Raptor Review

Est. June 3, 1961

Experience Life

Three Billion Years In The Making January 2017

Raptor Review

Issue 45

A quarterly publication for your information and enjoyment From the Director

By Dr. Ken Carpenter the museum. Watch for all the great changes coming in 2017!

As I reflect on 2016, it will certainly go down as the year of great change for our country and for the museum.

Lloyd Logan (education and exhibits) retired at the end of April and Christine Trease (gift shop, marketing, and PR) did likewise at the end of May. Claire Bennett (administrative assistant) left in September for graduate school in Seattle. But then Jennifer Shorthill started as gift shop manager in July, Katy Corneli as collections manager in August, Shai Reiswig as administrative assistant in September, and Sandra Budd as head of exhibits in October. With all of these new hires the museum is completely staffed for the first time in almost a decade, so great things can be expected for 2017. Please read each staff section to see what they have been doing.

Special thanks from me to the many volunteers that Santa Claus and an elf at Cretaceous Christmas helped Katy in collections. A group came out from Denver again this year to help finish the paleontology inventory. Students from the SUN Center have also helped out – thanks guys!

We had our first “Cocktails with Curators” for our premier members at the Allosaurus and Utahraptor levels. Tim spoke about his continued excavations at the Martinez Pithouse near East Carbon and I spoke on the building of a pithouse to test various ideas about what they were like to live in. A summary was given in the Fall issue of the USU magazine (//issuu. com/usuprm/docs/utah_state_magazine_fall_2016/25 Classroom activities for Cretaceous Christmas ?e=1295814/38749813). I am not yet sure what the next Cocktails will be, but it will give our premier members exclusive interactions with the curators. If you are not a premier member, I hope you will consider it.

The annual Members’ Appreciation Dinner was held December 2 at the Jennifer Levitts Student Center.

Besides giving a museum summary for the year, I spoke a bit about the carnivorous dinosaur Acrocanthosaurus, which is the subject of my recently published non-technical book.

Volunteers helping with Cretaceous Christmas I thank all of you for your membership and support of

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Castle Country Cultures

By Dr. Tim Riley

Greetings from the Hall of Archaeology!

The field season has come to an end and the Martinez Pithouse site out by East Carbon has been closed up for the winter. The last newsletter highlighted most of the discoveries out at the Martinez site this season, but we continued to expose parts of the living floor in the house until mid-November. The focus now shifts to the lab, where the artifacts are identified, cleaned, and labelled for curation.

This fall we debuted a new event for our premier-level members, Cocktails with the Curator.

This informal evening is designed to let members interact with the curators and the collections in an accessible and engaging way. Stay tuned for information on the next event in this series!

In the Hall of Archaeology, we are back at work on expanding our exhibits. We have several great exhibits on the Fremont, but the history of their neighbors to the south, the Ancestral Pueblos (Anasazi), has always been a bit underrepresented in our museum. This next suite of exhibits will change all of that. In addition to a miniature diorama of a site near Blanding called Five Kiva Ruin, you will be able to walk through a full-scale replica of a room from the site. This immersive exhibit will be highlighted by several other exhibit components focused on the importance of maize and pottery in the life of these people.

The coming year is going to be a busy one. I will be working on an excavation at the Cottonwood Village site in Nine Mile Canyon. This project, a collaboration with several other entities, will make the site a much more interesting stop on your tour of Nine Mile Canyon and will depend on volunteers. If you are interested in volunteering to help with this project or my ongoing excavation, please contact me.

Artifact of the Quarter When we hear the words Ancestral Pueblo, most of us think of Mesa Verde’s incredible cliff-dwellings.

However, groups of people that archaeologists call Ancestral Puebloans lived across a wide portion of southern Utah and neighboring states. One

group, called the Kayenta, were found across much of northern Arizona and south-central Utah. This beautiful little jar is part of the Sosi Black-on-white pottery tradition. It will go on permanent exhibit as part of the upcoming world of the Ancestral Pueblo exhibit, but our members get a sneak peek here first.

Jar showing the Sosi Black-on-White pottery tradition . This style is associated with the Kayenta people

Events & Information

By Shailetia Reiswig

Happy New Year! I hope you all had a great holiday season, I would like to thank everyone that came to our 6th Annual Members Appreciation Dinner, I hope you had a wonderful time. If you were unable to make it, I hope to see you at our 7th Annual dinner! On top of that we had Cretaceous Christmas which turned out to be a blast! I had so much fun seeing so many families join in the activities.

As many of you may know, Gary Prazen passed away.

All of us at the museum would like to take the time to appreciate his wonderful sculpture “Survival” that sits right outside of the museum.

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Choir preformance at Cretaceous Christmas

“Survival” by Gary Prazen Secrets from the Vault

by Katy Corneli

Season’s greetings from the collection! Here in the vault we have been busy conducting an inventory of rocks and mineral specimens. As such I thought I would decorate the pages of the December newsletter with some “ornaments” I’ve come across in the process.

First, if you are dreaming of a white Christmas you might enjoy our snowflake obsidian. Here is a cross section in which you can see how it got its name.

Obsidian is a glassy stone formed by quickly cooling lava. Prehistoric peoples used it to make stone tools with edges sharper than a surgeon’s scalpel.

Snowflake obsidian occurs when cristobalite (quartz-like) crystals form within the silicate structure during a process called “devitrification,” in which obsidian gradually changes from glass into rock. Once the “snowflakes” form, the stone will not fracture in the same way so it’s less useful for tool making. Because of this devitrification process, it is rare to find obsidian much older than 20 million years old, pretty young by geologic standards!

Next, I was pleased to find these petrified pinecones among the collection. These come from an ancient sequoia tree.

Though these pinecones are undated, fossil evidence of sequoias over 100 million years old is abundant throughout North America. Next to the pinecones is a beautiful piece of fossilized wood from a cycad tree. Some species of cycad trees still exist today and have changed little since the Jurassic.

Cycads are evergreens but they look more like a palm tree than a fir. Together these fossils give you an idea of how your Christmas tree will look in a few million years.

The last mineral could decorate your mantelpiece.

Looking like a holiday hedgehog, or a snow-covered mountain in miniature, this beautiful sphalerite specimen, topped by white calcite crystals, is adorned with golden pyrite. Sphalerite is the most important ore of the metal zinc and is mined all over the world.

Pyrite is an iron sulfide mineral that forms at low temperatures in all different kinds of rocks.

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Though often called “fool’s gold” pyrite actually often

2017 is going to be a fantastic year!! I feel it!! Can you dig it?

Gift Ideas from the Gift Shop

contains enough real gold to be valuable.

I hope these “gems” from our collection have brightened your holiday spirits. If you have some free time over the break why not come and look at more amazing rocks and minerals we have on display in the museum? Happy holidays to all!

Gift Shop

By Jennifer Shorthill

Happy New Year!!

Wow! The days seem to fly by more rapidly, each year and before you know it, we’re setting new goals, making positive changes and gaining a new perspective on life!

We learn and grow through experience and mistakes and, THANKFULLY, opportunities present themselves each day, allowing us to become more committed and to enjoy the rewards of this growth cycle, each year.

It’s been 6 months since I’ve started this new adventure.

I have experienced much growth and joy in the things I do and I have learned that such blessings do not come without the incredible help and kindness from an organization such as this, including the wonderful people whom I have the privilege to associate with on a daily basis! Thank you for your time, talent, humor and expertise!

I would like to thank everyone for visiting us and making purchases in the gift shop! Every purchase made helps support our wonderful museum!!

Watch for new products in the shop this year and keep us in mind for all your gift giving! Your patronage is greatly appreciated!

I am looking forward to this new year, to new experiences and growth!

In the words of C.S.Lewis.....” There are far better things ahead than we leave behind!”

Exhibits

by Sandra Budd

Hello museum members. I am Sandra Budd the new Head of Exhibits. I look forward to re-envisioning old exhibits and developing new ones as we look towards the new year. Since arriving here I have begun to understand the broader connection between our collections and the landscape that preserved them. Utah is a stark contrast to my home Other side of Utah Art show in the in Pennsylvania, but Special Exhibits Gallery I have come to realize the beauty in this new landscape and delighted by the good nature of its people.

Two exhibit projects were a good start for me to meet museum members and the larger Price community. The Other Side of Utah annual community art exhibition opened in November and runs until February 26th.

Several members submitted works of art for this exhibit.

I would like to get out ahead of this as we plan for next year. We could certainly fill the entire Special Exhibits gallery with so many talented artists in the area.

The second exhibit and reception was in support of the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry, AiR program.

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The three artists in residents will have works on display through the first week of January in our Dinosaur Hall. While planning for this event I AiR art show around the dinosaur pit learned the historical connection between our collection and the Cleaveland-Lloyd Dionsaur quarry. The collaboration between our museum and the Bureau of Land Management that sponsors the program was seamless. An excellent opportunity to bring new and old members of our community together in celebration of this unique site that continues to inspire new generations. Please feel free to contact me at Sandra. budd@usu.edu or (435) 613-5760

He started working on this delicate fossil with the newsroom personnel giving him a hard time, “Are you sure you aren’t hurting it?”

When the segment was finished I figured he would stop working on it, but no, he kept working on it for the next hour. He totally enjoyed it and said how cool it was that the rock just fell away from the bone. He asked “How old is this?” the answer came “About 80 million years.”

“Are you sure I won’t damage it?” “Yes, you are doing a great job.” Then Ken jokingly asked him if he wanted a job here at the museum. When Big Budah had to do the last segment he said “Thanks for letting me work on that. I have been to several of these dinosaur museums, and none have let me work on fossils. It was awesome!”

So if you all would like to do some “awesome work” on really old fossils we can always use volunteers, and remember if a tv celebrity like Big Budah can do it so can you.

If you would like to Volunteer or have any questions feel free to contact me at dave.alderks@usu.edu or by phone (435).613.5756.

I see dead things....

by Dave Alderks

I have enjoyed the past 9 months working as the chief preparatory. There have been some excellent volunteers during that time. I would like to take some time and tell you a little about one volunteer we had. On November 11, 2016 we opened the museum early for the Fox13 morning show with Big Budah. This morning started with Ken, Tim, and I getting here early to set up for the show, and then going Big Budah preparing a plesiosaur over what spots of the vertebrae. museum we would show off. Ken talked about the Utahraptor, Tim did a segment in the pit house and then it was my turn. I decided to put Big Budah to work and turned the preparation lab over to him. I had laid out one of the plesiosaur vertebrae for him to work on.

Big Budah and some of the Museum staff.

Congratulations to Tyler for 10 years of service to the museum.

Keep up the good work!

Prehistoric Museum 155 East Main Street Price, Utah 84501 Visit us on the web at usueastern.edu/museum Local (435) 613-5060 Toll Free (800) 817-9949

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Inside This Edition Item

Editor/Layout Page

From The Director Cover Castle Country Cultures

2 Events & Info

2 Secrets from the Vault 3 Gift Shop

4 Exhibits 4 I see dead things...

5

Dave O. Alderks

Advisory Board

Ken Fleck-Chairman Tim Gwyther-Vice Chairman - Student Representative Charles Semborski Maurine Tanner Mark Bunnell Andrew Urbanik Bruce Burgess Dennis Willis Terry Willis - Ex- Officio Advisor Brad King Don Burge-Founding Director Dr. Joe Peterson-Chancellor USU Eastern Dr. Kenneth Carpenter-Museum Director