Friday

Sweeping in the Desert

It had to be the saddest sight for anyone driving by, a lone guy standing in the middle of the desert with a broom sweeping, the desert will never be clean.  But that was the approach to find more of the fossil horse.  It began with sweeping the arroyo then on to the banks looking for more teeth, followed by an examination of the road surface.  All of which produced nothing but a few small teeth fragments.  Since the working hypothesis was the teeth were initially uncovered when the road to the Painted Pony Resort was created and the formation of the arroyo uncovered them a second time, it seemed reasonable that the skeleton might be found deeper along the edge of the road, hence the lone man standing in the desert carefully sweeping with a broom.  While removing soil then sifting the dirt through 1/4" mesh to recover any small fragments some anomalous material next to the road began to surface.  Poorly preserved and crumbling the structure appears to be part of a pelvis, see here and here and here for comparison images.  Though conformation of the pelvis will have to await further cleaning and isolation of additional skeletal fragments.
A clean arroyo with possible horse pelvis.


Close up of uncovered pelvis?  The round structure may be the crushed acetabulum.



4 comments:

  1. This is so interesting to see what you have found on the ground just walking around. Now with the sweeping the area it should even get better!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Just making the desert cleaner for guests, sad so sad, shaking head.

    ReplyDelete
  3. tee hee, what will be said about Rodeo now?

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'm not sure? Perhaps that residents are extremely fastidious, or conscientious about the areas appearance. The alternative is that I have a massive case of OCD.

    ReplyDelete