Pro tip: That old dig site might not be as 'finished' as you think

I was talking to Dr. Harding from the Field Museum last week about a site in southern Illinois we both worked on back in 2018. He told me they found a whole new burial layer 3 feet below where we stopped because some grad student checked old soil cores from a different team. It hit me different because I always figured once a site is written up and published, that's it. Has anyone else had a dig come back with new finds years later?

2 comments

2 Comments

paulw634d ago

That's really something about the soil cores, I love that kind of story. You'd think a big site would be totally picked clean, but it seems like every time someone goes back with fresh eyes something turns up. I had a similar thing happen at a little dinosaur track site in Texas, everyone thought we found everything in the 90s, then a kid on a school trip spotted a whole new set of prints in a washout we'd walked past for years. Just shows you, the ground doesn't stop giving.

river_hall444d ago

That's exactly how it goes, isn't it? You can spend years staring at the same patch of ground and then the light hits different or a kid looks from a lower angle and bam, something new appears. Love that story about the kid on the field trip, those sharp young eyes catch what we overlook. It makes you wonder what else is hiding out there just waiting for someone to pay attention.