Camarasaurus — Shell, Wyoming

At Red Canyon Ranch near Shell, Wyoming — the working ranch of John “Ed” Anderson — the 2007 field season recovered one of the most complete sauropods ever taken from the Bighorn Basin: an over-90%-complete Camarasaurus skeleton from the Morrison Formation. The dig was organized and run by Bob Simon (DinoSafaris); my own role was hands-on excavation of the specimen from first exposure through removal, together with photographic and video documentation of the recovery and on-site explanation of the work to visiting geology groups.

Recovering an animal this complete is months of patient work, not days. Over roughly two months the crew worked the full recovery sequence: careful, controlled removal of the surrounding matrix; consolidation and stabilization of fragile bone as it was exposed; mapping of every element on the quarry floor so the skeleton’s articulation was recorded before anything was lifted; and finally plaster-and-burlap jacketing of each block for the long haul out of the field.

What makes this Camarasaurus scientifically valuable is not only its completeness but its pathology. Several bones show healed trauma — injuries the animal sustained and survived, the bone remodeling itself around the damage. That kind of evidence reaches past anatomy into life history: this was an individual that was hurt, recovered, and lived on.

The Shell quarries drew researchers and visitors throughout the dig — among them Dr. Paul Sereno, who spent time at both the 2004 Stegosaurus quarry and this 2007 Camarasaurus site. A note on identification: the articulated sauropod skeletal material from Shell is Camarasaurus — robust, box-like vertebrae and tall neural spines — not the gracile Diplodocus it has sometimes been mislabeled. (Shed Diplodocus teeth do turn up at the site, but as separate, isolated finds.)

After recovery and preparation, the specimen was transferred to the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum, Japan, where it stands today as a mounted representation of a Jurassic sauropod. This page preserves the excavation itself — the quarry, the methods, and the recovery conditions — not only the specimen that resulted.