There’s not a great deal to report on today. The rain finally let up for a few hours, allowing us to drain the bottom of a very muddy pit. We worked furiously all morning trying to complete the trench around the lumbar vertebrae and flipper that we’ve been working on since last fall. The density of the bone is still causing problems for us, as there is a large amount of bone in the back of our trench. Moreover, even though the rain stopped the sediment in the outcrop above the pit is saturated with water, which leaks into our trenches, making a slippery, muddy mess.

Even so, at around 4:00 pm we finally got a top jacket over these bones:

About 10 minutes later it started raining, and it’s still raining as I write this. Supposedly it will stop sometime tonight.

We’ll probably work on other bones (the ones under the foil) tomorrow to give the pit some time to dry out; we’re going to need solid footing to flip this jacket, which we’ll probably attempt on Wednesday. I’m a little concerned about turning this jacket because we have so much bone right against the edge of the jacket in the back (right behind the short bracing board), which meant that we didn’t get a good undercut in the back. We’ll know soon if the undercut was deep enough.