Field Museum’s Post

Time to grind. ⛏️ Before fossils ever make it into our collections or displays, they have to be carefully freed from the rocky matrix around them. 🪨 Our preparatory team uses a combination of mechanical and chemical methods under the careful eye of a microscope to remove the matrix without leaving a scratch on the fossil. 🛠️ The fossil you see here is called "The Beast:" a massive block of reinforced plaster that contains part of a large duck-billed hadrosaur (plus a bonus turtle and fish). 🐢 This hadrosaur is named for Missouri, the state where it was discovered and a rare place to find dinosaur bones. 🦴