Even though the Valley of the Mastodons exhibit is now open, it doesn't mean that our mastodon work has moved to the backburner. On the contrary, we're now doing more mastodon work than ever before!The field jacket shown above is associated with a partial mastodon skeleton currently on display in Valley of the Mastodons; I've previously featured the axis vertebra and the tusks from this mastodon on Fossil Fridays. This jacket has been partially prepared, but there are still several bones present. Some of these are highlighted in the color-coded version below:
The blue area is (I think) the first cervical vertebra, or atlas. Yellow is a rib, and red are two thoracic vertebrae. There are also several unmarked and unidentified fragments. The thoracic vertebrae have the very tall neural spines that are typical of anterior thoracics in animals with large, heavy heads.We'll be removing these bones over the next few weeks, and as they're completed they'll be moving into the Valley of the Mastodons exhibit along with the rest of this mastodon.Next week I'll be in Calgary, attending the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology annual meeting. Many paleontologists will be live-tweeting the conference, including me (at least on occasion) and @MaxMastodon.