Digging season 2004
This year's dinosaur dig of the Dinosaur Museum Aathal has been successfully completed. The Siber team can look back to an unexpectedly lucky outcome of this year's digging season. During the last two weeks, the main task was to dismember the Stegosaurus skeleton Sarah into sensible and movable single parts. Smaller parts of the skeleton were wrapped in aluminum foil and newspaper, carefully tagged and numbered and packed into cardboard boxes. Larger Parts were wrapped into individual plaster "jackets". The heavy part of the skeleton containing the pelvis and the chest represented the largest cast. With the help of an excavator, the plastered 1500 lb rump was lifted and put on a wooden base. Cast and base were then lifted on to the back of a pick-up truck. The truck then took the cast down the slope to where all the other parts were already ready for transport.
Now Stegosaurus Sarah is on its way to Switzerland. In November, Sarah will arrive at the Dinosaur Museum Aathal. The preparators will immediately start preparation. Two Stegosaurus finds (Victoria in 1996 and Lilly in 2003) are already being worked on. We plan on finishing preparation work by 2007. A new special exhibit in Aathal will then show all three original skeletons to the public. This will be a very special event for both the museum and dinosaur research because never before was it possible to bring three significant Stegosaurus skeletons together in one exhibit.
The digging supervisor
H.J. Siber
Click images for a larger view!
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See
you around in 2005!