The photos were taken during a 2 month excavation of my Giant sloth. The location was approx 10’ above the river bed amd 30’ below the original surface. The river banks were clay and it was very difficult to carve away the layers.
I found that the bones were in very poor shape and I spent a lot of time stabilizing them with glue. Near the end of the excavation I enclose the bone and a lot of matrix inside of plaster field jackets for transport. I learned a lot about conservation and transport of fossils during this looong excavation. The photos loaded out of order.
This when I was well into the excavation and shows you some perspective of the area that I was working in.
This is what was on the surface when it was first discovered. It is clearly a Giant Sloth vertebrae. At that time I had no idea of what was about to come.
This is well into the excavation and at the time I was trying to figure out how to transport it. It really decided for me as it broke into 3 large pieces of about 100lbs each. The bones probably weighted less than 5 lbs in each piece but the clay matrix I transported it in was very heavy.
This photo was taken after I finished applying the plaster field jackets.
This shows the outline of the bed of course sand that the fossil was laying on.
This was probably my second day into the excavation.
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This is a section of spine which included approx 12 vertebrae and ribs.
Here I am highlighting the verts in red. The green is a large piece of scapula or shoulder blade and some ribs.
Awesome!
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