Geronimo! (I mean, Eureka!)

After a lecture in the morning, we headed out the town dump, of all places. The city of Glendive purchased a large enough area adjacent to the park to serve as the dump for the next two or three thousand years. Through her contacts at the city, Frankie was able to get permission to search the bluffs surrounding the active landfill area. It didn’t sound like a promising proposition, but we started from the bottom of the bluffs and worked our way up. Sure enough, by 4 p.m. (after working all day in 100-degree heat) fossils had been found at 6 locations! Some of these (including the site that Mike and I found) were too weathered to identify, but other groups collected several vertebrae and a phalange (toe bone). The toe bone is on 1/4" graph paper.We marked three sites to be of good enough quality to return before the end of the week.

End of day activities were the same as the previous night. Frankie’s (the paleontologist) husband is a retired MD and gets hauled around every time she goes to field camp. He serves as the medic and the cook. This time he had the help of two young ladies, a high school student who was serving as an intern, and my beautiful wife who was able to help him in exchange for food. I can’t decide whether to delete that line or just beat him for it … group me with the high-schooler. Angela was actually very nice (and a conscientious dish-washer), but she spent her days in the field with the class, so during the day it was just Bob and me. On Tuesday, I stayed at camp and read some education books and knitted until I had successfully turned the heel on my first sock. But Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I went into town with Bob to use the internet at the library (blasted job search). Bob was very quiet but very nice. After dinner and dessert, more discussion of papers and an early bed time to help us cope with heat exhaustion.