Hunting buried treasure

Quay County teems with dinosaur bones beneath its soil, and it's up to volunteers at Mesalands Community College's Dinosaur Museum to get them out of the ground.

Axel Hungerbuehler, curator and the college's natural sciences faculty member, organized the latest five-day "dinosaur dig" last week. About 10 people - ranging from a 16-year-old dinosaur buff to Mesalands students to a veteran schoolteacher - took part in the paleontology fieldwork.

The dig site lies in southern Quay County where the caprock falls away, revealing exposed layers of rock. The location remains a secret except to museum staff and volunteers. It's in a remote area that requires driving down a gravel road, then a dirt road and finally descending a steep, primitive trail in a high-clearance vehicle. The only other beings around were grazing cattle.

Hungerbuehler said he found out in 2007 about the site from the landowner who was touring the Tucumcari museum with his family.

"He mentioned, 'Yes, we have bones on our land, and I have two buckets of bones on my ranch we've picked up over the years,'" Hungerbuehler recalled.

Since then, Mesalands has organized dinosaur digs at the site two to three times a year.

"He's really excited by what we find here, and we keep him updated," Hungerbuehler said of the landowner.

Over the years, more than 40 fossils uncovered by field teams ended up on display at the museum. Dozens more are stored in the facility's laboratory that await dissection and analysis.

It's hard to believe now amid Quay County's arid climate, but a huge river system - bigger than the modern-day Mississippi River - ran through the region about 200 million years ago, Hungerbuehler said. Semi-aquatic or freshwater animals that died were deposited there, along with a few land animals that washed into the river.

Kneepad-wearing volunteers stooped to employ shovels, sledgehammers and chisels to get through big rocks or soil, then used screwdrivers, icepicks, dental picks and paint brushes for more delicate work.

During the first day of the dig, they found eight or nine fossilized teeth from long-dead animals. Fish scales that glittered in the sun were found embedded in rocks on day two.

Many fossils, including several skulls, found at the site primarily were phytosaurs, a bigger ancestor of the modern-day crocodile.

When asked about the field work's most significant discovery in recent years, Hungerbuehler didn't want to elaborate but acknowledged "two scientifically important finds we have in the works" that were "previously unknown to science or very incompletely known."

He pointed out a 3-foot-long section of stone covered in plaster gauze to protect it before it is moved and taken to the museum's lab. He said it was the lower jawbone of a phytosaur. It later took two or three volunteers about two days to gingerly dig a trench around the specimen so they could remove it.

In such a remote area, one might think the biggest hazards to the volunteers would be rattlesnakes, tarantulas or the occasional mountain lion. But Hungerbuehler said those pale to dealing with weather conditions.

"There are a lot of dangers in the Southwest, but heat exhaustion is the only real serious danger," he said. "If you have students who aren't from here and haven't grown up in the Southwest, they underestimate (the risks)."

It's why the team generally ends its on-site labors about noon, then works in the air-conditioned lab at the museum during the afternoon.

Hungerbuehler said digging for fossils often proves to be tedious work.

"You ask yourself why you're doing this, which is then peaked by the very rare euphoria," he said.

By the end of the week Friday, Hungerbuehler said they'd dug up about 30 specimens - a fairly typical haul for a dinosaur dig.

Kyleigh Magruder, a Mesalands student from Washington State, said she likes what the museum does for increasing public awareness of dinosaurs, but she likes working in the laboratory more.

"The research comes first," she said.

Back at the dig site, Lovington chemistry teacher Janet Bruelhart finds what appears to be a vertebra from a to-be-determined animal. Hungerbuehler and field assistant Richard Power of Huntsville, Alabama, help her wrap it in toilet paper, then coat it with plastered gauze to protect it until it's removed and examined at the lab.

"You could tell (it was a find) with the parent rock just by looking at it," Bruelhart said. "I think it's a minor find but, nonetheless, it's a find."