MONSTER fossil crab prep - the 50lbs crab finally gets prepped... and it's a beast!

It's been almost two years since I found the 50lbs fossil crab concretion and I was starting to feel confident in my crab prepping skills, so I decided to make a start on the best fossil crab I have found so far.

It started off badly as I prepped the bottom of the crab first and had to start over again on the other side of the concretion. I was using a combination of an angle grinder and a chisel to remove the bulk of the rock but it was very slow going. Luckily, my large air scribe, the Motovator, arrived and made a HUGE difference. It removes about ten times as much rock as my other scribe does in the same time.

The species is a Tumidocarcinus giganteus from the mid-Miocene, around 12-million-years-ago.

People always ask what the value of this crab would be and the short answer is that the value is the labour you put in. Unprepped crabs aren't worth much - 95% of the value is in the hours you spend prepping it with specialised equipment.

I use a variety of air scribes on the fossil crab. The Motovator for rough work, a middle-of-the-range scribe for 60% of the work and a very fine one for cleaning up the joints and other delicate areas.

The prep took 208 hours and the processing of the 1200GB of 4K footage took another 20 hours and I still had to edit the video itself. All in, I think I have spent 250 hours on this project!

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Website: http://mamlambofossils.com/

Postal address:
Morne Mamlambo
PO Box 78018
7648
New Zealand

#timelapse #fossil #monster