January 2018 – Time Scavengers

Aaron Woodruff, Paleontologist

January 29, 2018January 29, 2018jenebauer2 Comments

Aaron standing in front of a mastodon skeleton at the Illinois State Museum.

I am a vertebrate paleontologist, meaning that I deal in the fossils of ancient back-boned animals. I obtained my degree in paleontology from East Tennessee State University and I currently work as a lab technician at Georgia Tech. My primary research interests are paleoecology and ecomorphology of Cenozoic mammals. In the broad sense, paleoecology is the study of interactions between organisms and their environments across prehistory. Ecomorphology is the study of the relationship between an organism’s physical adaptations and its lifestyle. For example, cheetahs are famously the fastest land animals alive today. To become such good runners they have evolved, among other adaptations, lightweight skeletons with long legs and flexible spines. The general lifestyle and behavior of an extinct animal may, therefore, be predicted by comparing its physical adaptations to that of a modern relative or to that of an otherwise comparably proportioned species. Back to the Cheetah example, several species of extinct cats and cat-like predators have been found to have possessed similar body proportions for active sprinting, suggesting that these animals hunted in a similar fashion.

Aside from my paleontological research, another great passion/occupation of mine is paleoart: the artistic representation of a prehistoric organism or environment. Paleoart is a valuable tool for communicating paleontological information to both scientists and non-scientists. We are more likely to process and memorize information presented to us in image format than through text. I personally find great enjoyment in reconstructing animals which no modern human has ever seen alive. It really feels like I am bringing these animals back to life. Furthermore, accurate paleoart is a good way to pull in audiences and raise interest in paleontology. Ask any paleontologist or enthusiast what first sparked their interest in fossils and ancient animals, and most of them will no doubt reference images from a favorite book from their childhood, a museum mural, sculpture, movie or documentary which featured life reconstructions of prehistoric animals. That’s paleoart! Some of my own artwork may be seen on my personal blog Life in the Cenozoic Era in which I talk about various animals from the Age of Mammals.

As a paleontologist, the best thing I can hope for is a large sample size to work with. This can be somewhat difficult in paleontology because fossils, by their very nature, are generally few and far between and are often damaged or incomplete. Whenever possible, having access to a large sample of a given extinct animal is ideal for ontogenic, demographic, and morphological studies among other areas. For my thesis project I was lucky enough to have access to a HUGE collection of fossils belonging to an extinct peccary from a Missouri cave site. Because I had thousands of bones from dozens of individuals to work with, from fetuses up to elderly individuals, I was able to learn some very interesting things about the peccary population from that locality. Another important resource is a good comparative collection of modern and extinct animals for reference. Being able to visit other research facilities or borrow specimens on loan is also a major aspect of acquiring data.

Map showing the location of the Bat Cave fossil site within the state of Missouri (top-left), the most complete Flat-headed Peccary skull from Bat Cave (bottom-left), a mounted skeleton from the American Museum of Natural History (top-right), and life reconstruction by me (bottom-right).

The research we are doing at Georgia Tech involves analyzing the bones of small mammals and looking at how the community composition changes through time. Small vertebrates are good indicators of local climatic conditions because they are generally confined to a small area; many of the smaller rodents never venture farther than 30 to 100ft from their nest in a single day. An elephant can simply walk up to 50 miles per day in search of an area that suits it better should environmental conditions fall outside of its comfort zone. A vole simply cannot do this, and is thus confined to a narrower range of environmental factors. From examining the Natural Trap Cave microfauna we are finding that the local climate has fluctuated greatly over the past 20,000 years. At various intervals the region was home to animals which are adapted to the high desert conditions which characterize the region today, in another layer we may find species that are indicative of wetter or less arid conditions, while in yet another layer we may see animals which should be more comfortable in colder environments farther north.

Repelling ~80ft into Natural Trap Cave to excavate Pleistocene-age fossils.

My favorite part of being a scientist is that I am always learning new and interesting things. I find it very humbling and gratifying to know that my research will contribute to the collective knowledge of the general public. Being able to learn through personal research, exchange knowledge and ideas with other scientists, and to teach what I have learned with other people are all things that I appreciate about my career. Another thing I enjoy is being able to travel to conferences and field sites where I am able to intermingle with other paleontologists and keep up to date with the latest discoveries. My advice to young scientists is go to conferences or local events whenever possible. Volunteer or participate in outreach programs at museums or universities. Also, reach out to professionals for advice or to just satisfy your curiosity. Many paleontologists, myself included, are very active on social media and are happy to chat about our research, share information, etc.

Follow Aaron’s blog Life in the Cenozoic Era or follow his updates on Twitter by clicking here.

How Did Horses Get to Just One Toe?

January 26, 2018May 30, 2019jenebauer1 Comment

Mechanics of evolutionary digit reduction in fossil horses (Equidae) *
Brianna K. McHorse, Andrew A. Biewener, Stephanie E. Pierce
Summarized by Time Scavengers contributor, Maggie Limbeck

What data were used? This study used metapodials (toe bones) from 12 fossil horse genera as well as from a tapir (herbivorous mammal that looks similar to a pig, but that also has an odd number of toes) to collect data. The metapodials were imaged in cross sectional views to determine load strength (how was weight distributed among the main three toes of fossil horses and the one toe of recent horses) and geometry of the metapodials.

Methods: The metapodials from the fossil horses and tapir were micro-CT scanned (3D x-ray scanning, like the human procedure but on a smaller scale) and the images were manipulated to see the cross sectional area and other views using the open source program ImageJ with the plugin BoneJ. The images were then measured and corrected for evolutionary changes using the open source statistical software, R. Estimates for bone stress were calculated using a toe reduction index (TRI), reconstructed body weights, and angle of metapodial during ground reaction at two speeds of forward locomotion. Additionally, the amount of stress that the metapodials could support was estimated using beam mechanics (an engineering process that looks at how much stress a hypothetical beam could withstand before bending and/or breaking).

Results: Looking at the geometry of the metapodials, it was determined that as the fossil horses grew in both size and weight, their need for four front and three back toes was decreased, and as such the digits gradually decreased to one on all four limbs. For the stress experiments, as the fossils moved forward in time to recent horses, it is seen that the amount of stress that can be placed on metapodial III (what we see expressed as the hoof) increases through time and the dependence on the two metapodials on either side of digit III decreases. This statement is true for both front and back metapodials at both a moderate speed (trotting) and performance (acceleration, jumping).

Figure 1. Image of the toe reduction index (TRI) shown across a phylogenetic tree (evolutionary tree) with the cross sectional view of the metapodial being analyzed. Based on the TRI it is apparent that there is a gradient for toe loss and that there is only one genus of horse, Equus, that truly has one toe. You can also see that for those early horses that still had side toes that the shape of the toe in cross section has a much different shape and therefore still needs side toes to some extent.

Why is this study important? This study is important because it supports two hypotheses that were held about digit reduction in horses. That a) the increased body mass of horses selected for a single, strong metapodial and b) that as horses grew taller, the cost of speed from the side toes outweighed their use in stabilization. This also contradicts the commonly held belief that horses experienced digit reduction as an adaptation to the replacement of forests by grasslands.

The big picture: The big picture here is sort of two-fold. Digit reduction in tetrapods (four-legged creatures) has been of interest to many scientists because as tetrapods emerged onto land 5, 8, even more digits was the ancestral state for these organisms. As we see today, that is not the case. The vast majority of the organisms that we think of have 5 or less digits on their hands and feet, so we want to understand what drove the process of digit reduction in every animal. Second, this study highlights that it is important to keep testing hypotheses even if they have been held for a while. The additional lines of evidence provided by this study give more credibility to two commonly held hypotheses while continuing to falsify the common explanation for digit reduction in horses.

Citation: McHorse BK, Biewener AA, Pierce SE. 2017. Mechanics of evolutionary digit
reduction in fossil horses (Equidae). Proceedings of the Royal Society B 284: 20171174.

*all samples in this study were fossils, no live animals were used

I love introducing students to geology

January 22, 2018June 2, 2019jenebauer2 Comments

Sarah here –

I was recently asked a question during a job interview- which level of students do you most enjoy teaching and why? I thought for a minute and then gave my answer-introductory level students-and the entire panel seemed surprised, which gave me the idea to write this post. Right now, I am a visiting faculty member at a huge university-my entire job is to teach a lot of classes every year. These classes can range from graduate seminars, upper level geology classes, to introductory level classes, where the majority of the students are only there to get their core requirement classes out of the way.

Don’t get me wrong- I love teaching and working with graduate students and geology majors. It’s a blast to work with students who care so much about the material already and who have a thirst to learn more. But what I really love teaching-and the teaching that I find to be the most impactful- is teaching those intro classes.

One of Sarah’s awesome introductory geology students, Kelsey, with her super creative timeline of Earth history.

Nearly 90% of the students in my intro classes will never take another science class again. Most of them, on day one, probably don’t even want to be there-I am told by the students quite often that they’re terrible at science, or that they don’t have any interest in the subject, or even that they have learned some terribly untrue things about science (many of my students come in believing that science and religion are at odds with one another and can’t coexist peacefully-not true at all!). So why do I love teaching them? Quite simply, I am presented with an awesome challenge-to change their minds about science. With every semester, I am given the gift to encourage sometimes hundreds of students to explore the beautiful world of science. I get to show students volcanoes that burn bright blue because of the sulfur in the lava and show them reconstructions of how we think the earliest and weirdest of our ancestors might have lived. I get to help them learn to take a few pieces of evidence and draw conclusions and expose them to a new way of thinking. Geology is an incredibly fun and exciting science and to see intro level students get so engaged and passionate- and to let them see how passionate you are about this subject (seriously, I’ve gotten teaching evaluations that have said “too enthusiastic about science” before)- is a feeling that just can’t be beat.

However, this is also such an incredible responsibility- we have to teach them how science truly works and how to spot bad science, which is increasingly prevalent, in popular culture. We have a responsibility to help them see how their actions, like not recycling, have a direct affect on the people with whom they share the Earth. These classes help students form their opinions on the issues shaping our world today-is GMO food safe? Why do we care if evolution is taught in the classroom? Do we really need to be concerned about climate change? If this is likely the only science class they’ll take, this might be the only time they’ll ever learn how to form their ideas about the scientific issues facing our world-and most importantly, found their opinions based on scientific evidence. If, in a decade or so from now, at least a few of my students think back to their intro geology class with Dr. Sheffield and remember that they should really use those reusable shopping bags or that they might know how to correct someone’s misguidance on climate change or evolution, then I will have helped make a difference. And what could be better?

I wish I had had such an eloquent answer during my interview- but if I could go back, I’d say this: teaching these introductory classes is one of the most important things that we can do as scientists. Don’t take the responsibility you have to inspire a whole generation of enthusiastic and scientifically literate students lightly!

Ancient hydrothermal seafloor deposits on Mars

January 19, 2018June 2, 2019jenebauerLeave a comment

Ancient hydrothermal seafloor deposits in Eridania basin on Mars
Joseph R. Michalksi, Eldar Z. Noe Deobrea, Paul B. Niles, and Javier Cuadros
Summarized by Mike Hils

What data was used? High resolution imaging and spectroscopy data about mineralogy and geology

Methods: Used data from instruments on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, a satellite currently orbiting Mars:

HiRISE

CRISM (Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars) to study the minerals and rocks found in the Eridania Basin. Materials bounce light off of them in a consistent pattern and energy, and spectrometers can analyze that light and identify the material on Mars’ surface.

Results: The Eridania Basin was probably up to 1.5 km (0.9 mi) deep, and flowed into a canyon named Ma’adim Vallis. Images from HiRISE show that the western half of the basin consists of massive stone that lacks bedding planes and has eroded into buttes and mesas. The basin would have held about as much water the Caspian Sea on Earth currently does. This basin is shaped different than many of the other Martian basins, and it is thought that a covering of ice kept sediment from settling on the bottom. A comparison of the craters in this part of the basin suggest that these rocks are about 3.77 Ga (G = giga, SI prefix for billion, a = annum, Latin for year) old.

Analysis from CRISM found evidence of minerals and rocks associated with deep ocean water on Earth, including iron and magnesium rich clays, serpentinite, carbonates, and chlorides. For example, serpentinite, a metamorphic rock that looks like green marble, forms when basalt reacts with warm, deep sea water. Carbonate minerals are common on Earth in the form of limestone, marble, seashells, and corals. The authors suspect that the carbonate formed due to hydrothermal interactions. Chlorides, such as salt (sodium chloride), form on Earth when water evaporates.

Map of the Martian terrane with colors indicating highs (orange) and lows (blue) of an ancient sea. The data points in the legend are minerals that were identified at each location.

Why is this study important? This study is important in two ways. First, one idea for the origin of life on Earth is that it developed around hydrothermal vents in the ocean. Although ancient rocks have been found suggesting such environments in the past, they have been significantly altered by weathering and metamorphism, and vital information has been lost. Martian sites, which haven’t been altered nearly as much as Terrestrial ones, might be a good proxy for understanding early environments on Earth. Secondly, the identification of such sites on Mars could provide key places to look for signs of life on Mars.

The big picture: Understanding how life began is a huge problem that scientists in many fields are exploring. Life may have evolved on Earth, or it may have arrived here from some other body. The identification of hydrothermal environments on Mars would allow scientists to gain a better understanding of hydrothermal environments on Earth as life was evolving and try to see if life could have started here. This would also allow astrobiologists to look for evidence of extraterrestrial life on Mars.
Two other bodies in our solar system may harbor life around hydrothermal vents. Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus are both covered in salty water capped with ice, and both experience tectonic activity due to the gravitational pull from their host planets. In addition, organic molecules (chemicals made mostly of carbon that are often associated with organisms) have been detected in water escaping from Enceladus. If life could have evolved in hydrothermal environments on Earth and Mars, it is likely Europa and Enceladus both host extraterrestrial life now.

Citation: Michalski, J., Dobrea, E., Niles, P., Cuadros, J. 2017. Ancient hydrothermal seafloor deposits in Eridania basin on Mars. Nature Communications, 8:15978. doi: 10.1038/ncomms15978

Linda Dämmer, Geologist and Paleoclimate Proxy Developer

January 15, 2018December 29, 2021AdrianeLeave a comment

The great thing about science is that there is always something new to discover, always something new to try, always a new question to answer, always a new challenge. If you’re curious enough, there will always be ways to improve our understanding of how the world works. And as a scientist you’re free to explore all these avenues. Even though every single scientist is only looking at a tiny fraction of everything there is to discover, we still all contribute to the same, big, never ending puzzle. And I find that strangely appealing.

Inspecting a shallow marine site near an active submarine volcanic vent field on the Aeolian island of Panarea, Italy in May of 2017 (Mount Stromboli erupting in the background). Photo by Caitlyn Witkowski (NIOZ/Utrecht University).

By developing and improving methods for paleoclimatologists and paleoceanographers my research helps other scientists understand how the complex system that is our planet’s climate developed and changed over time and reacted to changing parameters in the past. Only if we understand this well enough we will be able to predict reliably how the climate system will be behave in the future.

The main problem we, as geoscientists, have with learning about the climate of the past is that we can’t go back in time to directly measure the temperature or the composition of the atmosphere and oceans (unfortunately our colleagues who are working on time travel are way behind their schedule, but they say it doesn’t matter 😉 ). And unless you’re only interested in the last few centuries, nobody has left us their notes in a neat lab book with all the information we are looking for listed up in a table. Therefore, we have to look at the next best thing: ‘nature’s lab book’, natural records of past environmental conditions. For example we can use ice cores, tree rings, sediment cores, corals and other fossils to learn about the past. But what exactly do we look for in these natural archives? Which particles, organisms, compounds, molecules or minerals have stored valuable information about, for example, temperature, sea water salinity, or composition of the atmosphere? And how do we unlock these data? That is what I’m working on. I’m trying to connect the environmental conditions with the resulting signals in the natural records that we find all over the world.

A benthic foraminifera (Amphistegina lessonii) up close. The scale bar here is 200 microns (1 micron = one millionth of a meter). The bright green, fluorescent part of the shell grew during an experiment that included a fluorescent dye. This way we can tell which areas of the shell are relevant for our measurements.

I do most of my work on living foraminifera (unicellular organisms with a carbonate shell) and the ratio of different elements in their shells. I use benthic (bottom dwelling) foraminifera and keep them under a range of different controlled conditions in the lab to improve our understanding of how environmental signals can be found in their shells.

In addition to this I also do field studies, where I sample foraminifera and collect environmental data from different locations and compare them to the relationships that were previously found in the laboratory settings. This means I get to travel a lot and use a wide range of sampling methods. I get some of my samples from the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, more than 3 km (≈1.9 miles) below the surface, by taking sediment cores with a research vessel. I crawl through the mud of the intertidal zones along the Dutch Wadden Sea coast to collect living benthic foraminifera from the mud surface by scraping off the top layers of the sediment. I snorkel through the acidified ocean around the volcanoes of the Aeolian Islands in southern Italy to find species that survive these harsh conditions. I scuba dive in the Caribbean Sea to collect living planktic foraminifera one by one using a glass jar. I take hundreds of cubic meters of sea water during scientific cruises to filter out all the plankton in there and then spend hours and hours staring through a microscope to identify all the tiny species.

I’m currently trying to develop a new proxy that will help us learn more about the ocean pH and the atmosphere’s CO₂ concentration of the past. To do so, a graduate student and I are using tropical benthic foraminifera. We keep the foraminifera under several different CO₂ levels, which represent today’s as well as pre-industrial conditions and concentrations that are expected for the next century.

In addition to that, I’m now calibrating an already existing proxy (the ratio of magnesium (Mg) to calcium (Ca) in carbonates, which correlates well with temperature) to a species of oysters. This method has not been applied to these oysters yet. Doing this will improve the paleoceanographers’ ‘toolbox’ for climate reconstruction in intertidal (the area at a beach between low and high tides) settings, where the most commonly used proxies can’t be applied, since they are based on planktic foraminifera and most of them live in the open ocean, far away from the coast.

Linda is a PhD student at the NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research in the Department of Ocean Systems; Utrecht University, Faculty of Geosciences, Department of Stratigraphy & Paleontology. To learn more about Linda and her work, visit the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research New Generation of Foraminiferal Proxies website.

What it’s like to be a new faculty member

January 12, 2018June 2, 2019jenebauer3 Comments

Andy here –

I just finished my first semester at Sam Houston State University (Sam for short). My position is a temporary one. I have a contract to teach there for a single academic year (Visiting Assistant Professor). The ‘load’ is a 3/3, three sections each semester. I teach two sections of Historical Geology, together about 90 students. In the fall I taught about 23 students in my Stratigraphy & Sedimentation course, and in the Spring I’ll have 20-30 in my Paleontology of Invertebrates course. I’m also the instructor for the upper-level labs. Sam treats labs as a part of the same course, while many other places consider the labs a separate, so in another University or College this would be a 4/4 (four classes taught per semester). I have not taught any of these courses before, though I was a teaching assistant (TA) for a course at the University of Massachusetts that was essentially a combination of all three courses I’m currently teaching.

Preparing 11 hours of lectures or activities a week, a total of ~165 hours (that’s roughly a week) of talking and guiding folks through science, is a brutal non-stop experience. Here are a few things to expect:

You are going to be seriously bad at it.

I was the top TA at UMass in Geology for a while, at least according to the award and recognition I got. When I lectured for Physical Geology I had students say “He’s the best professor I’ve had at UMass”. I was invited to talk to the incoming TA cohort about how to be a good instructor by the University one year. I am really good.

I was not good this semester. I know this. More than just an ‘aw, I wanted to do better’, I was just an acceptable instructor. My Sed/Strat class barely got to Stratigraphy even though I personally am a stratigrapher.

You will make some really harsh choices.

I knew that I had to spend more time on one course than another. I could either do a boring, mediocre job on both, or do a passable job in one and a crummy job in the other. I have 90 students for two semesters in my intro class (~180 total) and only 23 in Sed/Strat. Historical is the last time many of these students are going to be exposed to science in a classroom. Therefore, I view it as a moral imperative to do a decent — no, a good — job on that course.

I chose to spend more time crafting a Historical course. Making that choice was horrible, and I could tell that that my upper-class students knew I was phoning in some days. There were occasional times where I managed to work far enough ahead in Historical that I could spend time developing an interesting day in Sed/Strat. When that happened, the difference in the room was noticeable. I had students come to my office and tell me that it was a much better lecture and fascinating. It sucks to realize that you are failing a certain section. Make your peace with that, because it will happen. Maybe not catastrophic, but significant issues will happen, even.

You will burn out long before the students.

Before Thanksgiving I was just destroyed. In a single day four or five different students told me that I looked tired and asked if I was ok. It’s honestly hard to write about that because the burnout was so bad. I have never experienced that level before. One evening I went basically catatonic on the couch. It was, frankly, scary.

The only reason I’m still standing is that I made time for my family and slept over our Thanksgiving break. My wife and I went to a movie, the three of us went to the zoo, had a nice Thanksgiving. [Note: this was written in between the last lecture and finals.]

You will fail your family.

I, with all the stress, was a less patient father, quicker to loud frustration with my four year old. My daughter picks up on that and has become more quick to loud frustration as well. I was also, equally as apparent, not the husband that my wife deserves. I wasn’t able to listen to her problems as I was constantly going over new tactics to reach students, or designing activities, or worried I was not communicating important ideas. Even while not actively working, you’ll have enough of a stress level that you aren’t shutting down. It’s a tough thing to live through, but it’s apparently equally difficult to cohabitate with it.

Yes, it can be harder than the end of your dissertation.

Remember graduate school? Remember the push to your dissertation, when you didn’t sleep, you got heart palpitations because of all the caffeine? When you stopped taking care of yourself because you just didn’t have the willpower or time? When you got writing tunnel vision and all you saw when you slept was the blinking cursor of Word?

This is that, but instead of just your partner, your family, your advisor, or whomever, if you fail you aren’t just letting those about 10 people down, you’re letting down the hundred or so students, the professors that get them next who need to clean up your mess. The students don’t understand the stress that you are under. It will not occur to them, even if they personally are naturally disposed to empathy.

“Dr. Fraass, why do you look so tired, it’s almost finals. We’re stressed, but aren’t the professors basically done?”

“…. No, I have two interviews to prepare for, a conference that I’m presenting at and organizing a session, and I also need to write two exams, grade them, then figure out final grades.”

“Oh.”

Your students will hate you.

I am a friendly person; I like to think of myself as very personable. If departmental culture didn’t dictate me using Dr. Fraass, I’d have all the students call me Andy, just like the departments I was in as undergrad and grad. I have students in classes that come and sit down during my office hours to chat, or make appointments for mentorship.

I was shown a private chat thread some of my students had going about the class at one point. Many of them hate me. I’m too hard, I don’t explain things, I don’t care, on and on. For the record, I hold nothing against those folks, at all.

With more than 200 people making an impression of you every year, many of them are going to hate your guts, particularly when you control their grades. Yes, some of it is griping or venting, or simply individuals dealing with stressful situations, not everybody likes everybody else. Nobody is 100% likable. With an N of >200, even 1% means somebody is going to be mad for a full semester. Factor in that when you start you’re going to hold folks to a standard different than other faculty, and it’s probably well over 1%.

Sit with that feeling. It sucks, but that’s part of the job.

What is this thing you call research?

I got the tiniest bit of research done. Even that was overly ambitious, but with a Geological Society of America talk and an invited American Geophysical Union talk to prepare for, I didn’t have a choice. I read a single (1!) paper this entire semester. It described the creation of a database, but didn’t have a strong analytical aspect to it, so it wasn’t like it was even a complicated paper to read.

I doubt I’m a unique case. Just accept that there’s a pause and you can’t do anything about it.

Advice

Create set pieces.

I am a stratigrapher, a paleoceanographer, a paleontologist, and a member of a number of other little subfields of geology. The most important issue of our time, and in my classes, is climate change. I carved out time to develop impactful lectures on past and modern climate change. I also spent time throughout the semester preparing for a week long mock-UN climate negotiation game. It isn’t ideal, but by deploying a really intense, interactive game in a confined window, it minimized the amount of time I needed to prepare, while still giving the students an experience. I had them fill out cards, so I know it made a heck of an impact on several of them. I plan on developing a game for evolution myself (a significant minority of my students come to me as creationists, due to a lack of understanding science and evolution itself) since that worked so well.

It also feels great to really nail the ever living hell out of something. You are good at what you do, but much of the semester is going to be spent feeling like you’re not doing a good job. Doing a lecture about something that you really care about is going to remind you that you can be a good, or even great, instructor.

Get into a faculty writing circle.

Getting your next job, or tenure, requires publishing. Without the faculty writing circle I got in, I would have gotten no research done. A faculty writing circle is a group of faculty that come together once a week and meet to talk about research and writing. It helps to provide some accountability to be productive during the week. I still only managed 30 minutes on a really good day, but that’s more than nothing. Teaching is a massive time suck, and there is always more work that can be done to do better. Having a group of folks that constantly encouraged me to do more writing, more research, helped with the pull from the students and my department.

You have to look out for yourself. You won’t be active in publishing, but try!

Manage your stress.

Ride your bike to work. Do yoga, play video games to shoot some Nazis for that cathartic release. Find something that you can do to help manage stress because this is going to be rougher than you expect.

And I’d expect it to be really, really rough.

Have a shutdown time.

There’s been a 8:00 PM work-stop time in my family since my time working towards a MS degree. I can’t sleep for hours after I stop plugging hard on something, so if I stop at 8 I have some time to slow my brain down. It also gives me time with my wife, even if it’s just watching Brooklyn 99 or The Defenders. Work will be there in the morning, and you’ll be able to teach better if you sleep.

Teaching isn’t writing. Your students will be able to tell if you aren’t in the moment. If you’re on 4 hours sleep, you won’t be in the moment. You’ll be on autopilot. They will be too.

Be as specific as possible when writing exam questions.

Technically amphibians are ancestral to a dinosaur, but the answer is archosaur, man. Give me a break. Also make your answer keys as you write the test. It’ll save time in the future.

Be OK with a bad lecture.

They will exist. They will happen. You’ll have bad weeks or a bad month. Students will stop showing up, even after just one. It’s ok. My attendance was ~50% when attendance wasn’t a part of the their grade (Normal Sam attendance with it being a part of their grade is much lower.) You are there to do your best, no matter how many are in the room. I gave mine 5% of their grade just for showing up to the last week of school, which I told them about for the entire semester. Only 58% showed up for the full week. You can only do so much.

You have some time to fix things that come up. There is time, because you’re creating this material on the fly, to revise how you’re developing materials. I changed the format of my exams after my first in Sed/Strat. I changed how I was giving out review materials too. Don’t go overboard, though. Think of it as refining your aim, rather than shooting at a different target.

That said, strive to do better. A bad lecture is something to fix next time, and to try to do what you can to not have it happen again. But it will. Keep notes on what didn’t work, or what did. I wish I had, it’d be worth the time.

Lean into the lecture format.

They’re faster to prepare. It just is. They aren’t the most effective, the students don’t react well to them as they’ll bury themselves in their phones.

Do what you can. Don’t lecture when you have something great, but be ok with them. You are in survival mode.

I want to leave you with one thing. I was talking to a friend a little while ago. She, being far smarter than I, told me:

The first year isn’t about hitting a homerun. It’s about getting on base.

Survive. Learn from your mistakes if you can, but most importantly: Survive.

That’s the best you can do.

Time Scavengers travel to the Geological Society of America Meeting

January 8, 2018May 30, 2019jenebauer1 Comment

Jen here –

The annual Geological Society of America Meeting is a gigantic academic conference for all fields that connect with the geological sciences. This year they had a record number of abstracts totaling 4,900! That is a lot of science from a whole lot of scientists. I have a few favorite things about large meetings like this: (1) you get to reconnect with old friends and collaborators; (2) you get to meet so many new friends and collaborators; (3) you learn at rapid speed through the 15 minute talks. Topics ranged from early life, the intersection of geology and archaeology, to planetary sciences.

This year I brought an undergraduate researcher with me who presented her poster on Sunday, I ran a session on Monday, and then I presented a poster on Time Scavengers Wednesday afternoon. So, I had a very full conference but it was so fun getting a handful of Time Scavengers together at the poster! We were able to get five Time Scavengers together for a photo. It’s difficult working a project working so far away from everyone but it was fun catching up with everyone.

About half of the Time Scavengers collaborators at the annual GSA meeting! Left to right: Kyle Hartshorn, Jen Bauer, Maggie Limbeck, Sarah Sheffield, and Raquel Bryant.

I purchased business cards printed before the meeting so we had information to hand out to people interested in the site. I gave away about half of the cards I purchased, so roughly 250 cards! I got a ton of positive feedback from scientists, educators, and students. Poster sessions are always very intimate ways of receiving a ton of feedback quickly. Unlike with oral presentations where audience members can maybe squeeze in one or two questions, poster presentations allow for more detailed conversation. This year they had an additional poster session so we set up at 8 AM and had a session from 9:30-11:30 AM and again from 4:30-6:30 PM.

Check out the recording of the poster presentation below:

Curating a New Fossil Collection

January 5, 2018June 2, 2019Adriane5 Comments

Fossil turtle shells from the Oligocene (~32-34 million years), along with a turtle coprolite (fossil poop) from the Eocene (~47 million years).

Adriane here-

Last year, the Department of Geosciences at University of Massachusetts Amherst received a very generous donation of fossils. Being a fossil freak myself, I was over the moon excited to set up the new collection and help make the display for these precious fossils. Our department already has an impressive collection of minerals (the Rausch Mineral Gallery, which is open to the public weekdays from 9 am – 5 pm), so a fossil gallery was the perfect compliment to this. The department decided to call the collection the Lawrence Osborn Fossil Collection, after the generous donor.

Teeth of Hyracodon, a pony-like organism that lived during the Oligocene.

Setting up the fossil displays was quite a task, but one of the most fun tasks I have participated in during my time at UMass as a graduate student! Unwrapping boxes upon boxes of vertebrate and invertebrate specimens was better than Christmas morning as a kid! There are several amazing fossil specimens, but one of my favorite is a Triceratops horn fragment. Other impressive specimens are the two nests of dinosaur eggs and two individual eggs.

In addition to the fossils donated to us, the Geoscience department also has an impressive collection of Paleozoic invertebrate fossils that were collected by a previous professor (who has long since retired). The last cabinet in our fossil display was reserved especially for these fossils. My previous research experience was with Paleozoic invertebrates, so I (quite happily) undertook the task of selecting, identifying, and setting up these fossils.

My advisor Mark, my lab partner Serena, and I were tasked with organizing the display in cabinets next to our mineral gallery. We decided to order the specimens according to geologic time, with the youngest fossils on the right side of the room and the oldest on the left. In addition, we also tried to separate the fossils within each cabinet by terrestrial and marine organisms. This way, visitors can see how life on Earth has changed and evolved through time on land and in the oceans.

A Eubrontes trace fossil. Eubrontes is the name given to the dinosaur track. This one in particular came from western Massachusetts, and is about 200 million years old!

Rock, mineral, and fossil collections within universities and colleges are very important resources, as they allow the students in those institutions access to the collections through research, curating, and learning activities. Professors can also incorporate the collections into their teaching curriculum if they wish to. This semester, the Historical Geology students at UMass will each be assigned a fossil from the collection. As a class project, each student will write a one-page description of their fossil, and will include facts about the organism. These pages will then be print and bound in a book kept by the fossil collection so visitors can learn more about the extinct organisms. In this way, the students are learning about geologic time, evolution, and paleontology, and also science communication!

An Oviraptor egg, with a plastic model behind it to illustrate how the young dino would have grown inside the shell.

The collections are great tools for education outreach and science communication. For example, I have used the Rausch Mineral Gallery housed at UMass to teach local Boy Scouts about natural resources and important minerals we use in our everyday lives. Late last year, the first group to see the fossils was a science club from one of our local high schools. The kids were amazed at the fossils! When I told them our oldest fossils were ~550 million years old, they were seriously impressed. In the world of paleontology, dinosaurs are often king, so it’s always a sweet victory when I can get people to marvel at our Earth’s earliest multi-cellular invertebrate creatures.