Drew's Blog

I've been helping at the Price Science Museum here in Utah for almost a month now, and during that time I learned that the museum has these little plaster models that they give out for free. A few weeks ago I got two of these plaster models that were based off of the claws of two different dinosaur species and painted them as a small arts and crafts project. Which I blogged about previously. Well earlier this week I got the other three plaster models they give out as a way to complete the collection, and to give myself another little arts and crafts project. Here are the three models after I finished painting them: This first model is based off of a number of dolls that archeologists have found in the area. These dolls were made by a tribe of Native Americans that used to live in this area, and some of them could apparently get very elaborate and detailed. The museum even displays some of the real things in their archeology section. This second model is based off of a fossilized Tr

 So this Wednesday (7/19/23) I learned something new about cars. Specifically, that the AC systems of cars include a device called an AC compressor, and that AC compressors can blow up. Here's the story behind this lesson: On Wednesday this week while I was driving into Price I suddenly noticed that my AC was not blowing cool air. Now I had a can of AC fluid in the trunk of my car, along with a hose to recharge a car's AC system. So I simply pulled over into a parking lot in town and began the process of recharging my AC. Now when I initially plugged in the AC hose to get a reading on the AC pressure in my car I got a reading of 0 Psi (which in hindsight should have been a red flag of a bigger issue). However, before driving out to Utah Dad and I made sure that my car's AC was topped off, but we kept running into issues with getting an accurate pressure reading with the hose we were using (the same hose that I used on Wednesday). So I figured that the hose itself must be br

 Today was a day off for me and I decided to spend it doing some exploring. I've been looking up State Parks to visit while I'm in Utah and one that caught my eye was a place called Lake Utah State Park. Unfortunately it turns out this park doesn't really have any kind of hiking trails to explore. And it is mostly just a place for people to launch their boats from if they want to do some sailing around the lake. If I had a boat or a fishing pole I probably would have had some more to do, but I don't, so I mostly just wound up walking around the docks and parking lots that surround the lake. The view was pretty nice though. After I left the park I stumbled on a large mall that grabbed my interest enough to have me come inside and explore, and I was not disappointed. Inside I found: A store for geeks and nerds to buy supplies for their costumes A firing range for air-powered NERF guns An art gallery that included statues of characters from the Transformers cartoon And a m

   Over the past month I've been working at the prehistoric museum in Price ever Monday as a part of my internship. And I just completed my first project at the museum this week. Back in June I was given a fossil that was completely encased in a protective jacket and was asked to open the jacket up and remove the fossil inside from the surrounding rock that it had been encased in. As well as glue back any pieces of the fossil that were broken off. Here's what the fossil looked like when I was initially given it. Before And here's what it looked like when I was finished. After This fossil was a neck vertebra from an animal called a Polycotylidae. This animal was a marine reptile that lived along side the dinosaurs, although it was not a dinosaur itself. What's interesting about Polycotylidae was that it falls into a group of marine reptiles called the Plesiosaurs, who are iconic for having very long slender necks (kind of like reptilian swans). But for some reason Polyco

 Yesterday while working at the museum of Price my supervisor and his coworkers needed to pick up a new fossil to work on form the fossil collection kept at Utah University. Here are some of the things I saw there: This mammoth skull was the most interesting piece in the collection because unlike everything else in there this skull is not a fossil. It is still normal bone, possibly even with some mummified soft tissue.

 Yesterday I was given some plaster models of dinosaur claws from the museum in Price, and I spent my afternoon today painting them. Here's how it went. Before After This first model is of the hand claw of a relative of Therizinosaurus. A group of dinosaurs that were herbivorous, but also had unusually long claws, presumably for grabbing tree branches and fighting off predators.    The second model is of the "killer claw" of a Dromaeosaurus, the family of dinosaurs that included the infamous Velociraptor, as well as its relatives such as Deinonychus and Utahraptor.

 Here are some pictures I took of the office building I'm located at while interning for the Bureau of Land Management. These first three are of my own cubical. The bones you see are from the skeletonized remains of a coyote and goat that I found off the side of a highway near where I'm living. Because the bones had already been stripped bear by exposure, I decided to clean them up and bring them to the office for decoration. The rocks you see contain the fossilized remains of prehistoric squid. Said fossils were left behind in my work area by the person who used it before me. The photos after this are of the rest the BLM office building. The photos include the building's main hallway, and some of my neighboring cubicles.