This Hadrosaurus metatarsal we found in the Hell Creek formation of North Dakota near Bowman in 2018. As you can see in the first picture on the left, it was in a really bad condition when found.
The topside has been exposed to the sun, rain, snow, and frost for some time and is very weathered. The first action is to add as much glue as possible to save what is left. As is visible, some pieces are missing, and part of the inner bone is visible. I could only find some of the missing pieces, the rest must have been washed away by the water.
After digging a small trench around the bone, we wrapped it in thick aluminium foil and fixed it with duct tape.
Unpacking is also an exciting moment, although not as exciting as the moment when you discover it in the field. With this metatarsal, it was more than half a year ago that I found it and wrapped it.
Unwrapping this metatarsal was a moment of disappointment. In my memory, it was bad but not as bad as it turned out it was, as you can see in the pictures below.
The bone was broken in two big pieces and a lot of small parts. The first step was removing the dirt that came with it because I used a lot of glue. When this was done the shape became visible and the two big pieces fitted together quite well but only on a very small surface. I glued these parts together with a kind of gelly superglue and some of the original structure became clear.
In the end, it turned out very well. Of course, it is not a perfect bone but most of the pieces came together quite well. I never fill the cracks and don't add any missing parts. It is what it is. I still have some pieces left that belong to the bone but don't seem to fit anywhere nicely.
