Paleotrails Project

Research Plan 2010

2010-04-27T20:37:00.001-07:00

My research plan for 2010 consists of collecting samples from all fossil trees that can be shown to be in place. From these samples I will take 3 cuts from different directions: radial, cross section and tangential. From those cuts I will make thin section slides. In the field I'll also take measurements of tree length and diameter, and record the environment of deposition (or the conditions upon which the tree was deposited). When I am done collecting all of the samples and data, under the direction of Ian Miller and Kirk Johnson at DMNS, we should be able to determine genus of trees at Corral Bluffs, as well as noting how the trees changed over time.

I've collected 3 samples so far, but haven't been able to get back to the DMNS lab because of time and weather constraints. Spring weather has not been conducive to field work or the drive to Denver.

In the meantime I have rebuild and updated my website. My paper on Red Rock Canyon was published in the winter edition of the Mountain Geologist journal, and I have coauthored a book called Geologic Folio of Red Rock Canyon Open Space, under lead author Ken Weissenburger. It's been a busy winter, but I'm very ready for summer break and field season!

Spring 2010

2010-03-19T09:41:00.000-07:00

Unlike last year, it's been a long winter with few opportunities to go out into the field. I've spend the winter straightening out my records and preparing the required information for DMNS to report my Corral Bluffs fossil localities to the state. I have dozens of localities including fossils of trees, leaves, turtles, crocodiles, gar fish and even a couple of champsosaurs. We did document one mammal jaw in 2009. It was found by the preparator up at DMNS while working on the skull of a baby crocodile collected from the bluffs last summer. It turns out the crocodile skull is in pretty poor shape, but the mammal jaw in quite nice. It still has several teeth intact. I'm not sure of the identification yet, beyond that it is a condylarth.

After a year and a half of searching, a couple of weeks ago I found my first mammal jaw out in the field. It is surprisingly large. It is tentatively identified as an arctocyonid, a raccoon-like mammal. The teeth are not well preserved, so identification will probably be difficult.

My other early spring project is to learn to make thin sections so we can identify the types of fossils trees in Corral Bluffs, of which there seem to be an endless supply! It involves cutting pieces of fossil wood into incredibly smaller and smaller slices, mounting the slices onto a glass slide, and then viewing the cell structure through a microscope. From the patterns of the cells we may be able to tell what kinds of trees were growing in Colorado Springs 65 million years ago.

I'm sitting here as it is snowing on the last day of winter. I've got a snow day from school, and tomorrow begins spring break! Hopefull we'll have some decent weather during break and I'll be able to go out and see if I can find any more pieces of that arctocyonid!

Update on Corral Bluffs Survey

2009-07-11T18:41:00.000-07:00

I've been searching the 522 acres of Corral Bluffs Open Space for several months now. It's taken me until this past few weeks to really have a plan and a strategy. I've divided the area up into 38 sections, and then I can keep track of where I've been and where I still need to go.
I've found many species of turtles and several crocodiles. I've also found a vertebra from a champsosaurus, a creature similar to a crocodile, but more like a modern gavial (or gharial).
We've found several fossil leaf sites, and Kirk Johnson and Ian Miller from the Denver Museum of Nature & Science have been down to collect leaves several times. I'm still looking for ancient mammal fossils, but so far I haven't had any luck.
The temperature out there can be brutal. My thermometer said it was 114 degrees on the outcrop at one point on Friday. But believe it or not, by dressing right and drinking plenty of water it is actually tolerable. And I've only run into one more rattlesnake. This one I heard before I saw it. It was curled up in a hole, but the shed skin it left behind proved that it was about 4 feet long. The photo I took showed it had 9 rattles.

A Day in the field with the DMNS curators

2009-05-15T19:17:00.000-07:00

Today was the first day Kirk Johnson and Ian Miller of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science got the chance to walk the Case Property at Corral Bluffs. It seems that everywhere they looked they found new leaf localities. Kirk said that at one site every leaf they picked up was a new species. They marked 3 or 4 new localities. Two sites are near the bottom of the section and one is at the very top and may eventually correlate with the Castle Rock rainforest site. That site is one of the sites I had found and named "Dead Batteries" due to the fact that when I found the leaves I also found out that the batteries on my gps and my camera were dead.

Ken Weissenburger also found what appears to be a small crocodile skull, with various other bones. The DMNS crew may come back to take it out.

When I got home I found that I had a 6 inch hole in the seat of my old favorite field pants! I hope I was walking in back of the group most of the day...

First of fossils are in the Denver Museum

2009-04-27T20:06:00.000-07:00

The first batch of fossils from Corral Bluffs have been accessioned into the Denver Museum of Nature & Science collections. I met with Kirk Johnson and Ian Miller today and turned in locality information along with the fossils. Darn, I miss my humerus! Now I'll just have to find the rest of the turtle to go with it!

The Rattlesnakes are Awake

2009-04-23T20:58:00.000-07:00

My son Patrick and I went out for a brief tour of Corral Bluffs this afternoon. I knew it was about the right time, and my hunch was confirmed when Patrick said, "Oh, here's a snake skin or a dead snake, or, wait a minute..." I had stepped on a baby rattlesnake about 10 inches long. It looked rather squished, but after poking it with a stick we found out that it seemed to be fine. A short way away I found several fossil bones, so the new locality name is, naturally, "Squished Rattler." I don't know for sure what the bones are, but my first guess is crocodile. They don't quite look turtlish. The Bluffs are looking beautiful. Green leaves are beginning to appear. I decided I am Lewis and/or Clark, describing a new land. So I am creating names for every place. The spot I named today is Windswept Hollow. It's at the top of a bluff, with views of Pikes Peak and the Sangres and beautiful pinnacles and bowls of sandstone.

Corral Bluffs progress

2009-03-29T18:53:00.000-07:00

Our study of the new Corral Bluffs property, formerly known as the Case Property, has begun. This is a project of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science (DMNS). Ken Weissenburger and I will be documenting the stratigraphy to connect the Case Property strata with that in Jimmy Camp Creek Park. The importance of that connection is to try to document where the K/T boundary is. Scientists at DMNS have documented within several meters where the boundary is. This means the rock in Jimmy Camp is below the K/T boundary, while the rock in Corral Bluffs is above the Cretaceous extinction. We will also document and collect fossils. We are especially hoping to find fossils of early mammals, as this is one of only a very few places on earth that contain fossils of mammals during the first million years after the extinction of dinosaurs.

Corral Bluffs is an area of subtle beauty. The landscape is basically monochromatic, shades of grays and browns. At first glance the area seems to be much the same wherever you look. but upon closer examination there is a great deal of variety. Each gulley and crest has its own personality, containing surprises only visible when the visitor slows down to observe closely. The layers of rock are actually quite different from one another; some are silt and clay; some are poorly cemented sandstones and some are conglomeratic. Some layers contain hundreds of fossilized twigs while others contain enormous fossil trees. Layers of red, round concretions resembling bowling balls lay on top of sandstone benches, resembling photos of a Martian landscape. The soft sands hold the tracks of modern inhabitants: coyotes, mice, and birds, although seldom do you see the owners of those footprints. This is a land where the ancient and the modern come together. Birds of prey perch upon the fossilized trees while rodents throw crocodile bones out of their burrows.

The views from the tops of the bluffs are spectacular. Pikes Peak looms above the plains with the city hidden in the valley between the bluffs and the mountains. The Sangre de Cristo Range pierces the sky and the Spanish Peaks stand alone to the south. Corral Bluffs is truly a place of peace and solitude, and a place to reaquaint yourself with nature.

Red Rock Canyon Dinosaur Track

2009-01-06T20:27:00.000-08:00

On October 31 I was in Red Rock Canyon with two members of WIPS (Western Interior Paleontological Society). We were attempting to make molds and casts of dino tracks and other fossils found in the outcrops that can't be collected. Happily, we were met by a most friendly park ranger, who drove us near the outcrop, allowing us to avoid carrying the 12 foot ladder an extra mile. We still, however, had to carry the ladder up the steep hogback, through cactus and talus. We didn't have much luck with the casting of the tracks. The iguanodon track was too deep and the foam casting material broke into about 40 pieces! We got a nice cast of the ankylosaur track, but (unknown to my wonderful WIPS friends) as soon as I got home to admire the cast, my cat jumped on top of the foam, leaving four well-formed cat tracks on top of the ankylosaur track.

All was not lost, though! As we were leaving the outcrop, one fellow fossil lover looked down in a pile of talus, left from when Red Rock Canyon was a quarry, and saw laying there a dinosaur track cast that had fallen off of its original outcrop. What an exciting find. I can only think that the quarry men tossed it there as they were removing the preferred sections of rock, not realizing what it was. I have stepped over that same spot, not noticing the track, for over two years!

The best fossils collected from Red Rock Canyon will be displayed at the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum beginning later this month. Hopefully the ankylosaur track will be among those fossils!

The website it up!

2008-11-22T22:17:00.001-08:00

After days of work the new website, paleotrailsproject.org, is online. I had no idea what I was doing, but with some final assistance from the technical service department of my server I did it. I still have some photos to post, and I'm sure I'll make some changes, but it's a start. Unfortunately we had some problems with out old paleotrails.org site and so we had to start from scratch. It's not quite as sophisticated as the old site, but it should do the job.

Our newest project is to document the geology and paleontology of Corral Bluffs. It's been a lot of fun so far. It's a completely different type of site than any other in Colorado Springs. I've found several pieces of turtle and crocodile so far. I'm hoping for a mammal jaw or two, as mammals are the important fossil of this formation. My field work in Hell Creek Montana is coming in handy, otherwise I wouldn't have had the slightest idea of what to look for.

Tomorrow was supposed to be a day in the field, but the ground is covered with snow, so we'll have to put that off for a bit. We've been lucky and haven't run into any rattlesnakes so far, and hopefully they're all sleeping for the season now.

I'll post more later about Red Rock Canyon and other continuing paleontological adventures. Thanks for checking in!

2008-11-22T22:17:00.000-08:00

This is my first try at creating my own blog. This is a test.