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Alberta Connection Magazine
Spring 2000
By Marylu Walters
They left behind their old newspapers, bottles and even their sardine
tins. Early palaeontologists combing Alberta's badlands for dinosaur
specimens would get an F for littering the environment. But Darren Tanke is grateful they did.
The Royal Tyrrell Museum technician finds valuable clues in the trash
palaeontologists left behind in Alberta's badlands in the early
1900s.
Tanke, who grew up with a fascination for detective stories, describes one
sleuthing expedition that yielded clues: "I saw a brown rock the size
of a loaf of bread. I knew it had to be marking something because it was
unlike any rocks nearby. I also noted bad clay in the area. Then
three feet away there was an old wash pail. I ran up the hill and
there was a hole the size of an office desk. I found some plaster of
Paris and then sticking out of the side of the hill was a wad of
newspapers. From the size of the hole, I could tell it was probably
a mid-sized duck-bill (dinosaur)." Paleontologists used newspapers and
plaster of Paris to wrap dinosaur fossils for safe transport.
Tanke soaked the newspapers in warm water. "I could tell it was a Toronto
paper so I could guess it was an expedition from the Royal Ontario
Museum (ROM). There was a Model T car ad and a cartoon showing a
flapper with an August 31 date on the panel. I got the year from a
story about traffic fatalities showing statistics from 1919 through
1926. So, I knew it was August 31, 1927.
"Then I went to the ROM field notes from 1927 and discovered they had
collected a horned dinosaur skull from the same general area." What
clinched it for Tanke was a note saying "This was found in bad clay.
It will be hard to take up."
In a different "case," Tanke is hot on the trail of a left-handed field
worker who had a fondness for sardines. The keys on sardine tins
found at one quarry site were obviously unwound by a left-handed
person, he concludes. He's hoping to find someone in a photo
wielding a pick with their left hand. "But I have to be careful,
because some photos in those days were printed backwards."
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