Day 9: The Blocks Take the Express Route

SeasonLast day of digging

BlocksFlipped and plastered

Next stopThe lab

Every expedition saves its hardest work for the last day. Day 9, the final day of digging, kept the tradition.

At the first site, the morning went to the last of the plaster. The blocks going to the lab got their final coats. The blocks staying behind got a consolation prize: each one was photographed from every side for a 3D model. They will be studied from a distance, like celebrities.

Then came the heavy part. The biggest jackets had to be turned over so their undersides could be plastered too. Flipping a plaster wrapped block of rock that size is not a job for 1 person, or for 2. It takes a small crowd, a good count of 3, and a willingness to get plaster in places plaster should not go.

4 team members bending over a large plaster jacketed block on gravel, gripping it to roll it over — The team turns a jacketed block over so its underside can be plastered. Photo: Klara Gerken

2 team members looking down at a large plaster jacket standing on its side, marked in red with the letters FA — The team turns a jacketed block over so its underside can be plastered. Photo: Klara Gerken

Over it goes. On 3. Probably. Video: Klara Gerken

By late afternoon every block had a plastered bottom, a sentence nobody on the team expected to write, and the blocks were ready for the truck.

At the second site, the team freed the last plastered blocks, finished wrapping them, and then faced the oldest question on any dig on a steep hill: how do you get the rock down? The answer was a rope line strung down the slope. The blocks rode it to the van like very slow, very heavy passengers, on the only ride in the hills with a 230 million year waiting list.

The express route off the hill: a block rides the rope line down to the van. Video: Victor Carvalho

The tools followed. Then the team tucked the site in for the winter, covered and protected, so it will be ready when they come back next year. The rock has waited this long. It can wait one more winter.

Meanwhile, the first goodbyes had begun. Filippo Bertozzo, Leonardo Bonelli and João Neves packed the car and set off for the Sociedade de História Natural, where the blocks will be prepared.

2 team members sitting on a block, one brushing plaster off the other’s hands with a pink brush, while a third throws his arms up on the slope behind — The last of the plaster comes off. Behind them, Miguel Marx has already started celebrating. Photo: Hilde Desmet

3 team members waving beside a car with its boot open and bags on the ground — The last of the plaster comes off. Behind them, Miguel Marx has already started celebrating. Photo: Hilde Desmet

That night a nearly full moon rose over the hills. Below it, 2 quarries sat quiet for the first time in 9 days. Somewhere inside those jackets is a find the team is not ready to name. The hills have done their part. Now the lab gets to talk.

A pale full moon in a pink and violet dusk sky above a dark ridge line — A nearly full moon rises over the hills on the last night of digging.