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Tony's
Tree
On
May
13, 1998
,
young Tony Moreno of
Colorado
Springs
visited
Cañon
City
with his classmates for a tour of Dinosaur Depot and the Garden Park
Fossil Area. Before the
morning was over Tony, celebrating his 15th birthday, made a
discovery in the Fossil Area which was to prove very exciting.
During
the Fossil Area tour Tony wandered off the trail and found an
unusual rock. Being the
curious type he kicked away some dirt to see more and began to get
excited. Then he did
just the right thing. Tony’s
guide had said what we say to all visitors, if you find something
unusual, come and tell us about it.
The
guide that day was
Pat
Monaco
,
a very experienced field worker.
When Tony announced that he had found a bone she took the
group back to see it. She
told the group that Tony had found a very large piece of petrified
wood.
That
afternoon, Pat took Dinosaur Depot curator, Donna Engard, out to the
locality to confirm what Tony had found and began to plan how the
specimen could be recovered. The
piece was definitely petrified wood and looked to be larger than any
found in the Garden Park Fossil Area before.
A quick probing around the piece exposed edges which looked
to be about one square foot, a size which could easily be removed in
our regular Sunday field time. Because
of the very public location, right on the Marsh Quarry Interpretive
Trail, we contacted the Bureau of Land Management to get our small
excavation permit OK’ed for a quick dig near the trail.
We got the OK with the advisement that if the piece turned
into something larger we would need the Paleontologist’s
permission to enlarge the dig.
Sunday morning the field crew arrived to remove the piece of wood
and then move on to our previously planned work for the day.
The BLM has a large volunteer group working on the trail and
we had lots of fun explaining our little project to them.
Along for the day was Harley Armstrong, Bureau of Land
Management Paleontologist. As
we began to dig, we soon discovered the “piece” was just that, a
chunk frost heaved above the log from which it has broken.
As we dug, the log underneath got bigger... and bigger.
With Harley there to give us the official OK, we continued to
dig without waiting for Monday to get a Quarry permit.
The
joke of the day became pointing out the pillowcase Engard brought
along to put the “piece” of wood in.
The trail crew began to stop by on their breaks to see how much
longer the log was getting.
At the end of the day, two members of the crew went home to get
their campers so that they could stay to protect the site of what was
fast becoming a major dig.
On
Monday, day two of the dig, we began to explore the extent of the
log and soon realized that what we thought on Sunday was the base of
the tree, was in fact a split in the trunk, with the lower branch
heading on into the hillside.
What we thought was the top was actually the base of the
tree. This meant that the log had the potential to get very long
indeed.
We
began the arduous task of enlarging the quarry so that we would be
able to get down in it to work.
We needed to dig far enough below the specimen to be able to
put a jacket on it.
In this case we needed to dig about a foot below the log all
the way around. At the same time, we dug into the hill to try to
find the top end of the tree.
Once
word got out, the result of the media blitz was a steady stream of
visitors starting at
8:30
in the morning and continuing until
8:30
in the evening. The
people from around
Cañon
City
just wanted to see the first major find from the Garden Park Fossil
Area that was going to stay here in the community.
There was also daily speculation in the Cañon City Daily
Record about the ultimate length of the log.
After
a week of hard work, a big boost for the dig crew came during the
long Memorial Day weekend. Some
of the visitors began asking if they could help.
They wanted to see what it was like to work on a dig.
A number of them come for a couple of hours and a few got
hooked and stayed longer, one for three days.
The extra, fresh muscle and enthusiasm made the work progress
more quickly. They all
concluded, however, that the work was a lot harder than it looked
from outside the pit.
Our
biggest worry and obstacle to getting to the “end” of the log was
the enormous boulder hanging over the quarry.
Just as we felt we shouldn’t dig any closer to it, we came to
a small crack in the log, with a much wider crack about 10” beyond.
This was where we could remove a chunk and take out the main
log without having the boulder come down on us.
After
finding several cracks, the tree was separated into five pieces and
jacketing began.
A protective covering of wet paper towels was put over the
entire surface of the specimens.
This created a parting layer between the rock and plaster so
the jacket would be easier to get off later in the lab at Dinosaur
Depot. Burlap, mixed with plaster in wash basins, was applied in two
layers over the paper towels on the smaller pieces.
The largest piece was reinforced with a 2 x 4 for extra support
and covered with three layers of burlap.
These pieces were left to dry for a day while waiting to
finalize the arrangements for lifting the log out of the quarry.
Tom
McComb, Owner-Operator of the sawmill on
Red
Canyon Road
volunteered to do the operation for us.
His first task was to gently get the forks of his machine just
under the edge of the jacket and “pop” the log loose.
This was accomplished in expert fashion and then the log was
taken to the trailer. This
process was repeated with the other piece that was too large to carry.
The quarry was closed and the landscape restored until Fall.
The
dig to find the rest of Tony’s Tree was held over the Labor Day
weekend. Dinosaur Depot
had planned a special event for the community and the dig was a part
of it. While the insects
had slowed down somewhat, there was a record heat, not the cool
weather that was hoped for. We
again borrowed the shelter frame from the Bureau of Land Management to
help shade the quarry. Our
plan was to begin the work before the weekend so the log would be
exposed by Saturday.
The
first order of business for reopening the dig was to get the rock out
of the way. The equipment
we had lined up was cancelled because rain prevented the operator from
getting to the quarry safely. Thursday morning we resorted to Plan B,
the fun way of moving it... “Mongo”.
Here
in
Cañon
City
we know volunteer Tim Seber
as “Mr. Bones”, the
life size walking dinosaur skeleton.
He is also a former professional landscaper.
His experience with this type of work was invaluable during the
Stegosaurus dig and has
earned him his other nickname at paleontological digs.
With
the end of the log well protected we proceeded to dig a hole large
enough for the rock to be pushed into.
After
using jacks and much muscle power, the boulder was moved into the
hole and out of the way. The
end of the tree survived just fine.
Friday morning at
6:30
the very welcome sound of a tractor woke Engard at the quarry.
Volunteer Jay Hanson asked Joe Stock to come out to open the
new quarry section for us. Jay
saw the work that went into moving the rock and knew we would
appreciate not having to open the quarry by hand, too.
Joe made very quick work of opening the pit with his backhoe
and the crew arrived later to find the bulk of the planned work
already done. Instead,
we began to expose the top of the log for its debut to the public on
Saturday.
As we
exposed the top of Tony’s Tree, we found a lot of branching.
Most were just stubs like those on the lower trunk.
Two of them, however, extended about 30 inches from the log.
Unfortunately they were only preserved as carbon traces and
there was no way to physically collect them.
We recorded them carefully in pictures and continued to dig.
The smaller the log got, the more it had cracked over time and
matrix had filled the cracks. Each
of these was a potential break and it became apparent very quickly
that this dig could not be prolonged or we would have a lot of
fragments to prepare. Even
so, the tree had a lot of character and beauty and we took time to
admire its convolutions and patterns.
By
Sunday afternoon, things were well enough exposed at the larger end to
begin the jacketing process.
Each piece was carefully pulled aside to do as little
fracturing as possible and then encased according to its special
needs.
By the end of Monday afternoon we had finished!
In all about 20 feet of Tony’s tree had been recovered in 14
sections.
All that remained was to clean up the quarry and begin the
restoration of the site.
We will not need to reopen the quarry in the future, as there
are no more specimens to recover in this area.
In
mid November, after completing preparation on the Small Stegosaurus
and sending it off to the Denver Museum of Science and Nature, the
first piece of Tony’s Tree arrived at Dinosaur Depot.
Colorado Quarries of Cañon City, who helped us handle the Stegosaurus
jacket, moved the main jacket of the log into the lab.
The jacket was already on the new sand table.
The table was a great help in preparing Tony’s tree and will
be used to prepare other large specimens in the future.
The
new sand table is a great help in the laboratory.
The tree is very heavy and unevenly shaped.
The sand conforms to the shape of the tree providing support,
along with well-placed wedges, to keep the tree in a stable position.
This helps keep the tree from breaking when chiseling off the jacket
and later the matrix.
After
cleaning all of the jacket and matrix off of Tony’s Tree, it was
placed on display in the
Garden
Park
section of the newly renovated museum.
This twenty-foot tree is 155 million years old and up to now,
the only Jurassic tree found on the eastern side of the Continental
Divide.
Visit
us at the Dinosaur Depot Museum to see Tony's Tree and talk to the
volunteers that recovered and prepared it for exhibit and to be
preserved for the future.
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