Featured Photo by Mandi O’Grady
Story by Noah McLane and Alyssa Williams
Middle Tennessee State University professor Alan Brown brought a triceratops skull from Montana to the Earth Experience Museum in Murfreesboro.
Brown is the co-founder of the Earth Experience Museum and a professor of Earth Sciences at MTSU. According to the museum website, Earth Experience is “the first natural history museum in middle Tennessee” and the only natural history museum in Murfreesboro. It is home to a wide collection of fossils, minerals, rocks and dinosaur bones.
Every summer, Brown takes a team to the ranch Baisch’s Dinosaur Digs, located in Hell Creek, to dig up fossils donated to other museums or to take back to his own. However, it was not on his annual trip that he found the triceratops skull. The owner of the ranch is a friend of Brown’s, and he called Brown last spring to ask if he would take the fossil back to Murfreesboro.
The skull was found under the hot Montana sun at a dig site in Hell Creek. According to Brown in an interview by Murfreesboro.com, the museum team took a four-day trip — driving around 3,300 miles overall — to collect the 66 million-year-old skull.
When they arrived at the dig site, the fragile skull was mostly covered in plaster to protect the fragile bone. The only part that was left to be plastered was the frill, which had not been exposed to the elements. They lifted the skull, finished plastering the frill and packed the almost 2,500-pound fossil to go home.
It is a tough process to prepare the fossil for display. The work requires delicate hands and lots of patience, but Earth Experience preparators Joseph Nochera and Mandi O’Grady are impassioned and persistent.
The pair start by drawing a grid on a small section of the plaster, usually no more than 10 square inches. Underneath the plaster are layers of burlap and foil that protect the bone from debris. The preparators then use the cast saw to carefully remove the plaster and burlap from each individual square.
Nochera explained how long this intricate process could take. “I’ve been telling everybody a year, could even be more.”
Once they peel the foil back, they can begin the meticulous process of removing waste material like minerals, dirt and anything else that may have snuck in during the initial plastering process.
The pair says their biggest challenge will be dealing with iron that may have fused to the bone. Fossils from Hell Creek are known to have a high iron content. O’Grady said iron permeated the bone as it sat for millions of years waiting to be unearthed.
“It’s almost impossible to remove… sometimes,” said Nochera with an optimistic smirk.
The triceratops skull is the largest piece Nochera has worked on, so he came up with his own technique for removing the plaster.
“I used to do this at Yale, at the Peabody Museum,” where he received his training, “but this is something much bigger than anything I’ve done before.”
Museum attendees also have a chance to see the removal of the plaster cast. The skull is prominently located right next to a towering Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton replica, nicknamed Frank, and a struthiomimus replica, which resembles a raptor.
There are hundreds of fossils on display at the museum, but the triceratops skull is by far the largest. Museum employees are pleased the artifact has received news coverage by local publications, and they are hopeful the skull will be a popular attraction.
On weekdays, the Earth Experience Museum is free to MTSU students who wish to see the triceratops skull and other artifacts for themselves.
As for the museum employees, this project holds a special place in their hearts. Once all is said and done, O’Grady plans to get a triceratops tattoo to commemorate this experience.
To contact News Editor Kailee Shores, Assistant News Editor Alyssa Williams and Assistant News Editor Zoe Naylor, email [email protected].
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