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We got to go in a poke around directly. Nyah nyah. Here's some photos:

Look how delicately he works... carefully scraping away the stone... A work ethic I can't identify with.

The pelvic and tail bone of a duckbill dinosaur.

Jawbone. A ceratops I think.

A complete skeleton. Click for a larger view.

The backbone of the same duckbill. Neat!

The reconstructed skull of a ceratops of some kind.

a t-rex skull getting plastered

Right beside the preparation room was the mold room. They don't stick the real things out in the museum, but instead take molds of everything and whip off near-replicas for the kids to wipe their greasy hands on.

You remember the last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark? Where they were wheeling the sealed crate back into that warehouse filled with boxes and you were thinking, 'Gee, that's a lot of stuff in there.' Well, the storage areas in the Tyrrell struck me the same way. They have two separate cavernous rooms, one for unprepared samples -- the raw, unpicked at fossil samples straight in from the digs -- and the prepared items, ready for viewing in any museum.

These guys are so far behind in their work at they have years worth of materials sitting in storage that haven't been touched yet. There's simply too much stuff!

More photos:

Us in the unprepared items storage room.

A mold of a ceratops skull.

More prepared skulls sitting, waiting...

Me and my sweetie in the prepared items storage. No, I'm not goosing her.

A cast of dinosaur eggs in a nest.

Group shot! Click for a close-up. (Clockwise from upper right) Craig Dyck, Thor Osborn, Julia Lacquemont, Danita Maslankowski, Candas Jane Dorsey, Robyn Herrington, Phil Currie, Mike Resnick, ME, Lisa-Sweetie, Carol Resnick, Paul Bushell, Olga

More!