The sparrows did do a serious job of removing mortar - noticeable after maybe 1-2 years of them picking at it. But it's ok we moved out! I'm always impressed how adaptable european sparrows are in the USA - in the UK they are much less innovative.

Presumably gastroliths. Mortar is mostly sand with relatively little cement. Cement has lime & clay, but you'd think the clay at least is more easily available from soil. Silica however, is something birds instinctively consume daily, from gravel roads in ND, but not as easy to find in urban setting

I suspect they were after the coarse sand in the mortar rather than minerals. Probably the same for the parrots.

The house sparrows in Bozeman did that to our old rental.

Thanks for the post btw. I hope you like the magnets! I was very pleased with how they came out, and how good the metallic paint looks! I twisted our shop manager's arm to get the postcards online.

The shop pack up the orders quickly as they come in, so it should be possible within the US at least. I can't promise however, as it does depend on the orders coming in on a day when our shop manager is working.

I enjoyed Fallen Order ok. Not tried Survivor yet. Agree about the platform stuff, but its just about ok, and there are some nice looking atmospheric levels.

This last link is to our preparator Steve's Twitch account. He'll be streaming the field report live, and he also stream regularly showing fossil preparation in his home lab with ASMR vibes.

www.twitch.tv/fossilprepar...

Here's Danny Anduza's awesome TWITCH channel, Paleontologizing:

www.twitch.tv/paleontologi...

Here's the City of Dickinson's YouTube page (live stream will also appear here: choose your favourite venue!)

www.youtube.com/@cityofdicki...

Here's the Facebook Live & event page:

www.facebook.com/events/70471...

This is a slide in our fieldwork presentation, streaming this Thursday!

oops, here's the direct link to the shop.

shop.dickinsonmuseumcenter.com

Postcard sets are up now too. I really wanted a big range of exclusive merch available for this christmas. We've got a few out there, but we've got lots of cool new ideas in the pipeline, based on specimens and artwork we commissioned.

I made a lot (I run them off on our printer when it's not making exhibits). The detail is really nice -you could probably code characters from these! (I am unreasonably pleased with how well they came out). We're planning on more exclusive merch like this.

Here's the link. Proceeds from sales of these magnets goes to our paleo program. Andrey Atuchin gets 12.5% of the Dasp sales too! We've got tshirts, sticker, and hopefully postcards soon in the shop!

www.dickinsongov.com/museum-center

This is the third neck bone we have from the pterosaur skeleton now, making it one of the most complete pterosaur skeletons of its kind. It is an Azhdarchoid, probably related to Cryodrakon.
The oviraptor is a caenagnathid of medium to large size. Super exciting!

Both oviraptors (a bird-like dinosaur) and the flying pterosaurs (related to dinosaurs) had fragile thin-walled bones, so they are rarely preserved. We are really lucky that skeletons are coming out from one of our sites!

And you can read the press release here:

www.rte.ie/news/2025/11...