Easily one of my coolest finds yet! A complete Hyaenodon horridus skull from the white river formation of Nebraska.
This was my very first day of fossil hunting on my trip in the United States (2022). It was about 1 o'clock and I hadn't found much yet, I decided to take my very first small break of the day as it was about 41 degrees Celsius (106 Fahrenheit).
After my small 5-minute break I continued fossil hunting, I looked down and I saw three teeth sticking out of the ground. I was very thrilled when I recognized they were carnivore teeth.
I expected it to be a jaw, but obviously I was hoping for a skull. After quite a bit of digging, my wish came true, and it turned out to be a Hyaenodon skull! Another added bonus was that as we were digging a trench around the skull, we found an oreodont skull laying right next to it (See if you can spot it in the picture).
After a couple hours of digging, it was 5 o'clock and time to head out. We covered the skulls up with aluminium foil to protect them from the rain.
For scale, my knife is 30cm (12'') long.
The next day we continued digging. We first took out the oreodont skull and continued finishing the trench around the Hyaenodon skull until it was finally ready to take out. We plastered the skull so that it wouldn't fall apart. After waiting for the plaster to dry we took it out of the ground.
After coming home, I couldn't wait to open the plaster jacket and get working on the skull. The picture below on the left shows what the skull looked like before I started the preparation. The picture below on the right shows what the skull looked like after a full day of preparation.
