Working with a sharp knife and a pair of scissors, geology major Joseph Peterson carefully cuts into a large plaster-covered package sitting on a table in the basement of Parkinson Laboratory.

Inside the wrapping is the humerus bone of a triceratops, a plant-eating dinosaur that roamed the earth 67 million years ago. The bone was found in eastern Montana's Hell Creek formation. 

"The triceratops was one of the last dinosaurs to face extinction," says Peterson, pulling away the protective covering, "so this really represents the final days of the dinosaurs."

Peterson and other geology students will spend many months cleaning and preserving the specimen before sending it to its owner: the Burpee Museum of Natural History in Rockford, Ill.

SIUC’s connection with the museum is geology alumnus Michael Henderson, Burpee’s curator of earth sciences. In a research partnership that Peterson helped set up, the museum plans to send similar projects to SIUC’s Geology Department while it is engaged in restoring a rare, complete dinosaur skeleton found in summer 2002.

"We expect to be involved with cleaning, preserving, and casting many specimens like this one in the months to come," says geology research project specialist Harvey Henson Jr.

The work will give SIUC students, as well as high school students in the department’s outreach program, the chance to learn from some of the top dinosaur researchers in the country, he says.

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