Sorting bones at the Natural History Museum
It has been way too quiet on this blog, but this does not mean the work has not been continuing. One of the first missions Marius and Aurélie faced was sorting through the bags and bags of sieved sediments, picking out all the tiny and less tiny bone fragments that were in between the stones and shells. For this task we were so lucky to be able to borrow a room in the beautiful Palmehuset in the botanic gardens at the Natural History Museum. Always so nice to come to work in such a wonderful setting!
Species identification in Bergen
After much of the sorting was done Marius and Sanne travelled to Bergen, where we started working with Liselotte. She is a really skilled osteologist specialized in the identification of small mammals – and those we have found quite a few of in our samples! Also other exciting species were identified in those first weeks. The work is still continuing, but soon we hope to have the first overviews of what kinds of species we have found in the different layers. It will be exciting to start interpreting the first results! In the meantime, the first samples have been sent for radiocarbon dating and the first sedimentological analyses are being prepared. But those we will write about in a next post.
