DIGITAL PHOTOGRAMMETRY OF THE DINOSAUR QUARRY AT RED CANYON RANCH, SHELL, WYOMING

Using digital photogrammetry I have recreated the stages of excavation as well as the position of the bones in the Lower Quarry at Red Canyon Ranch in Shell, Wyoming. Our Lower Quarry is in a river deposit in the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation and preserves disarticulated dinosaur remains including sauropod vertebrae and theropod teeth. The quarry itself is about 7 meters long and 4 meters wide. I have compiled three sets of 6.3 Megapixel photographs of the quarry, each taken one week apart, into photogrammetric maps using the PhotoModeler Pro 5 software by Eos Systems Inc. The purpose of these maps is to give future researchers a recreation of the quarry that can be used for research. In my first photo session I took 40 photographs and in the final photo sessions over 150 photographs to increase the level of detail. Over 100 points were referenced between the photos in the final three-dimensional map. The points are connected by lines or curves to create a framework of the quarry that the digital images are pasted onto. These data provide me with the distance between various points in the quarry and the positions of bones in the quarry. The quarry will never look the same as it did in any of these models but I now have an electronic record of it for future use.