Dinosaurs in Patagonia Argentina

Travel to Argentina and learn about dinosaurs in Patagonia.

Host: In the oil fields just outside Rincon de Los Sauces about 70 miles from Aca Mahuida, another Argentine paleontologist Jorge Calvo is working on a dig of Sauropod classes. Rain prevented them from working their primary dig on this particular day but they showed us a new discovery of what they believe maybe a titanosaurus femur and fibula just a half-mile from their camp. The bad weather in one respect is good since the rain delay gave them time for more exploration of the area. Jorge Calvo: What we have found is Sauropod bones. The Sauropods are huge dinosaurs with a long neck and long tail and they walk in four legs and the material that we have here is humerus, the bone of the forelimb and the other one is a femur. This area Rincon de Los Sauces is very good to find dinosaurs because the outgrowths belong to the cretaceous area, so when you work here you may found a lot of few pieces of small pieces of dinosaur bones so it’s easy to find new material. Host: So that’s why you go walking when it rains and you keep working. Jorge Calvo: The only way to find dinosaur is working and look in the ground. Host: On the one hand there’s some comfort in the knowledge. There lies in these hills are treasured about the important dinosaur fossils to find, excavate, retrieve and examine. On the other it could be a little disconcerting to know they work ahead may last several generations. In Ucan, at the University of Comoway Paleontolgy Lab, another of the many steps in unraveling the many prehistoric being. The time that’s required in this science is staggering. Finding the fossils is only one element, the first step if you will of the long discovery process. Jorge Calvo: I am cleaning this bone, it’s the dorsal of a Sauropod and I am taking now the rock separating the rock from the bone. We have to be very careful doing this because sometimes you can broke the bone. So we use brushes and hammers to do that This we’ll take at least three weeks. Host: Jorge described his work and for that matter with that of his contemporaries as an attempt to put one letter in the entire page of an entire book about dinosaurs to make some contribution to the understanding of the dinosaur’s family tree.