Posted on August 7, 2015
Tracking Dinosaurs
The sticky rubber material clung to my fingers, as I painted it onto the fossil dinosaur footprint. The rubbery mess on my hands bridged the gap between some fingers, reminding me of the webbed feet of a duck. Several weeks ago, I went to Glen Rose, Texas to work on dinosaur footprints in the Paluxy River bed (more about that here). The project I worked on was making a mold of one of the many Acrocanthosaurus footprints captured as fossils in the limestone layers. Working at Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum in Crosbyton, Texas, we make molds of many different kinds of fossils. These molds are used to make detailed replicas of the fossils.
To make a mold of a Glen Rose Acrocanthosaurus footprint, first we had to clear all the mud and debris out of the footprint that had been left there because of recent river flooding. The footprint we chose to mold was already exposed on the surface, so we didn’t dig through any of the hard limestone to get down to it this time. It really amazed me to look around this dig site and see the vast number of footprint fossils exposed all around – some disguised with mud or covered in water. Trying not to step on a fossil footprint was hard.
Once the dirt was cleared and any potential problems for the molding process were taken care of, we were ready to start painting on the first layer of wet latex rubber. The wet latex rubber we use is a little like the latex-based paint that is commonly used to paint the walls of a room, but much more rubbery. When wet, the latex gets into every little crevice and curve of the fossil, precisely capturing the smallest details. It takes several layers, or coats, of this latex, letting it dry between each layer to make the mold thick enough. It usually takes at least three layers of latex to make the rubber mold.
After making the latex rubber mold by painting the material into the fossil footprint, pressed into the limestone, we made a rigid “mother mold” out of plaster and burlap. We do this by mixing water with white plaster powder (made of the mineral, gypsum – the same white powdery material inside the sheetrock used in walls) to create a muddy white mixture. Dipping squares of burlap cloth in the wet plaster, we essentially make a plaster layer on top of latex rubber mold (putting a sheet of plastic between the two). We have to work quickly before plaster sets up. When the plaster hardens, this creates a sturdy form for the flexible rubber mold to keep it from deforming after they have both been carefully pulled away from the original footprint fossil. We can then use that two-part mold (the detailed, flexible rubber mold and hard, plaster “mother mold”) to make a precise replica of the footprint fossil we molded.
Making a mold that is supposed to be precisely conformed to the shape of the original fossil reminds me of how we are supposed to let God mold and make us, conforming us to the perfect image of Christ. Don’t let yourself become warped by the world – conform to the perfect image of Christ. Don’t compromise with dangerous ideas like evolution or long periods of time; rather, conform your thinking to the perfect, unchanging Word of God.
Copyright Sara J. Bruegel, 2015
Posted on July 31, 2015
Suffering, Sin, and Spectacular Creation
“Why am I in a wheelchair, diabetic, and dying of cancer?” the lady asked pointedly, glaring straight at me. I had just been describing the perfect creation (without any suffering and death) that God declared “very good” at the end of creation week. My heart swelled with compassion at her pain-filled words. The more I talked with this lady the more I realized how bitter and hurting this lady was. She spoke of how lonely she was, prevented from seeing her family for some reason. A church group had told her she needed to go to church and took her to their church for a while, but apparently decided they couldn’t once she needed a wheelchair. Accusatively, she demanded to know why all the injustice and pain. If God is righteous and just, like I said He is, would He punish those who had wronged her?
Questions like this trouble many people deep within. We look around and see so much brokenness – we see pain, loss, and loneliness that often leaves a heart bitterly hardened or hopeless. Like the lady I talked to, we usually want to know why – is this my fault, in some way? Am I a victim? Is God doing this to me? Simply put, I don’t know the answer to the questions this lady asked about why she lives this life. I can’t really say I understand the specific whys of my own life, much less a person I just met hundreds of miles away from home.
Scientists can study the natural world for generations, yet it’s astounding to realize how much we still really don’t understand. There’s a vast depth in the oceans that is still unexplored, and the universe beyond the planet we call home . . . it’s so vast and mysterious that we can hardly comprehend it. There are more questions than answers in science, but many of the basic principles can be easily grasped. Though we may never know the specific reasons for each of the problems we struggle with we can know with certainty that the pain we experience is not a result of God’s original “very good” creation, but part of the consequences of sin. We also know that God will create a new earth that will be very good; free from all sorrow and death, and that He will wipe every tear from our eyes.
One of the things this lady talked about that struck me most was how upset she was about the church that had abandoned her. I’ve often wondered why there is so much corruption and unkindness among the “good” Christians who are supposed to be bringing light and hope into a dark, corrupted world. It’s easy to become bitter or discouraged, but the simple truth of the matter is that my focus is not supposed to be on “fixing” the behavior of my brothers and sisters, but on following Christ. Like Jesus said when Peter asked about the other disciple John, “ . . . If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou Me” (John 21:22)
When we ask “why” all the corruption and suffering, we must also ask ourselves “why” all the love and grace we have been shown. Life isn’t fair . . . but I sure am glad it isn’t because I don’t deserve any of the love, grace, and life I have. From the air we breathe, to magnetic field surrounding earth, to the placement of our planet in the universe, God continually provides and protects from unknown dangers, and randomly scatters sparkling reflections of His perfect love and beauty all around. After talking with the lady I first mentioned for quite some time, my mental energy was exhausted, and I finally asked, “Want to pet the bearded dragon?” (more about the bearded dragon here) As I knelt beside her with the animal, her hardened frown relaxed into a smile and she cooed gently to the spectacularly created creature. Even the small beautiful things in creation can brighten our life when we chose to notice them.
Copyright Sara J. Bruegel, 2015
Posted on July 24, 2015
Meeting Miss Lulu
“Meet Lulu – she’s a bearded dragon” I explained to the delighted kids as I knelt down so they could stroke the lizard sitting on my shoulder. Some timidly touched Lulu, surprised to find that she didn’t feel as prickly as she looked; others asked as many questions as they could think of about her. When I held her the first time, I was surprised at how docile and responsive she was, though I think my cold hands made her squirm a little. Sometimes she did act up a little bit, trying to get down and clinging to my hair or necklace with her sharp curled claws, but I learned how to manage her (giving her lectures for bad behavior, as needed) after a little practice.
Though native to Australia, bearded dragons like Lulu (classified in the genus, Pogona) are known for being very good pets. In captivity, their diet usually consists of crickets and nutritious fruits and vegetables. These creatures generally are not very picky eaters. Radiation from natural sunlight can be very important for the health of a bearded dragon, helping their digestion among other things. Most of the time Lulu lives indoors, equipped with special radiation lamps, warmers, and a basking rock in her display tank, but she does take vacations from her photogenic glam job (greeting museum guests) to spend time outside, soaking in a little sunshine to enhance her natural beauty.
Like many of the kids noticed, she looks very prickly, but when you actually touch her she is softer than most people would expect. That’s part of her defense tactic of looking intimidating, just like the expandable “beard” that these creatures are named for. Both the male and female bearded dragons have a beard that puffs out and turns dark when they feel threatened, though males are generally known for using their beard more often. An interesting way that these creatures communicate with each other is through head bobbing to show dominance and arm waving (they literally pick up one of their arms and wave it in a circular motion) to show submission.
Female bearded dragons lay a clutch of up to 24 eggs at a time and can lay up to 9 clutches each year. Recent research has been done on how temperature influences whether the eggs in a clutch hatch as males or females, showing that hotter temperatures lead to all females hatching from a clutch. This is not a new phenomenon, as “temperature-dependent sex determination” is known to occur in other reptiles, such as some types of turtles and crocodiles. Though many speculations have been made about what this could mean for the Australian bearded dragon and other aspects of biology, what it seems to imply most clearly is that there is a lot more than we realize at first glance that goes into development of embryos and their genetics. Living creatures are very complex – marvelously designed by the Creator to carry out His command to fill the earth, even equipped with the beautiful defense structures they need to survive in our fallen world after man brought death into God’s perfect creation through sin.
Copyright Sara J. Bruegel, July 2015
References:
- “Inland Bearded Dragon” fact sheet from Smithsonian National Zoological Park. Last accessed July 24, 2015. https://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/ReptilesAmphibians/Facts/FactSheets/Inlandbeardeddragon.cfm
- Ed Young. “Hot Wild Dragons Set Sex Through Temperature Not Genes”. National Geographic. “Not Exactly Rocket Science”. Published July 1, 2015. http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/07/01/hot-wild-dragons-set-sex-through-temperature-not-genes/
- Randy Guzzilla. “A Response to ‘Does Natural Selection Exist?’: Creatures’ Adaptation Explained by the Design-based, Organism-driven Approach: Part 3”. Answers Research Journal. Answers in Genesis. Published November 5, 2014. https://answersingenesis.org/natural-selection/response-does-natural-selection-exist-part3/
- Special thanks to Dr. Rod Butterworth and staff of Creation Ministries of the Ozarks and Creation Experience Museum in Branson, Missouri where Miss Lulu the bearded dragon makes her home
Posted on July 17, 2015
Garbage Guys
Trembling with mixed excitement and fear, I slid back the wire screen on top of the glass tank and slowly reached in to touch a pile of the huge sleeping bugs. I jumped back in fright as the creatures reacted with a sudden hissing noise and running from my fingers. I tried again, this time determined to pick up one of the crawling critters to hold it, quickly grabbing one of the squirming “giant Madagascar hissing cockroaches” before it could get away. I could feel the suction of the insects little legs clinging stubbornly to my fingers, so I just let it hang in there for a while as I looked at it from several different angles, realizing this giant cockroach in my hand was actually a pretty cool little creature. The next day while I was letting some kids “pet” one of my new giant roach buddies, it fell on the floor as one of the kids tried to pick it up out of my hand. I could hardly believe the irony of the situation as I got down on the floor to chase down my runaway roach, saying to all the kids “Oh! Hold still – don’t step on him!”
At first glance, giant hissing cockroaches may look like nasty, creepy crawly critters – they’re roaches and my first reaction is usually the desire to stop on them. However, these roaches are actually pretty unique, cool critters. Classified as Gromphadorhina portentosa, females carry their young in an egg case, called an ootheca, bearing live roaches in the nymph stage, which later develop to be full- grown giant cockroaches – about 2-3 inches long. They’re bodies are amber colored and they have a single pair of antenna and no wings. The males have bump-like horns on the top of their heads that may, from a distance look like they should be the creatures’ eyes. However, it’s face and eyes are actually below these horns, pointing out in front of the roach.
Of course, one of the most interesting things about these creatures is the hissing sounds they make, usually as a defense mechanism. While many other crawly critters use hissing sounds, the mechanism the giant Madagascar roaches use it pretty unique. Unlike other creatures, these roaches do not use the vibration of rubbing body parts together to make their hissing; rather, the sound is made as the roach exhales air through its breathing holes, causing to air to move along the segments of its body and creating the hissing noise. It’s interesting to see how the Lord used His creativity, designing these cockroaches with a different way of hissing than many other insects use.
These roaches are garbage guys – their primary food in Madagascar is rotting wood. They eat decaying plant materials, cleaning up their environment. Roaches are specially equipped with an ability to resist diseases that are often found in what they’re eating. It’s amazing to see the way God created each creature with different purposes throughout His creation, all functioning together with various roles in their habitat. Even though God’s original perfect creation has been corrupted by sin, introducing thorns, disease, suffering, and death into the world, by His mercy He has equipped living things with the genetic flexibility and ability to adjust to the challenges of our fallen world. In a similar way, our Creator does not leave us (as humans) hopeless, even in our sinful state, giving us a choice of redemption and a new creation to come.
Copyright Sara J. Bruegel, July 2015
References:
National Geographic “Hissing Cockroaches”. Last web accessed July 17, 2015 : http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/bugs/madagascar-hissing-cockroach/
Also, special thanks to information from Curtis Baker and Dr. Rod Butterworth of the Creation Ministries of the Ozarks “Creation Experience Museum” in Branson, MO
Posted on July 9, 2015
Designed to Do Things His Way
“What’s that?!” I asked when I saw the creature disappearing into the woods. “It’s a woodchuck” my friends explained. I was thrilled – I didn’t remember ever having seen a real woodchuck just running around by the side of the road like that before! I forget how much I love summer and all the incredible “little” natural things throughout creation that make this season so beautiful. Then again, I thought the same thing earlier in the spring, and probably will later this year when autumn comes . . . by the time winter gets here maybe I’ll have forgotten the things I don’t like about winter and will be ready for the change. The changes in seasons and changes in scenery when we travel are good reminders to notice and enjoy the ‘”little” beautiful things that are easy to miss in our hurry of every day life.
Recently, I enjoyed getting to go on a dig in Glen Rose, Texas, working on some fossil dinosaur footprints on the Paluxy River banks (more about that here). Although the footprints were my focus and I was thrilled just to see them in person, I was also enamored by all the little beautiful things in the river area. One butterfly was quite fascinated with my shoe when I sat down once for a break, continuing to fly a lap around me and land on my shoe several times. A curious lizard that came to investigate the dig site from the shadow of a plant. There were a number of interesting spiders that liked to hide under my gear. A colorful bird briefly graced the area to drink from one of the many picturesque puddles left by the recent flooding. I never did quite catch up to any of the speedy, graceful dragonflies rushing past.
The thing that struck me most about all these creatures and some of the other things I’ve seen in recent travels is that they are all just living the life they were made to live. The dragonfly is just enjoying life flying around like dragonflies are meant to do. The herd of deer I drove by yesterday morning were just grazing and running away like deer do. There’s a catchy song, by Buddy Davis, that they remind me of that says “it’s designed to do what it does do; what it does do it does do well”. It really is beautiful to see creatures that are just comfortable doing what they’re designed to do and fulfilling their purpose.
It’s even more beautiful when we do the things we were designed to do. While God has a unique plan for each person’s life, there are some things that He intended for every one of us, because all humans are created in His image. He created each one of us to be with Him and love Him. He also designed us so that we function best when we following His instructions – the laws He has given to protect us. When we do things His way (the way we were designed to do) we are fulfilling our purpose. However, when we try to do things our own way, we bring destruction to ourselves and others. Choose to do what you are designed to do – following God’s way and His perfect design for your life. It truly is beautiful and fulfilling!
Watch Buddy Davis’ song “It’s Designed to Do” here
Posted on July 3, 2015
Footprints in the Mud
The warm, summer morning on the picturesque muddy banks of the gently rolling river was a stark contrast to the roaring torrent that had flooded the same river just a few weeks before leaving large pieces of debris caught in tree branches dangling above my head. Kneeling down on the puddle-laden river bank, I scooped away some of the mud to reveal a large dip in the hard limestone beneath. But, this wasn’t just any hole in the ground . . . it was a footprint – a dinosaur footprint, turned into a fossil!
Earlier this week, I got to go see and make replicas of some of the dinosaur footprints on the banks of the Paluxy River in Glen Rose, Texas. It was probably one of the muddiest, hottest, and most humid experiences I’ve had in paleontology (so far) but it’s also one of my favorite experiences. Although I’d read about and seen pictures of this trail before, seeing the real footprint fossils in the field is something I’ve been wanting to do for quite a while. Getting to look at these footprints right where they are buried made me realize just how extensive and diverse the Paluxy River trails are – in one of the trails I “followed” it looks like the dinosaur turned around.
While I was there, our team created molds of two of the footprints so that we can make replicas (casts) of the fossils. While we were working on these footprints in a lower layer, another layer of limestone formed a nice ledge a couple of feet above it that worked fairly well as a built-in bench when necessary. The interesting thing about this ledge is that there are very similar dinosaur footprint fossils on both layers that are probably from an Acrocanthosaurus, which is a type of “Theropod”, like T-rex or Allosaurus (more about this topic here). This is interesting because the footprints are preserved in limestone, a rock that conventional geology will tell you is made of dead things building up in an ocean over a very long period of time, so the rock between these two similar layers of footprints supposedly would have taken at least several hundred thousand years to form. I don’t know about you, but I find it hard to believe that there could be so much time between two such similar trails in the same place.
Just like recent, local flood filled in many of the exposed tracks with fresh mud, I think it makes a lot more sense to believe that these footprints were originally buried and preserved in a flood – the global flood mentioned in the Bible. Locals mentioned seeing a wall of water when the 2015 flood happened in Glen Rose. Imagine what it would have looked like when an Acrocanthosaurus dinosaur ran through this part of Glen Rose, making footprints in the mud as he tried to escape from a disastrous wall of water in the global flood a little more than four thousand year ago. His footprints soon would have been covered by the floodwaters and turned into stone.
Perhaps you think you might be able to relate to this dinosaur – maybe you feel like you’re barely ahead of the flood, trying to run from a disaster and keep getting your feet stuck in the mud. This Acrocanthosaurus didn’t make it through the flood, and in the long run, you’re not going to be able to make it either if you’re depending only on your own strength. Remember that Jesus offers a much lighter burden than any other burden we could bear when we enter into His rest.
“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” ~ Matthew 11:28-30
“But I will hope continually, and will yet praise thee more and more. My mouth shall shew forth thy righteousness and thy salvation all the day; for I know not the numbers thereof. I will go in the strength of the Lord GOD: I will make mention of Thy righteousness, even of Thine only.” ~ Psalm 71:14-16
Copyright Sara J. Bruegel, July 2015
Posted on June 26, 2015
Loves’ Perfect Reference Point
Are you more likely to turn to your brain or your heart when you are facing a problem or making an important decision? As a “geeky girl” I’ve experimented a little with balancing the heart and the head and have discovered that there is a vast depth to this topic. Like the Bible says, the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, so we can’t totally trust our hearts. The brain is imperfect with limited knowledge; it makes mistakes and forgets important things. Proverbs 3 instructs us not to depend on our own understanding. Neither our brains nor our hearts are completely reliable. And a combination of the two doesn’t necessarily cut it either.
What we need is a fixed external reference point or we will be caught up in chaos. If you sit in a chair and spin around, it looks like the walls around you are moving, but you are really the one who’s moving and the walls are still. Then someone walks into the room while you’re spinning in your chair (because that person wonders why you’re doing such a random, silly thing) and you really get confused because the person and the walls are both moving, but in different ways. If you continue in this confusion for too long, you will end up falling over from dizziness.
What is your reference point? You are moving and changing over time, as am I and every other person. We can’t completely trust anything inside of any person. God – the Creator of the universe – is the only true, reliable Reference Point we can trust, because He never changes. We can count on God and His Word, even if the entire world crumbles beneath us.
“Before the mountains were born, or Thou didst give birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God.” ~ Psalm 90:2
“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, yes and forever” Hebrews 13:8
With our Creator as our reference point, we don’t have to worry about conflicts between the head and the heart, because it is God who gets the final Word in everything. We don’t have to choose between the truth our heads need and the compassionate love our hearts yearn for. We are instructed to speak the truth in love. Love is not a feeling, but an attitude of humble selflessness (see 1 Corinthians 13). It means following what is best for the other person, even if it’s painful. I’m so very grateful that God chose to be the example of that love for us – He did not choose between the truth of justice (the head) and the grace of forgiveness (the heart), but instead chose to love us by sacrificing His own life, fulfilling the needs of both the head and the heart.
Have you chosen to love Him back and lay down your life to life for Him? Are you choosing, every day, to continue in that truth-speaking love to those around you?
Here’s a song to listen to as you think about this:
Posted on June 19, 2015
Jurassic World & How Our World Should Be
My friend beside me gasped in horror as the bloody scene of a dinosaur tearing into one of its human victims flashed across the big screen of the movie theater. When I went to see the new movie, Jurassic World, last weekend my first impression was that it is unnecessarily gory. However, there were several ideas and concepts in the movie that I found rather interesting. Although the opening scene allude to the far-fetched idea of birds evolving from dinosaurs (read about a few of the problems with dinosaur to bird evolution here), I was relieved to see that this movie did not try to depict any of the dinosaurs with feathers or other bird-like features. Many modern dinosaur artists are trying to make dinosaurs look “bird-like” in books, museums, toys, etc., giving our kids an image that really doesn’t have any supporting fossil evidence.
What I think is most funny about Jurassic World (and Jurassic Park, etc.) is that it features a lot of creatures, like Tyrannosaurus Rex and Triceratops, that are actually found in Cretaceous rock layers – not Jurassic. This doesn’t really bother me because I believe that God created Jurassic dinosaurs, Cretaceous dinosaurs, people, and other mammals on the same day just a few thousand years ago like the Bible says. While “Jurassic” and “Cretaceous” are often thought of as being time periods in the “geologic timescale”, they are really just sections of rock layers that were laid down during the global flood mentioned in the Bible. Each of those rock layer sections were probably different areas, ecosystems, or events (like different volcanoes, tsunamis, earthquakes, etc) that happened during the flood and while earth was recovering from the flood.
There was one scene of the movie that really stood out as important to an underlying theme of the movie – survival of the fittest. Here’s the conversation between Owen Grady (one of the main “hero” characters) and Vic Hoskins (one of the “bad guys”):
Vic Hoskins: “War is part of nature. Look around, Owen. Every living thing in this jungle… is trying to murder the other. Mother Nature’s way of testing her creations. Refining the pecking order. War is a struggle. Struggle breeds greatness . . . Progress always wins, man.”
Owen Grady: “Maybe progress should lose for once”
According to Hoskins, war, struggle, and death are just natural parts of good progress (i.e., evolution). But, just like Owen brings up, should it be that way? Well, without our Creator God, there is no absolute moral standard of what should and should not be. When God originally created the universe, dinosaurs, and people, He said that it was all “very good” – there was no war, pain, or death before Adam and Eve chose sin. War, struggle, and death are not the way things should be, but are consequences of sin. God isn’t responsible for our pain – we are.
“For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now” ~ Romans 8:22
Jurassic World is a good reminder of how frail we really are, and how disaster can turn a person’s world completely upside-down in a very short amount of time. So often I hear ideas like: “whatever happens, we’ll be okay as long as we’re together” . But, we can’t really depend on anything or anyone in this world always to be around. The only One we can really count on, no matter what happens, is our Creator God. You know how He originally created everything good, like it should be – no death, pain, war, or struggle? He also promises to restore that perfect world one day. Because Jesus took our punishment for sin, we have the option to cling to this promise and live in that perfect world – the way things should be – if we choose it.
Copyright Sara J. Bruegel, 2015
Posted on June 12, 2015
Fish Tales
The whirling wind swirled my once-neatly pulled back hair in every direction as I intently chipped away at the dirt around the fossil. Almost breathless with anticipation, my excitement grew every time we brushed away the dirt to reveal yet another fossil fish vertebrae. During the paleontological dig I went on in western Kansas last month, I really enjoyed getting to participate in the excavation of a fairly large fish fossil. Last week I talked about the discovery of this fossil with some boys on the dig (read that story here) and I mentioned my excitement and surprise at how complete this fossil fish was. Most of the fish fossils our team had discovered up to this point were fish tail pieces, often with several vertebrae either still attached or scattered. There’s an interesting and meaningful explanation for all of this.
In the area of Kansas where we were digging you can find fossils of Mosasaur (sea dragons, like “Leviathan” in the Bible), big & small bony fish, and lots of sharks teeth. Since all these creatures would have been buried during the flood, after death came into the world as a consequence of human sin, many creatures were probably
http://oceansofkansas.com/sternbrg.html
eating each other. One of the most famous fossils found near this area is the “fish within a fish” fossil, which may be a large fish eating a smaller one. The reason why we find so many tail sections of the (relatively) smaller fish by themselves is probably because larger fish were eating these fish, biting off the less delectable bony tail sections.
Now why would a (practically) whole big fish be buried and fossilized with his “leftovers” from lunch? If this big fish had died from normal natural causes, it would have been scavenged and scattered by all the other creatures lurking in these waters. I don’t think evolution has a very good tale for how these fish tails could have been buried in the way they are. Finding these “leftovers” buried with whole bigger fish is probably best explained by the rapid, global burial of Noah’s flood just a few thousand years ago, which would have captured many creatures just the way they were living – lunch “leftovers” and all!
I have absolutely no idea what was going on in the brain of this poor fish, our flood victim, in his final days (if you have any special insights on fish psychology , feel free to enlighten us). He may have just been going about his normal business, never dreaming that is swimming days would soon be forever done and his flexible fins would be turned into a stone. He was buried with his lunch “leftovers”. If you’re life suddenly ended in the middle of whatever you’re doing in your every day life, what would you be buried alive with, like this fish, representing your life? Would you be ready to go? Did you get the really important things done? What about the most important thing – do you know for sure where you’re going?
“Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure . . . ” ~ 2 Peter 1:10
“Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.” Matthew 24:44
Copyright Sara J. Bruegel, 2015
Posted on June 5, 2015
Fishy Finds
“Come see the fossil I found with Mr. David!” The boy called out to me across a ravine with an irresistible smile. Though nearly breathless, I still had a lot of momentum from running down the rough terrain, and having just accomplished my mission of the moment I kept on going to let my young friend lead me to his find. This boy, Ben, had been trying to get me or someone else to go look at this particular fossil, but we had all been so busy with our “important” projects that I hadn’t been able to go see what he found yet. Ben and his brothers had found lots of the good, small fossils we expect to find in the Niobrara formation: They found many fossil fish vertebrae, fish tail pieces, and shark’s teeth in addition to a variety of interesting rocks and bits of clams that were an abundant part of the surface gravel we walked on. I didn’t really expect this fossil to be much more than just a bigger section of fish vertebrae and tail pieces, but was thrilled to find my expectation turned out wrong.
I enjoyed getting to work on a paleontological dig in western Kansas a few weeks ago. One of my favorite parts of this particular dig was the excavation of what is probably the largest most complete fossil our team has found on this property – the same fossil that Ben wanted so badly to show someone. When he first showed it to me, I could definitely tell that there were quite a few rather large fish vertebrae as well as some other interesting smoother, more flat fossil pieces gathered on one end of the line of vertebrae. The vertebrae on the opposite end of the line seemed to be partly covered by the dirt, so I lead the boys in carefully brushing them off . . . only to find another vertebra buried just beyond it, then another, and another . . . it just kept on going!
Eventually, the rest of our dig team joined in the project and we ended up with a fairly complete fish: about 60 vertebrae, most of the tail, and even parts of the head. The whole thing measured approximately 56 inches long. Once our team was able to figure out about how much of the fish was there (and not washed away), we dug a trench around it and created a plaster jacket over the bones. After taking the appropriate steps to protect the fossils directly, we make plaster jackets by dipping pieces of burlap in wet plaster (lots of messy fun in the field!) and securely encasing the fossil we trenched around, including some of the surrounding dirt, in the plaster. Once the plaster dries, this makes a hard, custom-made case for that particular fossil so that it can be safely taken to a lab to be completely “prepped out” and made display ready.
Taking out this field jacket presented some challenges since the fossil was buried at the top of a ravine. This made for somewhat precarious positioning and our perch was the top of a dramatic wind tunnel on our windy days. But, the excavation went smoothly and all the field jackets were safely removed. Be sure to look for the “Creation Clue of the Week” next week, as we will talk about why this fish fossil is important and what it means to you.
