oma and Now a dinosaur bones is always exciting, but itis hardly ever easy. Early palacontologists ~ scientists who study ancient bones ~ had to work hard. to excavate dinosaur remains. When they found a bone near the surface, they used scoops to carefully scrape away the earth and rock covering the rest of the skeleton, These scoops were pulled by horses. Next, they used shovels, and then —as they uncovered the fossils themselves ~ they worked with small tools like trowels and brushes. ‘Today palaeontologists still look for bones on the surface, but uncovering buried remains is much quicker. The soil and rock is removed with earth- ‘moving machines like bulldozers and backhoes, drills and even explosives. ‘Then scientists work with shovels, brushes and even dental picks to uncover the skeleton. This part still involves much long, hard work. In the past, palaeontologists recorded their finds by drawing the position of the bones and numbering them so they could be reassembled in a museum. They kept field journals to record their finds. They dated finds by the type of rock in which the fossils were buried. Scientists believed that the deeper the rock, the older the dinosaur. ‘Today palaeontologists may map their finds on a grid and photograph them. ‘The exact location of the find can be recorded using a global positioning system (GPS) on a computer. Field journals may also be kept on computer. The age of the remains is often established with radioisotope dating, Using this method, scientists can determine the age of a fossil by the amount of radioactive material in the rocks that surround it, Methods of work are different, but the goal of palaeontologists is still the same — to increase our knowledge of amazing creatures that are now extinct.