Students from Wright State's Celina and Dayton campuses explore a dig site in South Dakota with chisels, awls and brushes. It's meticulous work to uncover an object without damaging it in the process. Once this 300-pound hadrosaur bone is resting on the equivalent of an earth pedestal, they begin preparing a field jacket using layers of aluminum foil and quick-drying plaster, shown in the picture at right. When that area dries and holds the fragile bone in place, they'll carefully turn over the bone and prepare the exposed side with foil and plaster.
A group of geology students at Wright State University-Lake Campus have a big project ahead of them - restoration of a 250-million-year-old bone they dug up and brought back from the South Dakota Badlands. [More