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Thursday dawned
at the Cedar Mountain Dinosaur Project with a partly cloudy sky
and a cool wind from the north. The east and west project camps
sent 21 people into the field to learn more about Cretaceous dinosaurs.
The main dig site on the east of the region became active just before
9:00 a.m., with three subsites working. Quality bone specimens from
Gastonia were removed today and packaged for transport to
the lab. It is important that newly exposed bones are removed quickly,
protecting them from possible damage from heat, rain, and blowing
sand. Graduate student Allen Shaw continued drawing his site map
of all Gastonia bones, and Bob McCarroll, working nearby,
worked on a small bone from the foot of a meat-eating dinosaur found
only yesterday. Speculation of "who came to dinner" surrounded
the work site. Initially, it appears few other bones are present
from the predator.
More than 30 miles away, Frank Sanders prospector team
fanned out over the badlands topography southeast of the town
of Green River, Utah, to search for future dig sites. With a rare
federal government fossil collection permit in his notebook, Sanders
directed 12 trained volunteers across mesas, down canyons, and
along dry washes in search of small fragments of dinosaur bones,
which might indicate larger fossil deposits nearby. After a full
morning of searching, only one fossil had been found. Even that
find seemed unconnected to other remains. After lunch, the 12
volunteers again disappeared on foot into the backcountry.
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