Sunday 20th October 2019

In The Lab

With my PI and other members of the lab out or returning from Brisbane, Australia for the SVP Conference, it was a quieter than usual week. Nonetheless, there was no let up to the pace of work!

The focus this week has been on evaluating the many, many fragments of eggshell that the lab team has recovered from Utah over the past 8 field seasons, totaling around 200 specimens. I have been adding the details to a comprehensive matrix detailing the ornamentation morphotypes, and potentially the ootaxa, seen from the fragments. This work has been done predominantly from hand lens analysis, and has greatly benefitted from the arrival of a new book – Eggs, Nests and Baby Dinosaurs by Kenneth Carpenter, twenty years old now but the only place with useful comparative illustrations of the known morphotypes!

Once the matrix is complete, or actually during its compilation, I am identifying a good example of each observed ornamentation morphotype, which will be used for creating thin sections. Under the microscope, we can study these thin sections to see if there is any variation between the different types. This could contribute to an existing theory on the correlation between ornamentation type and the egg’s porosity.

In the Classroom

In this section, I will provide detail on the other aspect of grad school – classes. Coming from the UK system, this aspect has certainly been an adjustment at the PhD level, and balancing the two aspects (notwithstanding the TA work that will ensue in Fall 2020!) a real challenge.

It is a challenge I am relishing though; I thrive in the classroom and the courses available are of great interest and usefulness. This semester, I am enrolled in four classes:

  • Introduction to Biological Research
  • Stable Isotope Terreestrial Paleoclimatology
  • Paleoecology
  • 3D Anatomy and Visualization Techniques

This week, I have worked on a CT scan of a colleague’s fossil assemblage, using a program called Amira to identify individual bones in this very messy assemblage. The CT scan takes X-ray images of the item at set distances (unfortunately the size of this specimen means low resolution of 1mm) and differentiates based on density – bones are more dense than air, and (typically!) the sediment/matrix they are preserved in. This means you can work through these ‘stacks’ of images and color individual bone elements.

For paleoecology, in the absence of the lecturer (Dr Terry Gates) due to SVP, it’s been a reading week (see Paper of the Week segment!)

In Introduction to Biological Research, again the main lecturer (Dr Rebecca Irwin) was absent due to fieldwork, and the guest lecture was on developing a personalized website (hence here I am!).

For Paleoclimatology, we focussed on the Triple-Oxygen isotope proxy methodology, discussing the applications of these both in very deep time (c. 750Ma) and also for more modern settings (Last Glacial Maxima).

In the News

Two major news items of interest grab my attention this week:

  • The leaked discovery of a hadrosaur showing a hoofed appendage! https://twitter.com/ndgspaleo/status/1184830562768510976?s=21
  • Deep sea diving exploration mission off the California coast revealed a baleen whale carcass being stripped bare by other sea creatures, all live on camera! https://twitter.com/evnautilus/status/1184571414763966470?s=21

Paper of the Week

This section I will use for the single most interesting paper I have read in the past week, from the 10-20 papers I typically gt through in that time. It won’t necessarily be a recent publication, just one I have read that was particularly attention-grabbing.

Untangling the Multiple Ecological Radiations of Early Mammals (Grossnickle et al. 2019)

This paper is fantastically clearly written, and contains some really helpful figures that assist in the complex world of evolutionary patterns of diversification and extinction for mammalians throughout time, recognizing existing and competing theories and applying recent information to these. The authors describe independent and asynchronous lineage evolutions across the mammal clade, which are driven by evolving food webs in the Late Cretaceous. Separate insectivores are seen as the progenitors of the lineages that radiate following this , including distinction  temporally between placentals and  marsupials.