Home
Back to Articles
Information for Preparation
Dr. William Hammer has been collecting in Antarctica since the 1970's and has had an ongoing fossil prep lab at Augustana College, located in Rock Island, Illinois, since the mid 1980's. The labs location and its managers have changed over the years, with the current prep lab located in the basement of the recently renovated Swenson Hall of Geosciences. The lab is currently managed by ReBecca Hunt, MS. While ReBecca is the head preparator for the lab, student assistants are often known to stop by and volunteer during their time at the College.
Currently, ReBecca is hard at work preparing a 700lb block containing cervical vertebrae of the theropod dinosaur, Cryolophosaurus ellioti. This block was collected during 2003 from the original quarry in the Transantarctic Mountains, which was discovered in 1990-91 austral summer, around 650 km from the geographic South Pole. The matrix consist of a tuffaceous siltstone which is relatively hard and indurated.
Occasionally we will have fossils from the White River Badlands, specifically the Brule Formation (Oligocene), in the prep lab. This material is collected during a two-week course entitled "Fossil Mammals of the Badlands." The group camps on Shalimar Ranch, outside of Harrison , Nebraska , and collects fossils on privately owned land. This trip has become a tradition, with the first trip in 1982. ReBecca is always happy to see fossils from the White River, as the matrix encasing the fossils is far easier to remove than that she sees in the Antarctica material.
