As I had mentioned in my last post, I am using something called an air scribe to remove plaster from an Axis. The air scribe is essentially a pen with a needle point that moves up and down like a super tiny jack hammer. This moves with air and requires very meticulous work with the hands. A picture below shows my work on this so far. You can see the lines through the plaster part showing how small this is. Extra care is needed around the bone areas so as to avoid damaging the bone material. As our fossils here at the mammoth site are over 10,000 years old, they are not petrified. Meaning that they are still very fragile - like fresh bones. This makes air scribing around spots that are covered in plaster with bone underneath a scary job.