> Those hands belonged to technician Mark Mitchell, who compares the process of separating dinosaur from rock to chipping concrete chunks from a surface as soft as compressed talcum powder. It took him 7,000 hours over 5.5 years, during which he did little else. For that reason, the dinosaur carries his name—Borealopelta markmitchelli. (The first half comes from the Latin for “northern shield.”)
So basically, preparing a fossil is rather like sculpting a statue. The outline is there, but following it isn't so trivial.
This was the most remarkable part about the whole thing as well. 7,000 hours just working on a single fossil. This man must have extraordinary patience
I've met some folks involved in quarrying and have heard stories about seeing fossils and blowing them up to avoid stopping work. It's terribly sad and should have large consequences.
I'm really glad this mine did it the right way and stopped!
Consequences, yes. But surely it would help to have appropriate positive incentives toward doing the right thing, for example mandated insurance for an archeological event, that pays out in the event that one occurs.
I wish in the headlining photo a person was standing next to the fossil to give a sense of scale. That thing is probably > 10 feet long! No wonder it took 7000 hours to separate from the rock.
Had it before but a different article and photo. Showed this to my daughter who is dino-crazy a few months ago - she went '>gasp< WOW!' genuine agape awe. Amazing. Isn't it fantastic that the operator was trained and cared enough to stop working? It would have been really cool though if prior to expetrification that the block was MRI'ed and a 3D model created from the MRI which could then be 3D printed in schools all over the world.
And dinosaurs are reptiles, mammals and reptiles are amniotes [1], both amniotes and amphibians are tetrapods, tetrapods are actually fish[2], and there's no such thing as a fish[3]!
This is absolutely true, and to be expected from the fact that the inheritance splits like a tree. For one thing both we and salmon have bones, sharks only have cartilage.
But we're more closely related to sharks than either is to the jawless fishes like the hagfish. The hagfish are just plain weird.
So basically, preparing a fossil is rather like sculpting a statue. The outline is there, but following it isn't so trivial.