Day 10: A Truck Full of Questions | DinoDawn Field Notes

SeasonFinal day

CargoEvery block

ArrivedSHN, tonight

Roy Chapman Andrews left the Gobi with a caravan of camels. The DinoDawn team left the Algarve hills with a flatbed truck, a camper van, a hardware store van and a wheelbarrow. It is less romantic, but the wheelbarrow does not spit.

Day 10, the final day of the 2026 season, was short on work and long on everything else. The morning went to waiting for the truck. The afternoon went to making sure 9 days of work got onto it in one piece.

First, the last blocks left unfinished the day before got their final coat of plaster. Then every block was checked, labeled and tied down, so that each one can be matched to its spot in the hill when the lab opens it.

Team members kneeling over a plaster jacketed block on a gravel track, surrounded by more labeled jackets, while 2 men watch and a truck waits behind — Last checks before loading. A block that loses its label loses its address. Photo: Hilde Desmet

2 team members smoothing wet plaster bandages over a large block on a gravel track under a blue sky — The final coat of plaster goes on the last unfinished block. Photo: Sandra Willert

A team member in a hooded sweatshirt carrying a plaster jacket in his arms down a steep red hillside — The final coat of plaster goes on the last unfinished block. Photo: Sandra Willert

When the truck arrived, the excavator took over. Its operator, Nelson, set the jackets onto the truck bed so precisely that the team took to calling him their surgeon. The team guided each lift from the ground and from the truck itself. Nobody dropped a block. Nobody lost a finger. On loading day, those are the only 2 numbers that matter.

A yellow excavator lifting a plaster jacketed block in its bucket toward the bed of a flatbed truck — A jacket rides the bucket to the truck, the gentlest ride a rock has had in 230 million years. Photo: Klara Gerken

A team member in a high visibility vest standing on a truck bed among plaster jackets, beneath the arm of a yellow excavator — Ricardo Araújo, dressed for the occasion in a high visibility vest and very little else, guides the blocks into place. Photo: Hilde Desmet

The smaller jackets traveled in arms, in wheelbarrows and in any van with a free corner. One camper van gave up the space under its bed to a row of plaster jackets. They were quiet guests and did not snore.

The open back of a camper van, with plaster jackets packed beneath the bed and a wheelbarrow on top — Under the bed: blankets, a wheelbarrow and several kilos of Late Triassic rock. Nobody slept on that side. Photo: Hilde Desmet

Team members loading a plaster jacket from a wheelbarrow into the back of a white van on a narrow street — The last load leaves the village by wheelbarrow, still the expedition’s most reliable vehicle. Photo: Filippo Bertozzo

Then came the goodbyes. The team cleaned the house that had been home all season. Ricardo Araújo and Miguel Marx drove back to the village to hand out DinoDawn t-shirts to the neighbors who had helped all season with lunches, the truck and the generator. It was a thank you they can wear.

After the final hugs, the team scattered. Ricardo was home with his family by evening. Marco Turcato drove Sandra Willert and Klara T. Gerken back in the van, a trip of nearly 6 hours and, by Marco’s account, the longest part of the shortest day.

For Ricardo, this was the season the hills began to make sense. The team now reads the geology far better than before, and he already has ideas for how to search smarter next year. Whether next season brings more excavation, more prospecting or both is still being decided.

I’m very, very happy with this year’s success. All of these blocks are absolutely crucial for us to understand the taphonomic context of these layers.
Ricardo Araújo, lead paleontologist

Taphonomy is the study of how a living animal becomes a fossil: how it died, what moved it and what the rock did to it afterward. Each block carries that story along with the bones inside it.

The plan was for the blocks to reach the Sociedade de História Natural on Wednesday. They arrived tonight, 2 days early, a rare thing in the history of moving rocks. Ignace R. Nerinckx was there to unload them by wheelbarrow.

A team member lifting a labeled plaster jacket from a rusty wheelbarrow beside an open camper van — The first jackets reach SHN. The wheelbarrow made the whole trip too. Photo: Hilde Desmet

The hills are covered and quiet until next season, and the plaster starts coming off this winter. When the lab finds something worth telling, it will be told here first.