Slow Week

This week has been even slower than the last, and I don't really have any cool fossil discoveries to report in on. Despite the fairly regular rains we've been getting lately (sometime between noon and 3:00 each day it's almost guaranteed to start pouring) there just hasn't been much new and interesting material exposed. There's no doubt that the water's been helping clear out sediment for us -- it's pretty common now to arrive at a site to find our quarries full of loose debris and it's obvious that there's a lot of movement going on on the hill slopes. We've been doing more prospecting than we have in the past in hopes of finding exposed fossils away from our usual hotspots, but all we've found are bits of turtle carapace and unidentifiable bone fragments. And while it's true that the quarries have produced more fossil material than in past visits, this material has also happened to be mostly unidentifiable bits or non-diagnostic remains (limb bones with no ends, simple fish teeth, etc.). There have been a few interesting finds, like a small, worn section of camel jaw, but they're greatly overshadowed by the amount of junk we've been pulling from the outcrops. The upside to it all is that the weather during our field work window (from 7:00 until whenever the sky threatens to rain down on us) has been phenomenal. The increase in cloud cover has noticeably upped the humidity, but that's more than compensated for by the steady winds and occasional drizzles that have also started up. So even though we're finding little and less, at least we're comfortable.

With all the disappointment in the field, my week has been much more about soccer than about paleontology. I've had a ton of opportunities to play, with work games on Fridays, pickup on Wednesdays, and a park less than a block from my apartment. I'm at the point where I play in one form or another every day and still find myself wanting more. My team's prospects for the work tournament aren't looking great at this point, but who knows, maybe we'll turn it around in the second half of the season. I think that the final games are on the Friday right before I leave for home, so the timing is pretty perfect.