Day 5: Digging up Bones! (Tory M)

  By Friday it had stopped raining and we had planes to start our first attempt at finding bones at a dig site. The day had started off with us all eating breakfast at the Rock INN Café as usual. After breakfast we headed out to first meet up at the museum here in Seymour where our guides gave up a little bit of history about the site we would be digging in and Dimetrodons, which inhabited the area about 300 million years ago. We then made our way to the digging site where we would first find bone fragments on the surface of the ground. After this we were all split up into groups and where given tools to start digging onto the ground. All of us managed to find bones within the dig site, from ribs and vertebrae to even teeth! We spent hours finding many bones, it was a very successful day. Afternoon time we ate dinner and played games like  poker, cornhole, and Catan!

(us at the dig site)

(Looking for bones fragments at on the surface)

(looking for bones fragments on the surface)

(digging for bones underground)

(digging for bones underground)

(digging for bones underground)

(bone fragment)

(game of Poker)

(game of Cornhole)

(game of Catan)

(dinner)

Day 4: First Full day in Seymour! (Eli L)

Our first full day in Seymour it was to be filled amazing adventures. We started the day with breakfast at the rock INN café. Ironically our first day in town it would take us through through the town of Jacksbrough to visit an exposed shale face for some above ground fossil hunting. We spent three hours searching for Corals, Gastropods, Amenities, and Natalids. After sack lunch at the cars we drove back to Seymore to clean up. After that we stopped at Whiteside Natural History Museum, over the next hour two hours every visited the exhibits and tour the fossil prep lab. We left Whiteside played a short game of poker at the Motel. We met up with Chirs ant Holly for dinner at a local BBQ joint.

Crew Breakfast at Rock INN

 The crew crosses a dam on the way to a survey site

Small Bivalve

 Small Gastropod

 Dr. Salem and Ms. Trimble sit and pick up fossils

Part of the crew eats lunch in the shade 

A common site on the road (cows)

Tory and Chase explore the museum

 A specimen found by Ms. Trimble last year, in the prep lab

Ellie re-visits with the resident bearded dragon

 The lizard uses Eli as a couch

 

Gala at dinner

Aya at dinner

Crew finishing dinner 

Day 3: Travel Day! (Leo R)

Today is the day that we are leaving for Seymour TX. We arrived at school bright and early prepared for our long journey, we departed The Post Oak School around 9:15AM and were quickly whisked out of town by they quick flowing I 45. I cannot attest to what events occurred in Dr. Salem's SUV but there were many great moments in Ms. Trimble's vehicle. We quickly assembled an excellent selection of songs to listen to while we engaged in cordial conversation over the duration of the trip. After a little while we had a rest stop at Buc-ee's. As we passed through the rolling fields of Central Texas we engaged in a conversation to convince Chase of the fact that most of the occupants of the vehicle are indeed freshmen and are about her age. After this we stopped for lunch at Joe Friday's diner (12:00 PM) and reunited with the rest of the Paleo members, in the diner we had an engaging conversation about the different Planet of the Apes movies, siblings, and which Wonka movie was better. After a quick photo we were back on the road at 1:15 PM. While passing through the fields of lifeless windmills we were interrupted by a dog running in the road, after our quick break we discovered that we could no longer play our music due to the fact that we were passing through an area with nonexistent cell service, due to the inability to play our music we passed the time by discussing what the most scary movie we had seen was, due to multiple people in the car being bibliophiles we widened the range from movies to include videogames (My choice was Subnautica), this conversation quickly shifted to paranormal events. Ms. Trimble regaled us with her personal tale of a paranormal event that has been witnessed by multiple people, after this we listened to the story of  Skinwalker Ranch and then went to a rest stop to rest. At this rest stop we purchased a bottle of Big Red as well as a bottle of Big Blue, and combined them to make Big Purple which has a unique taste to say the least. After our rest we set off on the final leg of our journey to Seymour. We were whizzing by the by now turning windmills, with nary a house to be seen when we suddenly saw a crop duster and a short while after that a burning barn. At 5:21 PM we pulled up to the HH Creek Inn and had an hour to rest before we had a meeting and discussed the rest of the day. We split up into two groups, one to obtain groceries for the day while the other group reconvened in the restaurant attached to the motel to play poker, after the second group met us back at the restaurant we ordered food and had dinner together then split into our respective rooms for the night.

Paleo People taking a break at Buc-ee's!

Paleo People eating lunch!

Paleo People after eating lunch!

Ms. Trimble's car having fun!

Paleo People resting after a long car ride

Paleo People eating Dinner!

Day 1: In-Class Activities! (Ellie)

 Today, the Paleo crew kicked back in class and learned briefly about the geological overview of Texas. Dr. Salem showed us where Texas was during the Permian Period with a website that allowed us to go back in time and view what the Earth looked like. The crew discovered that half of Texas was a Permian basin with a mountain range and the other half was submerged underwater. Shortly after we rolled out two maps one explaining how old the rocks are around the world and in the ocean and the other explaining the geological areas of Texas. We discovered that the oldest rocks on Earth are on the continents, mostly in Canada and Scandinavia and the oldest rocks in Texas are the Llano Uplift area and an area out by El Paso. Dr. Salem explained to the group how the rocks near the coast are younger and as you go upstate the rocks get older with some younger rocks mixed in. We also covered how old the rocks we would be digging in and learned that they were around 300 million years old. Later, the students selected a topic given by Dr. Salem to do a presentation or activity on. Out of the 11 different topics, I chose to cover the topic of Dimetrodons. The rest of the morning before lunch the students spent time researching and putting together their presentation that they would later share back their findings with the class. After lunch, the students returned to the classroom to finish working on their presentations and then after an hour, some students started presenting their topics. 

Topics that were covered today:

The Geologic Time Scale 

Roadside Geology Houston to Seymour 

Permian Geology of Texas

Sedimentary Rocks and Stratigraphy

Aya giving her presentation on Roadside Geology Houston to Seymour

Tory and Chase working on their presentations

Dr. Salem helping Lily and Gala with their presentations