• Location: Birmingham, Alabama
• Mood: tired
• Music: The Lumineers, "Stubborn Love"

A Mosasaur Named Bumblebee

I'm really too tired to be making a journal entry, but I want to get something down, so here goes. Then I'm headed straight to bed. Today was warm and sunny, until the clouds began moving in late, and the temperature started falling. Currently, it's still 62˚F, but that's not gonna last long. We have a wind advisory and a freeze warning. A two-day freeze warning. With a chance of "wintry mix" in the morning. Our overnight low is forecast at 31˚F.

After yesterday, we needed the chalk gullies again. And it was good day. Various incidental finds leading up to Kathryn and I both spotting (at pretty much the same moment) a medium-sized mosasaur weathering out. There's the potential for a good skull in the ground, but between wet weather and hunting season starting on the 23rd, it may be spring before I can find out. Oh, and there was a cottontail that burst out of the weeds about a foot in front of me and scared me silly. And there was a sleepy little brown anole. And a bumblebee that hugged Spooky. And a beautiful bald eagle perched in a tree. Also a coyote trotting along the interstate median. Deer everywhere. And a lot of marvelous, merciful quiet.

We left about 9 a.m., then got home about 5 p.m.

The photo below shows a dorsal vertebra (light-colored bone on the left) laying atop a cervical vertebrae (darker bone), with some cervical ribs fragments showing below the vertebrae. The genus is Clidastes, though I can't call the species without seeing the skull.

Later Taters,
CRK




1:27 p.m.