Digital Innovation in 2000

I was looking back at field notes and photographs from the “Dinosaur Expedition 2000” online web updates. These images and written notes and labels all contain important data that was obtained during the two week long collection of new dinosaur bones at the site.

The project proved to be innovative in the level of online engagement, with daily written updates and photographs provided on the website of the Fundy Geological Museum in the evening after a full day’s work in the hot sun. The images were taken as Polaroids (R) – the fastest way to develop, scan, and publish images online at the time. Digital cameras were around but not yet quite affordable for regular field work.

This was very early days of the internet – and this was an early example of online updates during dinosaur digs. These updates are still available online through the Way Back Machine.

Click Here to see the the July 21 update:

Expedition Notes: July 21, 2000

The July 21 update is helpful – as it includes an image of the ilium that had been exposed that day. This is the earliest photograph of the specimen (FGM998GF13.46) – a right ilium that has several fault offsets cutting through the bone.

The images in the web updates were very small (8 kb) – because the early internet was very slow and images had to be kept small to avoid long page loading delays.

Years, later – back in the Preparation Lab at the Museum, the specimen was photographed several times while being prepared, and the sandstone was carefully removed away from the fossil bone. In these later years the digital images increased in size and quality as camera technology increased.

Finally, after the bone had been fully prepared – it was then illustrated in a figure with the posterior portion of the ilium blade ‘reattached’, and published in a dissertation in 2007.

The online publishing of the updates from the dinosaur field work was innovative for the early days of the internet. Even twenty years later, these online updates continue to provide information to compliment the field notes, maps and photographs from the dig.