Riassunto analitico
In this thesis we’ll talk about the process of cleaning a fossil jacket containing the remains of a Xiphactinus audax, a fossil fish from the Cretaceous period (the last period of the Mesozoic era), excavated in the Niorbara Formation of the Smoky Hills Chalk, in Kansas (USA).
This project was born by a collaboration of the private company Zoic srl., the university Università degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia and the university Università degli studi di Trieste. The three institutions worked together to give a couple of students all the necessary resources to clean and prepare the fossil mentioned before. The project was executed in a laboratory set up by Zoic, in a room located in the geology department of Università di Trieste.
What we did was trying to map the visible skeletal elements before starting to work on the jacket itself, to later confront them with the final result.
What we found was really interesting, as in the jacket more bones than initially thought were found.
In the end we were able to save most of what was found, and it was enough to give our fish its ID with the correct genus and species, as well as to make some consideration about the destiny of fossils like this one and their potential use to draw the general public closer to topics such as paleontology and natural history, and how collaboration between private companies and public universities can give both realities mutual benefits.
|
Abstract
In this thesis we’ll talk about the process of cleaning a fossil jacket containing the remains of a Xiphactinus audax, a fossil fish from the Cretaceous period (the last period of the Mesozoic era), excavated in the Niorbara Formation of the Smoky Hills Chalk, in Kansas (USA).
This project was born by a collaboration of the private company Zoic srl., the university Università degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia and the university Università degli studi di Trieste. The three institutions worked together to give a couple of students all the necessary resources to clean and prepare the fossil mentioned before. The project was executed in a laboratory set up by Zoic, in a room located in the geology department of Università di Trieste.
What we did was trying to map the visible skeletal elements before starting to work on the jacket itself, to later confront them with the final result.
What we found was really interesting, as in the jacket more bones than initially thought were found.
In the end we were able to save most of what was found, and it was enough to give our fish its ID with the correct genus and species, as well as to make some consideration about the destiny of fossils like this one and their potential use to draw the general public closer to topics such as paleontology and natural history, and how collaboration between private companies and public universities can give both realities mutual benefits.
|
