The fossil season -- lacklustre as it was this year -- is pretty much over, now that there is snow. That said, I am not going to officially call it prematurely since oscillating temperatures and surprise opportunities are more the norm in the past few years. My annual blog tradition of a roundup post of the year's finds and happenings will wait a bit longer. Instead, a small post to signal some work in the lab. I am in need of a few more tools, but I'm waiting for the economy to improve a wee bit (and perhaps we'll be waiting a while). There is no doubt I have several flats of unfinished/abandoned/delayed preps to clean up. Sometimes I get in that "let's clear up the backlog" moods to cut down on the mountains of half-prepared clutter threatening to topple over me in the little lab. I had received a package of St Petersburg trilobites for prep. None of them came out very well at all, and this one was no exception. In this case, stupid me went ahead and glued these pieces together without properly marking the location of the trilobite, so it was blind scribing until I hit shell. Fortunately, I didn't scribe right through it (much). This is a Pseudobasilicus lavrowi, and these are deemed much rarer than the Asaphus sp. that turn up in these rocks. Rarer, and much thinner and less forgiving. To complicate matters, parts of it were encased in that sticky translucent calcite that is tougher than the shell, so abrasion would just burn the shell around these little calcite globs. Some parts were lost. The first attempt at some restoration was a disaster, but reversible. I opted to scale back my efforts in that regard. It isn't a "wow" display piece, but an "example of the species" piece. I've done much better work, but I've also prepared much kinder trilobites. This one was mostly prepped when I got it, and I just continued a bit without getting too risky. It has two starfish (Schuchertia stellata, I think), and two species of Ceraurus. This Nanillaenus/Thaleops was mostly prepared but missing some parts. I did some matrix landscaping and somewhat tasteful restoration I can fine tune later.
There's a handful of others "on the go," which means they are on top of the blast box as higher priority. Unless I get my hands on some new complete trilobites to prepare this winter, it is likely I'll be focusing on the B- and C-material I have. Comments are closed.
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Kane Faucher
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February 2024
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