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Students make UMD new home for fossilized dinosaur remains
BY ALLIE BENTRUD
STATESMAN STAFF WRITER
ISSUE: 78/30
TYLER SWEENEY / STATESMAN
Senior Mike “Indy” Etter prepares the
vertebrae fossil of a Diplodocus for display in
Heller Hall.
On the first floor of Heller Hall, there is a long, narrow room. Inside, dust covers every surface, and the smell of dry rock is heavy in the air. Welcome to Heller Hall 113, the primary
location of UMD’s dinosaur research program and home of the remains of ancient beasts.
The process that leads to displays in Heller Hall takes a lot of time and effort. UMD performs its digs on federal land in Wyoming’s Upper Morrison Formation. This geographic structure is the source for many fossils from the Jurassic Period, according to UMD researchers. “We spend days, or even weeks, walking around looking for bones on the surface,” said Matt Kuchta, an UMD geology instructor. “When we find something, we look for the source.”
With any luck, that source will turn out to be a large deposit of dinosaur remains. Today’s advancing technology has allowed UMD researchers to make the most of such finds. One way this is being done is through a process known as digital photogrammetry.
Enter Mike “Indy” Etter, geology major and undergraduate research assistant at UMD. Etter, who earned the namesake of Indiana Jones from wearing a hat similar to the one belonging to the famous movie character, is currently working with this new technology.
When a site yields fossils, Etter comes armed with a specially calibrated digital camera and takes detailed pictures of the area. Next, he heads to a computer, where he enters the pictures into a special program that processes them into a 3-D map of the rock face they came from.
This map allows researchers to “visit” the dig site even after they have concluded the dig. It is also possible for Etter to perform digital photogrammetry on individual specimens as they come out of the rock. When finished, this allows him to look at a deposit of fossils with the surrounding sediment removed. According to Etter, this can provide insight about how the deposit formed. Since the location of every fossil is carefully mapped by GPS, the 3-D images that Etter creates could eventually end up on Google Earth, where anyone could view a digital model of the dig site.
After Etter finishes photographing a dig site, the fossils are carefully removed from the rock face. Finally, they are ready for their new address at Heller Hall. Etter and his colleagues spend months releasing the ancient remains from their rocky tombs. After all this work, it is often difficult to identify the species of a specimen. Even so, valuable information can still be gathered from unidentified remains. “We don’t know what type of animal this is,” said Etter referring to a Heller Hall specimen still largely encased in a block of sandstone, “but we do know that it’s a river deposit.”
Other times, identifying a fossil is not quite as difficult. UMD currently has as many as eight vertebrae from Diplodocus, and many Allosaurus teeth, according to Etter. “On some teeth, you can still see the serrations,” he said, pointing along the edge of one well preserved fang.
Another geology student who is working with dinosaur specimens on campus is Mike Beyer. He finds the work very enjoyable. “In museums, you can’t touch [fossils],” he said. “Here you get to take them out of the rock.”
