S01E07 Fossil Collecting

Terrible Lizards

In this episode, we take a look at the actual process of finding, excavating, preparing and then exhibiting dinosaur fossils. How do palaeontologists know where to find fossils, what do they look for, how do they get them out of the ground? From there we move onto safely transporting fossils out of the field and into the museum and discuss the process of preparing the bones free of the entombing rocks and then getting them arranged back into the form of a full skeleton to go on display in a museum. It's all an odd mix of techniques from the 21st and 18th centuries. To round us off, we are joined by podcaster and QI elf, Dan Schreiber who wants to ask about the best way to go about owning a dinosaur fossil.

Round up post of a huge series on Dave's blog about preparing a tyrannosaur fossil by Darren Tanke https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2011/02/22/darren-tanke%e2%80%99s-gorgosaurus-preparation-final-roundup/

And the resulting paper that Dave and Darren coauthored about using the blogposts as an educational tool https://www.geocurator.org/images/resources/geocurator/vol9/geocurator_9_8.pdf#page=17

A series of photos of the dig in China to excavate Dave’s tyrannosaur https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2011/08/22/xinjiang-2011-fieldwork-report/

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Dan is Host of No Such Thing As A Fish podcast / QI Elf/ Creator of BBC's Museum of Curiosity/ Watch 'Show Us Your Sh*t' live nightly at http://instagram.com/schreiberland