Ancient fossils give MSU students hands-on research experience

For Montana State University undergraduate Isabelle Brenes, digging a triceratops out of a hillside in the badlands near Ekalaka in July marked only the beginning of a long, familiar process of readying fossils for study and display.

When she isn't volunteering on field digs with the Museum of the Rockies at MSU, Brenes, a senior majoring in paleontology in the Department of Earth Sciences in the College of Letters and Science, works at the museum as a fossil preparer, meticulously cleaning the preserved remains of dinosaurs and other ancient life.

"It's my dream job," said Brenes as she used a laser transit and grid paper to map the lay of the ribs, vertebrae and other 67 million-year-old bones uncovered by fellow crew members wielding shovels, chisels and a variety of brushes. Along with fellow crew member Tom LaBarge, another senior majoring in paleontology, Brenes is an example of how MSU undergraduates get hands-on experience while contributing to new discoveries about ancient life.

Back in the lab, Brenes' first step in preparing each specimen is to remove the plaster and burlap cast that protects them for transport and storage. "I never really know what I'm getting into when I open one," she said.

Using small picks, she pries off remaining dirt from each find. "Sometimes you can't remove all the dirt right away or the fossil will collapse on itself," she said.

Next, she does a gentle scrub with a toothbrush and water. That's when the high-tech art of fossil preparing really begins, often with a device called an air abrasion machine, which resembles a small, enclosed sandblaster. Another tool of her trade, called an air scribe, "is like a mini jackhammer" that removes spots of hardened crust, she said. "The trick is to not remove any bone."

It's an iterative and labor-intensive process that can take weeks for a single fossil, especially if the specimen is broken in pieces. Assembling 10 baggies of bone fragments from a triceratops' nasal horn occupied more than a month's worth of her working hours this spring. "It's like doing a jigsaw puzzle except you might be missing half the pieces," she said.

Once a fossil is completely cleaned and put together, it often heads to the museum's paleohistology lab, where Brenes started volunteering as a sophomore. The lab removes thin slices of preserved bone and examines them under specialized microscopes. The structure of the bone can give clues about a dinosaur's age, among other things.

Brenes' internship is sponsored by the Bureau of Land Management, the agency that oversees the vast areas of public land in the Western U.S. where many fossils are unearthed. Helping with digs like the one near Ekalaka gives her experience with the whole process from start to finish, she said.

"It's a mutual benefit for both the students and the museum," said Scott Williams, Museum of the Rockies paleontology lab and field specialist. "There are a lot of moving parts on a dino dig, and students provide needed help. There's no way we could handle all of it ourselves."

Beneath a shade tarp on the Ekalaka dig, LaBarge chiseled hard badlands clay from around a vertebrae. "Being out here with these other paleo people is a great way to bounce ideas around," he said.

When not in the field he works in the lab of Christopher Organ, an MSU Earth sciences assistant teaching professor, using computer models to chart evolutionary trees of large South American birds that went extinct more recently than triceratops. The field work complements his research by giving him a better appreciation of all that's involved in producing knowledge of ancient creatures, he said.

"I love looking at the diversity of the past, how many forms animals take and how they lived," said LaBarge, who started his work with Organ as a freshman and went on his first dinosaur dig last summer. "Engaging in research so early in my career has been amazing."

Brenes, the incoming president of the MSU student paleontology club called the Dead Lizard Society, said that one of her goals for the organization is to help students learn about ways to be involved with research, whether in the lab or in the field.

Those experiences "have really enhanced my understanding of the field as a whole," she said. "The things that have had the most impact for me as a student have been the opportunities that the museum has given me."