I know that you are very busy finishing up all the details of your school year, but, in your spare time, you might want to check out some of these web sites before you arrive on June 12. Open up your browser at the same time you are reading and clicking on the text in this letter.

On June 15, we will be traveling by University vans to Colby, Kansas, where we will be staying at the Holiday Inn Express.  We will be staying there until  about June 21;you might want to tell your family members that the phone number at the motel is 785-462-8787.

Colby is the county seat of Thomas County , but the mosasaur dig site is to the south in Logan County . Driving to the dig site, we will pass through Russell Springs,past the Butterfield Trail Museum.  We will stop there on one of the days of the dig, particularly if it is raining. Two years ago, we stayed in Oakley, Kansas, and visited the Fick Fossil and History Museum , where they have a good collection of fossils. This would be another good museum to visit if the weather is uncooperative.

If you check out a physiographic map of Kansas , you will see that the dig site is in the Niobrara Formation of the Smoky Hill Member. This chalk layer was laid down during the Late Cretaceous Period when the middle of the North American continent was an interior sea. At that time, many fish and aquatic reptiles are living in this shallow sea, but even more surprising, is that pterosaurs, flying reptiles, were flying over this water 200 miles from the closest shore.  Their remains have been found in the Smoky Hill Chalk, including at our dig site.

The first mosasaur was discovered in a cave in France.  Since then, many fossil mosasaurs have been found in North America. A team from the University of Wisconsin Geology Museum dug out a mosasaur in 1988 and that fossil is now hanging from the ceiling of the museum.  We returned to that site two years ago and located another mosasaur. Last year we brought back large blocks of the fossil and we will return this year to bring back more.

To learn more about mosasaurs, visit the Virtual Mosasaur Museum. The Platecarpus is the most commonly found genus of mosasaurs in the Smoky Hill Chalk. You can learn a lot about the animal life in the ancient oceans of Kansas by looking into the many pages of this web site.  We have also visited the new Sternberg Museum of Natural History in Hays, Kansas. On this web site you will see pictures of the primitive fish Xiphactinus which are like the fish that we have found at the mosasaur site. Xiphactinus is a primitive teleost or bony fish and probably looked and acted like the modern tarpon. We also found shark vertebrae and shark coprolites. Other Kansas fossils can be found at the Kansas Fossils web site.

I hope your tour through these sites will increase your knowledge and anticipation of this upcoming paloentology adventure. I am looking forward to meeting you and wish you a speedy end to your school year.

Marilyn Hanson
A Lead Teacher of
Paleontology:Course Development and Field Experience