Prehistoric Museum
155 East Main Street Price, Utah 84501 Visti us on the web at http://usueastern.edu/museum/ Local (435) 613-5060 Toll Free (800) 817-9949
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January 2019
Raptor Review
Issue 53
A quarterly publication for your information and enjoyment
From the Director By Dr. Ken Capenter
Here it is the end of 2018 and the start of 2019. I’m amazed at how quickly the year has passed. Attendance was steady, and visitors have said many nice things on TripAdvisor (www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g57104d1555378-Reviews-Utah_State_University_Eastern_Prehistoric_Museum-Price_Utah.html ). Our ranking is very high at
Inside This Edition Item Page From the Director Cover Castle Country Cultures 2 Events & Info 3 Secrets from the Vault 3 Exhibits 4 I See Dead Things... 5
Editor/Layout Dave Alderks
Advisory Board
Ken Fleck- Chairman Tim Gwyther - Vice Chairman Mike Leschin Charles Semborski Maurine Tanner Mark Bunnell Andrew Urbanik Bruce Burgess Dennis Willis Terry Willis - Ex - Officio Advisor Brad King Don Burge - Founding Director Dr. Gary Straquadine - Interim Chancellor Dr. Ken Carpenter - Director
4.5 stars, which is even higher than some of the larger museums (check for yourself). Of course, that is due to the hard work by the museum staff. Our frontline admissions and gift shop clerks have done a fantastic job under the leadership of Jennifer Shorthill. These clerks are the face of the museum for visitors. The kids’ area got a complete make-over by Sandra Budd. Its popularity was starting to show, making it look run-down. Sandra was also responsible for the renovation of the changing exhibit gallery (aka, the art gallery). The cinder blocks have been covered with dry wall and paint, and a new professional art hanging system installed. Sandra also designed, built and installed several exhibits in the paleontology hall. The conservation lab moved out of the museum and is now in a separate, secure room on campus. This lab is also shared by Tim Riley, and both are now closer to the archaeology collections.
Katy Corneli splits her time between paleontology collections and archaeology. Next year, she will be more active in the museum’s growing archives. Dave Alderks spent most of his time this past year cleaning the many trilobites and fossil plants for our exhibits. Some of the plants are on exhibit, and the trilobites will soon be the stars of their own exhibit, along with a collection of trilobites we purchased from Jason Cooper (Trilobites of America) this year. Tim spent a lot of 2018 in the field, excavating at a cave near the Buckhorn Wash rock art, as well as excavating the experimental pit house on my property we built and burnt. He plans to apply what he learns from experiment to better understand what he sees in Fremont pit houses. Shai Reiswig has managed to deal with a myriad of problems to keep the museum running smoothly. It’s a tough job, but she has risen to the occasion. Finally, much of the year for me has been herding the cats that I call my staff. I have a long term goal of making this place be the “little museum that could.” We may not have the money, space or specimens of certain big museums on the Wasatch Front, but we shall rank up there in education and quality of exhibits. This past year pushed the bar higher than the previous year, and 2019 will be even higher as we return to the archaeology hall. If you haven’t been to the museum in the past few months, I invite you to visit. It continues to change. Thanks as always for your membership and support of the museum.
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Events and Info by Shai Reiswig
Our 8th Annual Members Appreciation Dinner took place on December 7th at the Jennifer Leavitt Student Center. To those of you who were able to come out and enjoy a dinner put out by our USU Eastern catering, thank you. If you did not get the opportunity to come this year, we hope you can make it to one of our many great annual events next year! For Cretaceous Christmas, kids got to meet Santa and participate in the activities our wonderful staff and volunteers helped to put on. Members have the fantastic benefit of free admission to the Museum of Moab as well as the John Wesley Powell River History Museum in Green River through a reciprocal membership partnership. Your Prehistoric Museum membership allows you access to three museums for the price of one! Simply show your valid Prehistoric Museum membership card to enter either the Museum of Moab or the John Wesley Powell River History Museum at no charge. What a wonderful way to explore the exciting history of eastern Utah. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about your membership, please do not hesitate to contact Shai Reiswig.
Secrets from the Vault by Katy Corneli
Season’s greetings from the Collections Department! We must have been good this year because we have gotten a lot of presents. Over the summer we received a donation of artifacts collected in the 1940s and ‘50s in and around Nine Mile Canyon by Francis Flaim. The
collection of around 150 artifacts was donated by Francis’ son, Dr. Stephen Flaim, and contains some unique and important artifacts, including a number of small Fremont figurines from Rasmussen Cave (pictured), cordage, and some beautifully preserved pot rests. These artifacts are a fantastic addition the archaeology collection and excellent supplement to the archaeological knowledge of Eastern Utah. Not
to be outdone, our paleontologists have also been collecting and purchasing hundreds of trilobites this year (see Dave Alderks’ column). Many of these will end up on display, and the rest are valuable for research. Between these two lots of objects, I seem to be cataloging non-stop the last few months. It is very satisfying to be able to add so many items to the database as I watch our collection grow. Other ongoing projects include re-organizing the collections office and storage areas and completing some minor conservation work on some of the more vulnerable objects on display. Pictured here is a squash rind from the Pectol collection that lacked any support while on exhibit and was cracking under its weight. I am currently joining the breaks and reinforcing to alleviate stress on the object. Visit us soon to see the results! Similar treatments will be undertaken on other items in the Hall of Archaeology next year to go along with new exhibits being developed. To see more of what goes on behind the scenes, please join us on March 30th, 2019 for the next “Member’s Fieldtrip” in which I will host a tour of the collection and a discussion of conservation measures undertaken here at the Prehistoric Museum. Thank you all for being members. Have a wonderful holiday season and a happy New Year.
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Exhibitions
in this new gallery space. (Thanks to Terry Shaw for providing acoustic guitar music)
by Sandra Budd Greetings from Exhibitions, This fall I made a new sign and improvements to the kids play area, which has been renamed the Prehistoric Explorers Corner. A window was added to the kiva play area and resurfaced to make it more kid-friendly. In the fossil dig area old sand was replaced after repairing
Old Gallery Cinderblock walls
Cleveland Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry Artist in Residence Thank you for attending the AIR reception for outgoing resident artists myself 2018 and this year’s recipient Terry Willis for AIR 2019.
Sandra Budd - 2018 the dinosaur skeletons underneath. Then a fresh coat of cement was laid down, and more color was added to the surrounding rock walls.
Cast fossils were made to add a curiosity cabinet look. The open cabinets improved the storage of books and games. We are developing new kid activities for the area this year. Special Exhibits Gallery Renovation The gallery was significantly improved this year. Contractors resurfaced the cinderblock with drywall and painted the walls and ceiling. I followed up and installed a modern picture hanging rail with gripper system hardware and finished off the floor with base cove molding. We opened the gallery with our renamed community art exhibition ART ELEVATED — Thank-You for your attendance and submissions to this grand opening. I look forward to the possibilities for exhibitions
Gallery Renovation
Terry Willis – 2019
We are developing two new cases for the Paleontology hall on the Cambrian Era. You can hear a little about our process so far in Dave Aldreks section. To start the development process, we have to ask all the big questions. Why is this exhibit or collection important to invest time and money into. How does the “Cambrian” fit into the exhibit timeline we started? What specimens best tell the story of the Cambrian period of evolution? How can trilobites help tell a story about the Cambrian? How do we make this a positive, interesting and informtive visitor experience? This process began with general research on the Cambrian and its ubiquitous trilobites. I learned first that over 20,000 species of trilobites had been discovered and we had over 20 species in our collection just from Utah. But not all trilobites are exciting to look at.
Single trilobite fossil
Mashup of trilobite fossils
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Castle Country Cultures Dr. Tim Riley
Greetings from the Hall of Archaeology. As the winter winds sweep across the Colorado Plateau and the year heads to a close, the hall is getting a fresh coat of paint to prepare it for our upcoming school tour and tourist seasons. It has been a bit of a mess as we shift exhibit cases and storage areas to accommodate the painters, but I think you will find it well worth it the next time you stop in. Thankfully, this work in the hall did not interfere too much with our Cretaceous Christmas event, one of our busiest days of the year. Special thanks to our volunteers associated with the Castle Valley Archaeological Society, Nate and Aurora Smith, and Sarah Herrera from the Manti-LaSal National Forest. I have continued work at the experimental pithouse we burnt down several years ago. In addition to the natural weathering, we decided to speed up the process during the unproductive monsoon season this summer by directly watering it with a sprinkler. And, of course, we monitored just how much “rain” we added to the process. I have started collaborating on a new research project led by Steven LeBlanc from the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University focused on coprolite specimens from Danger Cave, one of the most important rockshelter sites in Utah. I spent some time selecting samples
Page 5 for analysis up at the Natural History Museum of Utah, where they are stored. The goal is to amplify the aDNA in the coprolites to understand the human gut microbiome alongside the dietary constituents. It was a thrill to sort through the boxes of specimens and particularly exciting to see the remnants of some of the specimens processed by Gary Fry in the 1960s. It was my year to host the Cocktails with the Curator event for our premium-level members, and I focused on the fieldwork I had done this summer out in the Buckhorn Wash portion of the San Rafael Swell. It is always great to have an intimate and cozy setting to share our research with such an engaged and interested group. Thanks to Shai Reiswig for pulling it all together!
Cheryl Marzec, one of our members who attended the Cocktails with the Curator event, asked that we be more forthcoming in sharing our published research with the membership. I have included a direct link to my most recent publication, ETHNOHISTORIC RECORDS OF HUNTER-GATHERER DIET OF THE TEXAS/MEXICO BORDERLANDS: IMPLICATIONS FOR STAPLE FOODS OF THE LOWER PECOS CANYONLANDS DURING THE HOLOCENE https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gFUWLCyUu8IibCqKnfjYj74HT5CTepqA/view As always, thanks for your continued support of the Prehistoric Museum.
Our first meeting was abstract scribbles on the whiteboard, and hashing out the what, where, when and why of the exhibition. Then we could focus our research with current scientific publications from peer-reviewed sources. While digging into the life histories of the Cambrian animals, I realized a lot of other animals made life possible for our star trilobites to appear. At our second meeting, we realized this Cambrian case needed to become two cases, so life did not jump immediately from single-celled stromatolites to a planet suddenly inhabited by evolutionary complexed animals like arthropods. A lot of evolution happened between the end of the Edicarian 600 mya through the late Cambrian 485mya. The third meeting we agreed to separate Cambrian evolution and Cambrian trilobite diversity. In the early Cambrian 542mya, the main body plans for animals appeared in the fossil record. By 485 late Cambrian, an array of not only trilobites but all manners of arthropods inhabited the shallow oceans of our planet. It has been coined the Cambrian explosion, for this reason, radiation of life which had never occurred before then. We have located some better specimens of both trilobites and early soft body animals. We have much work ahead in making this Cambrian world come to life. Special Exhibitions Gallery Schedule ART ELEVATED: Prehistoric Museum Community Art Exhibition December 22, 2018 through March 23, 2019 Please reach out to me with any questions regarding exhibitions. sandra.budd@usu.edu or 435.613.5760.
Spliting Weeks Formation Limestones looking for Trilobites.
can go long periods splitting rock and not find nything. It also did not help that in some places the bugs were covered in stone and you had to look for small impressions in the rock. After the fieldwork finished, the next step I did was to prepare the fossils so we could accurately identify them and see if we would need to order more trilobites or go back into the field to collect some more. Preparing the fossils was a multistep process that started by examining each fossil and determining what would be the best methods for preparing them — some of the fossils needed to be cleaned with an air scribe, while others would only need to be air abraded in the mini sandblaster. Then there were those that needed both methods and also a small bath in dilute acetic acid.
Trilobite Preperation work and identification.
Once the prep work was finished on the trilobites, identification of the specimens began!
I see dead things..... by Dave Alderks
Greetings from the depths of the Cambrian Period, or at least that is how I feel. I have spent this last quarter working with Sandra Budd on the new Cambrian exhibit, and also the Trilobite Exhibit. So in conjunction with Sandra, we will take on a journey about the development of an Exhibit. So way back in the day, I went out to the west desert of Utah to the House Range to collect Trilobites from the wonderful Lagerstadt that is the Weeks, Marjum, and Wheeler Formations. Fieldwork was a fun, hot dirty job, and requires lots of patience and encouragement from the other team members because you
Volunteer Opportunities Volunteers are always welcome here at the museum. We have opportunities in all departments you just need to contact one of the following individuals: Archaeology Tim.riley@usu.edu or 435.613.5280 Collections Katharine.corneli@usu.edu or 435.613.5765 Exhibits Sandra.budd@usu.edu or 435.613.5760 Paleontology dave.alderks@usu.edu or 435.613.5756