After a successful expedition earlier this summer, the Western Science Center crew returned to the Menefee Formation of New Mexico last week to search for more fossils of dinosaurs and other creatures that roamed the area 80 million years ago. As before, we were joined by colleagues from the Zuni Dinosaur Institute for Geosciences, students from the University of Arizona - Tucson, and volunteers from the Southwest Paleontological Society. Unlike the first trip, when we spent most of our time digging at two dinosaur quarries, this trip was mostly spent exploring for new fossil sites.This bone fragment is one of the pieces we collected while prospecting. The outer surface of this piece is riddled with deep branching grooves. This sort of texture is present only on the bony horn cores of ceratopsids, the big horned dinosaurs, such as Triceratops. When the dinosaur was alive, these grooves would have been occupied by blood vessels supplying the sheath of keratin (think fingernails) that covered the bony horn core. The photo shows the Menefee horn core fragment next to the brow horns of Ava, a horned dinosaur skull on display in WSC's "Great Wonders" exhibit. Ava's horns have the same texture. 
We will spend the next year preparing and studying the fossils we brought back from this summer's Menefee expeditions, and we will have much more to say about them in the very near future! Post by Curator Dr. Andrew McDonald