of a hillside, or anywhere that the earth has recently been weathered away, and look and dig near there.
Edit to add: You, too, can go on a dino dig through Experiment's (YC W13) partnership with https://twitter.com/BBPaleo. I highly recommend it!
Here I would recommend watching the excellent documentary https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur_13 about the 13th found complete T-Rex nicknamed Sue at the very same area, and its decade long legal struggle.
I found it very strange that this article already named it 15 having found only the head yet, and not mentioning at all on which area it was found in detail. Esp. if it's on the Indian reservation they'll face big trouble again sooner or later. But any private ground is a problem, even with a contract.
You don't want it exposed to the elements, the bones are frequently in pieces the size of a penny, and are remarkably fragile. It only follows that they would want to do the really fine work back in the lab.
Wrapping in plaster as they remove it from the surrounding rock makes the most sense. Come on up to the Museum of the Rockies, and you can watch the cleanup process and see the output.
We've all been told that fossils are dated by the layer of rock that they are in, and the layer of rock is dated by the fossils that they contain. I've always found that hard to believe. Especially in the case of Hell Creek, where supposedly an entire large area of 65+million year old rock has just been sitting in the open sun light for the last several thousand years. Interesting at least. Perhaps I need to make a trip there and see for myself.
We've all been told that fossils are dated by the layer of rock that they are in, and the layer of rock is dated by the fossils that they contain. I've always found that hard to believe.
AIUI prehistoric dates are corroborated by radioisotopic dating, similarly to using C14 for much more recent dates.
It's not on every story I read, so there could be something about the types of stories you favor that draws out the dismissers? I wonder how many clusters of users could be found based on which articles they like to click and comment on.
I'd love to have a full size T. Rex skull in the middle of my Living Room. Of course I couldn't afford to buy a real one, so it would have to be a reproduction. But it would be totally awesome as a graphic reminder of our planet's amazing history. (And besides, we spend much of our time in the Family Room, not the Living Room; it's not like it would really interfere with anything.)
My wife didn't think it was such a good idea when I suggested it while we were visiting the dinosaur exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC.