Dang Tree stop eating my bones by Maggie Dalene

Above: Rolling the tree stump down the hill.

As we were digging for fossils we ran in to a slight problem…. We had found fossils but a giant juniper roots had started to eat away some of the fossils. As the day went on the more fossils we found the more tree roots we had found with. The reason we found so many bones next to this juniper was because of the minerals that the fossils have. When the animal dies soil and water is put over them. As the water flows in and out minerals fill the cellular spaces and crystallize. The shape of the original plant or animal is preserved as rock. Sometimes the original material is dissolved away leaving the form and structure but none of the organic material remains. Trees love all of these minerals that the fossils have. So having the tree there was kind of a good thing because the roots helped push up some of the rock that was covering the fossils and it was a bad thing because they were eating them away.

The tree we had to kill to get to the bones.

The bones underneath the tree.