In this time-lapse video, a man uncovers a crab fossil from a rock it was encased in.

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

The fossil hunter used a wide range of air scribes during the extraction process: the Motovator for rough work, a middle-of-the-range scribe, and a very fine one for cleaning up the joints and other delicate areas.

The fossil crab concretion weighed 23.7 kg. More than 16 kg of rock was removed. The final weight of the crab is 7.3 kg.

It took the man 208 hours to expose the fossil crab, and 20 hours to process the 4K footage.

The footage was filmed on May 23, 2021, in New Zealand.

This sped up version of the video is currently on Reddit's frontpage with 77k upvotes: https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/nmufri/removing_the_rock_from_a_fossil_crab_it_took_208/

It's been almost two years since I found the 50lbs (23.7kg) 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! The final weight of the crab is 7.3kg, more than 16kg of rock was removed chip by tiny chip.