Collecting Fossils

• Did ancient peoples understand fossils? Adrienne Mayor thinks they did.
• Discovering and collecting a Miocene whale on the Chesapeake Bay shore. News item from the Calvert Marine Museum, January 2004. This is a really nice story on how field collecting works (sometimes).
• Early dinosaur discoveries in North America led to feuds among paleontologists
• A day collecting fossils in Patagonia, 1933, by the great vertebrate paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson.
• Collecting fossils in the rain. Only the English would think this was a normal activity.
• A joint American-Chinese expedition colleting Jurassic fossils in Xinjiang, western China
• A dinosaur dig that you can follow on-line (May 2004) National Geographic News. The URL for the dig itself is here
• A mastodon dig in New York state, 1999-2000: The Chemung mastodons homepage.
• Digging Ice-Age mammals in Oregon.
• A plesiosaur dig in the US
• A plesiosaur dig against time in Australia.

Preparing Fossils

• Feature about Sarah Finney, preparator of early tetrapods for Jenny Clack

Beware of Hoaxes!

• The hoax fossil "Archaeoraptor" is now fully analysed. National Geographic News, November 20, 2002.. The current research is published in Nature, which does not allow universal access. Previous stories:
  • How Archaeoraptor was faked. BBC News OnLine, March 29, 2001.
  • An earlier announcement in February 2000: Science News.

Last updated August 27, 2004.

Links last checked September 30, 2005

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