Assorted Research Photographs
My faithful truck Babe lost in her ruminations on existentialism while waiting patiently as I do stratigraphic work in the Smoky Hill
Chalk. This and the following nine photos were taken during field work in 1987 and '88 that was part of my dissertation research
and formed the basis for the e-publication on inferring stratigraphic position of specimens (See Bennett, 2000b). Note the massive
bioturbated beds and prominent ferruginous seams at left. Off in the distance you can see the Western Interior Seaway stretching
away south some 1000 km to the Gulf of Mexico.
My fieldwork was aimed at placing individual outcrops in a stratigraphic context so that stratigraphic information could
be obtained for specimens collected long ago as long as their locality data was good. The Smoky Hill Chalk is flat-lying
and full of bentonites and other readily identifiable isochronous marker beds. Here is an example of a bentonite, much
altered by the deposition of reddish-brown iron oxide and white gypsum. Note how the seam is obscured on the
weathered surface, but clearly visible on fresh chalk.
Here is a view of part of an outcrop with seven different bentonite seams visible. Scale = 30 cm.
Babe basking in the sunshine with Monument Rocks in the background.
See them? This was taken at Monument Rocks and there are at least three large Inoceramus (Platyceramus) platinus
fossils exposed at the surface. Most people don't see them and just walk right over them.
Here is a closer view of one of the Inoceramus (Platyceramus) platinus fossils. It is 76 cm or
30" in diameter, but may originally have been bigger (note the 52 mm lens cap in the lower left).
The left humerus of a large individual of Pteranodon that I stumbled
across during my stratigraphic work. Poorly preserved, but pretty big.
Humerus is roughly 30 cm; estimated wingspan is in excess of 6 m.
Warning sign at Monument Rocks. Of course, my stratigraphic work meant that I was climbing on
crumbling, falling rocks all day for most of one summer and part of the next.
A memorable sunset at Monument Rocks—a rainstorm moved through heading east and it began to clear just as the sun was
setting, painting the Rocks with a beautiful reddish light. Note the long shadows in the foreground.
It's not so easy to get around in western Kansas when it rains and the roads get slippery. Here Babe,
who only had two-wheel-drive, recovers at the top of a slippery slope after spending a lot of time
spinning her wheels trying to get out of the ditch. Note the badly damaged ditch at right.
Here is another view of Babe at the hilltop. She and I waited for hours until we thought things had
dried up enough to proceed. Little did we know that it wasn't dry enough and just a hop, skip, and
stone's throw up the road, it curved to the left, dropped down steeply, and then took a sharp curve
to the right before going across a very narrow wooden bridge over a flooded creek—a bridge that
like the road was covered with slippery mud and did not have guardrails. Had I touched the brakes
at any time while going downhill we would have slipped off the road, but somehow we made it
down and across the bridge and right into the middle of a deep mud puddle on the other side!
Dorsal and anterior views of the right humerus from Peru. Note that although
the quality of preservation seems more or less comparable to that from the
Santana Formation of Brasil, the color of the specimen is quite different; a
dark slaty blue-gray. (See Bennett, 1989).
The first sailed pelycosaur model, here with a smooth sail lacking cross-bars, at work in Karl Niklas' low speed wind-tunnel
with helium-filled soap bubbles used to visualize air flow around the sail. Note the convoluted bubble tracks in the lee of the
sail and the straight tracks above the sail. The tracks of soap bubbles were digitized using Niklas' equipment, then
processed with his software. (See Bennett, 1996c).
The instrumented sailed pelycosaur model that I used for the heat transfer experiments in my low speed wind-tunnel in front (left)
and left side (right) views. The turntable on which the model was mounted can be seen in both photos. Scale bar is 30 cm.
The "Mesaverde" Formation in the vicinity of the Case localities in north-central Wyoming. I collected here over a number of years
in response to stories from Larry Martin to the effect that Don Rasmussen had discovered well-preserved 3D bones that he could
not collect. Larry made it sound like the place was full of pterosaur bones, but I suspect he just wanted me to go and collect there
because Don had collected some hesperornithiform bones and Larry wanted more. I went up and discovered relatively abundant
small fragments of pterosaur bone, but after a while it became clear that almost all I was getting were light flakes of long bone shaft
wall, and all the heavier and readily identifiable fragments and elements were being deposited elsewhere. If only I knew where.
An exposure of the Jurassic Sundance Formation, where the KU field team collected
fossil insects and fishes. This unit is a varved deposit from a shoreline lagoon and has a
very depauperate fauna. Larry Martin compared the deposit to those of the Solnhofen
Limestone and was hoping for fossil birds. I am not sure the comparison is really a
good one, but with plenty of fishes preserved in the deposits and abundant trackways
of pterodactyloids elsewhere in the Sundance, I was hoping for some pterosaurs. After
all, the Solnhofen Limestone has produced nearly 200 pterosaurs and only 7 or 8
birds, so we should have found pterosaurs before we found birds. No such luck!
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