"You are asking me how a watch works." (257)
Cloudy all day, but I don't think we've had any rain. The high was 67F.
A much better day today than yesterday. Not stress free, by any means, but better. I made it to McWane by 10 a.m. and spent a few hours with the mosasaurs. My task at the moment (this is beyond the research that I do, but actual curatorial work) is to take twelve large drawers (see below), each holding ~100 specimens labeled simply "Mosasauridae indeterminate," and I have to try to make a more specific identification for each one. We're talking isolated vertebrae and teeth, or a fragment of a vertebrae, or what looks like some or another part of the skull, half a wrist bone...and so forth. Today, I made it through one entire drawer and began on a second one. I think my best find today was a beautifully preserved pathologic splenial (lower jaw bone) from a Platecarpus. Of course, not everything in these drawers is actually mosasaur; today I found a few misidentified fish teeth and what might be part of a crocodilian osteoderm. But what's really wild is that some of these specimens are fossils I collected way back in the early 1980s, back in my Red Mountain Museum days.
Anyway...
Tomorrow I have to get back to work on The Night Watchers.
Oh, the sun just came out.
This afternoon's movie was Denis Villeneuve's Sicario (2015). And I see there are three episodes from the FINAL season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel waiting for me.
Please take a gander at the Dreaming Squid Sundries shop. Thanks.
Later Tater Beans,
Aunt Beast
12:00 p.m.
A much better day today than yesterday. Not stress free, by any means, but better. I made it to McWane by 10 a.m. and spent a few hours with the mosasaurs. My task at the moment (this is beyond the research that I do, but actual curatorial work) is to take twelve large drawers (see below), each holding ~100 specimens labeled simply "Mosasauridae indeterminate," and I have to try to make a more specific identification for each one. We're talking isolated vertebrae and teeth, or a fragment of a vertebrae, or what looks like some or another part of the skull, half a wrist bone...and so forth. Today, I made it through one entire drawer and began on a second one. I think my best find today was a beautifully preserved pathologic splenial (lower jaw bone) from a Platecarpus. Of course, not everything in these drawers is actually mosasaur; today I found a few misidentified fish teeth and what might be part of a crocodilian osteoderm. But what's really wild is that some of these specimens are fossils I collected way back in the early 1980s, back in my Red Mountain Museum days.
Anyway...
Tomorrow I have to get back to work on The Night Watchers.
Oh, the sun just came out.
This afternoon's movie was Denis Villeneuve's Sicario (2015). And I see there are three episodes from the FINAL season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel waiting for me.
Please take a gander at the Dreaming Squid Sundries shop. Thanks.
Later Tater Beans,
Aunt Beast
12:00 p.m.