When this jacket sets and dries the
block is rigid and stiff enough to lift and turn over; the remains of
the pedestal are trimmed off and the under surface is plastered like
the rest. With large blocks it is often necessary to paste into the
jacket, on upper or both sides, boards, scantling or sticks of wood to
secure additional rigidity. For should the block "rack," or become
shattered inside, even though no fragments were lost, the specimen
would be more or less completely ruined.
[Illustration: Fig. 41.--A Dinosaur skeleton, prospected and ready
for encasing in plaster bandages and removal in blocks.
(_Corythosaurus_, Red Deer River, Alberta.)]
The next stage will be packing in boxes with straw, hay or other
materials, hauling to the railway and shipment to New York.
Arrived at the Museum, the boxes are unpacked, each block laid out on
a table, the upper side of its plaster jacket softened with water and
cut away, and the preparation of the bone begins. Always it is more or
less cracked and broken up, but the fragments lie in their natural
relations. Each piece must be lifted out, thoroughly cleaned from rock
and dirt, and the fractured surfaces cemented together again. Parts of
bones, especially the interior, are often rotted into dust while the
harder outer surface is still preserved. The dust must be scraped out,
the interior filled with a plaster cement, and the surface pieces
re-set in position. Very often a steel rod is set into the plaster
filling the interior of a bone, to secure additional strength.
Pages:
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94