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Field Journal
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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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