San Diego Natural History Museum--Your Nature Connection[BRCC San Diego Natural History Museum: Paleontology]
Clams of Champions:
Excavating and cleaning the Balboa Park fossil invertebrates

Photos of labeling and curating the fossils | Clams of Champions | San Diego Formation

[Paleontologist in hard hat prods with a dental tool at an exposed clam shell.] May 14, 1998: SDNHM paleontologist Scott Rugh carefully removes fossils from the surrounding material (the matrix). This excavation site is beneath the existing Hall of Champions building in Balboa Park.
Getting the fossils out of the ground is only the beginning of the work! They now need to be cleaned and identified. [The fossils as brought in from the field, ready for preparation and sorting.]
[Badly cracked and fragmented fossils are held together with cyanoacrylate glue applied in the field.] Because these shells were so fragile and badly cracked, they were cemented with cyanoacrylate while they were still in place, before being dug out of the matrix.
This clam shell has matrix material inside it. This will all be cleaned off before the fossil is stored. [Clam shell with encrusted soil clinging to the inside.]

Photos by by Hugh Wagner and Judy Gibson 1998