We Are Palaeontologists

Ocean Sciences 2010

2010-01-21T05:17:00.001-08:00

Hello everyone.

I have finally got my first oral presentation at an international conference. I will be talking about the vaguries of d13C in the Southern Ocean at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Portland, Oregon in February.

I'm wondering if any of you will be attending the meeting.

Let me know

Cheers

Lys

Magical Prehistory Tour

2009-07-16T12:01:00.000-07:00

In light of Rachel's good news, I thought I'd also take it upon myself to post an update. Any of you who are on Facebook (which is most of you, I guess) probably saw the updates Graeme (who I suppose I should be referring to as 'Dr. Lloyd' now), Phil (Finches), and I kept posting from across the middle part of the US over the last month or so. We were all in Cincinnati (along with Mark Bell, James Tarver, and Phil Donoghue) for the North American Paleontology Conference. All of us presented talks there, and they seemed to go over very well. After the meeting, Graeme, Phil, and I drove the ~3000 miles to Seattle, which is an excellent trip I would recommend to anyone (you know, with all that spare time and extraneous cash I'm sure everyone has on their hands...). I won't bore you all with endless stories about what we did, but I've posted a slideshow in case any of you are interested.

Hopefully I'll get to see most of you at SVP this September (I've heard rumors of a get-together ahead of time, but who knows if anything will come of that). Also, are any of you planning on going to GSA this October? It's being held just up the road from me in Portland, and while I'm still on the fence as to whether or not I'll be going, a visit to Oregon is another trip I would recommend to anyone.

Hope you all are doing well.

-John

Greetings from Bristol! (but not for much longer)

2009-07-08T11:37:00.000-07:00

Hello there chaps and chapesses!

I've got a job! An actual, real, proper job! In Glasgow, of all places. At the Hunterian museum, cataloguing their entire collections (well, writing brief descriptions of the contents of each and every drawer and shelf, to be put onto a google-linked searchable database). Which may not sound much fun, but I'm excited!
I've been scouring flatshare websites, and I'm planning to go flat-hunting up there at the weekend. Got to get a move on, because I'm supposed to start at the end of the month! Eek! Although, of course, being a university-run thing they're very slow on paperwork and I haven't had anything in writing yet! Or been given a firm start date. But I'm being pateint and not panicking yet.

So looks like I won't be going to SVP after all! Or any of the gigs I'd bought tickets for - there's a David Attenborough thing on at the Colston in September that I really wanted to go to! D'you think I can fly down for one evening?!

A New Year and Cold Start!

2009-01-15T06:11:00.000-08:00

Hello, greetings and all that jazz.

I am still here in good old .DE and merrily procrastinating my way into the second year of my PhD. First big, proper conference coming up at the end of the month, but I appear to have lost the ability to panic too much anymore.

So what's new? Um, it's cold. In fact so cold we had an iceberg in the harbour at the start of the month. I was going to scan it in, but of course left the article at home this morning.

Not much of an update I'll admit, still just thought I'd stop in and say hi....oh and gloat slightly over the fact I am off to Australia for a month in February...Mwhahahahahaha!

Take care of yourselves

Lys

2008-12-18T12:30:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas, one and all! Does anyone still read this thing?

It sounds like you're all off doing far more exciting things than me...I'm pretty much doing exactly the same as this time last year, the only differences being that I now volunteer in Biology at Bristol Museum (which is fun) since Tim Ewin abandoned us for the NHM (but can't say I blame him!).
My trip to Oz in January/February was amazing, even though I didn't discover anything mind-blowing on the dig...a few scrappy pieces of dino and turtle bone mostly. But it was still pretty damn cool! (even though it was about 35 degrees in the shade!).

Me breaking up some rock. We found a nice big ornithopod femur in this block!

Anyone going to SVP next year? It's being held in our own fair Bristol! Maybe I'll see a few of you there! In the meantime, everyone have a very merry Christmas and a happy new year!

Rach

2008-10-24T05:10:00.000-07:00

Well hello there!

It's been a while since I've put in any sort of update, so I thought I'd bung in a quick post to let you all know what I've been up to. I had a couple of weeks of fieldwork out on the U.S. Gulf Coast in May, and I've spent most of my time since processing samples and doing microscope work. Which has been dull, quite frankly, but the data is now starting to trickle in. I'll be doing a poster at Palass on what I've done so far. And while we're on the subject, who else is going this year? I've taken a room at the Kelvin Hotel, is anyone else going to be staying there?

Other exciting news: for those who aren't aware, next year's Progressive Palaeontology will be in Birmingham. You are all of course cordially invited, although I understand that those in a different timezone may not be able to make the trip. Preparations are going well, but I do find all this teamwork rather challenging. Palass will also be in Birmingham next year, so 2009 will be a bit of a Brummie double-whammy.

My first paper will also be out in December, in the very fine journal Palynology. It's not the most groundbreaking paper ever written, but I'm still quite pleased with it. Has anyone else got any publications in the pipeline? I've enjoyed reading Luke's, Rob's and Koen's papers from their MSc projects, and I'd very much like to read any more papers that get published.

Time to get back to the lab.

Cheerio!

Neil and Cheryl tie the knot

2008-07-01T04:55:00.000-07:00

T'was a lovely day and the bride looked radiant. There are a few pics on facebook for all to see. Hope you're all well

SVP

2008-05-19T14:49:00.000-07:00

I was just sending in my abstract for the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting this year (in scenic Cleveland...ugh...) and was curious whether any of the rest of you had plans to be there. It should be a good time; those of us that were there last year got to see Mike Benton get drunk at the afterparty, which in and of itself was worth the trip (I might also mention that Lara gave an excellent talk and I presented a much less excellent poster). If any of you are going, let me know if you might be interested in working out shared rooms (this seems very early, I know, but I'm told all the double rooms at the host hotel are already booked, and I'm betting that affordable rooms in downtown Cleveland are going fast).
While I'm writing here, how is everybody these days? People so rarely post here anymore, which is a shame, since I always enjoy hearing what people are up to. For my part, I'm getting ready to spend the summer helping to write a grant to fund our university museum and traveling to California to measure horse, dog, and squirrel teeth for my dissertation research. I hope everyone else's life lately has been equally or more exciting (though, really, I'm not sure how anything could be more exciting than fossil squirrel teeth...) and that I'll get to see at least a few of you in Ohio this October!

The demise of Chantry Court.

2008-04-21T07:40:00.000-07:00

I thought this might be of interest to some of you who suffered at the hands of Unite Student Housing during your brief but eventful time in the fair town of Bristol. Chantry Court has been struck off Bristol's accommodation list for next year. This is NOT due to the flooding fiasco, the ventilation vexation, the postal palaver or the raucous residents (although the office was staffed by some highly admirable sorts!) No this was due to the infestation of maggots they had all throughout the back entrance because of the overflowing refuse tip outside. Aren't you glad you all moved Koen, Lys, Rob, Ben? I am!!!!

Anyway, I'm utterly bored at work and this was the last procrastination tool at my disposal before giving a resigned sigh and heading off to Borders for 20 minutes. I hope that you are all well and having plenty of success at whatever you're all turing your hands to. I think a reunion might be in order at some point no?

Well, until we meet again (don't know where, don't know when) fare thee well comrades and palaopadwans in arms.

xxx

Merry Christmas and junk

2007-12-20T05:45:00.000-08:00

Hi everybody,

Since there is only one post so far for december, I thought I shear up the numbers a bit. Although I'm far from religious in any way (perhaps only when worshiping divine female curves), I do love the whole christmas atmosphere. It is supposed to be the birthday celebration of Jesus Christus, but that was just a smart move of the Catholic Church to absorb the pagan celebrations around that time of year. I like to think of Christmas more as a fertility celebration. The tree is obviously a phallussymbol, and the presents underneath, well I don't think I need to explain what they represent. It's the celebration of the winter solstice, which is actually on the 22nd, and means the beginning of the lengthening of the days. In short, I wish you all a Merry Solstice and a very Happy New Year.

And don't let my obscene thoughts ruine your fun when opening those balls... I mean presents.

Best wishes,

Koen

Stuff and nonsense

2007-12-01T10:58:00.000-08:00

Ugh. I had to look at Braddy's smug face on the local news blathering on about his bloody giant eurypterid. That news story was even a question on Have I Got News For You that week. Braddy's practically famous! Though his name wasn't actually mentioned!

Anyway, that wasn't the purpose of this post. Just thought I should say hello, I haven't been here for a while. So hello! Hope you're all doing well with your PhD's or whatever. I'm still working part-time, and volunteering at Bristol museum. Which is fun! Kinda. More excitingly, I'm going to Australia in January! I'm joining a university-run dig near Melbourne for a couple of weeks, and I'm gonna dig up dinosaurs! Hopefully. I went digging in Westbury one day last week with a collector, looking for a plesiosaur skull in the clay pit, and found bugger all! Well, we found a fish, and some fossilised wood, but that's it. The chap had already found the plesiosaur's mandible, a paddle and all of the cervical vertebrae, and all quite well articulated, so he was hopeful that the skull was still there...but no such luck.

So, yeah...digging is the plan at the moment. I'm just trying to get some field experience, really. It was Remmert who recommended the Australia trip to me, 'cause I asked him how one gets into doing what he does for a living, and the advice was basically to get out in the field. So into the field I shall go! Even if that field happens to be an Australian beach, at the height of their summer and the depths of the glorious British winter! It's a hard life!

Hope everyone's OK, enjoy Palass those of you who are going, and see you sometime!

Rach

Braddy's Big Bug

2007-11-21T22:11:00.000-08:00

I assume everyone has heard this story by now, but the Braddster has made international headlines this past week by co-authoring a description of a giant eurypterid. I heard a story about it on the radio this morning; they never mentioned Simon by name, but they did talk about his favorite hypothesis, and believe me, it's quite a shock to wake up to a description of mass-molt-mate behavior in sea scorpions...

isotope standards.

2007-11-08T03:44:00.000-08:00

hi, this is a purely theroretical query (possibly answered with a simple reference i'm just curious about the histroy and whether there was any thought behind it or if it was simply a case of eeny meeny miney mo.
the isotopic composition of a sample is often expressed as a delta notation relative to the isotopic composition of a standard (e.g. d13C in 0/00)
the standard typically used for carbon is the Pee-Dee Belemnite (PDB). Now this limestone has a relatively high 13C/12C ratio, therefore values of inorganic or organic carbon are mostly negative, i.e. isotopically lighter than the PDB standard.
can anyone tell me why we use the PDB? and also if other standards used (i.e. for other isotopes) also have relatively high or conversely relatively low ratios?

thanks

Lys

Just a comment and another

2007-10-31T05:10:00.000-07:00

Hi everybody!

Just to point out that it's not always clear who wrote the comment, I suggest you sign your comment with your name/favourite nickname or some other word that you can be distinguished with. I assume the last comment came from John? Sorry, I really don't know...

Nevertheless, interesting subject, as I'm interested in size increase and decrease as well, but in Sauropodomorpha. The study I'm dealing with now concerns the (formerly) putative Romanian dwarf Magyarosaurus. Now histology has proven they are (were) indeed dwarfs, we can start thinking about the insular dwarfism in these creatures and the palaeobiogeography of Europe in those days. interestingly, it seems there is another somewhat larger taxon amidst the bones. My supervisor and I had a discussion with David Weishampel (still can't believe that the man who wrote the dinosaur bible just let me call him Dave) and Kristi Curry Rogers, and it is possible that this larger taxon infers a peninsular palaeogeography or at least an island with temporary landbidges to the larger continent of Eurasia, resulting in invasions of non-endemic species. It's cool that there is a similar pattern in the ornithopods of Eastern Europe.
More anon. I'm off making some thin sections.
By the way, did you all know that Lara is now doing a PhD in Canadia (with Phil Currie I believe)? Or am I the last one to find out again?

best wishes,

Koenosaurus

Horses and Squirrels and Dogs, Oh My!

2007-10-29T19:30:00.001-07:00

First and foremost, (belated) congratulations Lys! Depending on how you figure these things, having been through the Bristol MSc program together makes us all either academic siblings or cousins. Either way, you always like to see your family do well, and the number of people that have gone on to PhD programs from our year is really phenomenal (and, I think, uncharacteristic). I'm sure you'll all agree that this is yet more evidence that ours was the greatest MSc class ever...
Secondly, since the original purpose of this blog was to keep one another updated on what we were working on, I thought I'd announce that I've finally - after several false starts - settled on what exactly I'll be doing for my dissertation project. Most of you are, I imagine, at least vaguely familiar with the mid-Miocene climatic optimum. For those of you that aren't, it was a period of global warming that peaked around 16 million years ago at temperatures that are right around those predicted by several models of modern climate change. Of course, one of the great questions of our age is how climate change can affect ecology, and I like to think that paleontology has some answers. I'll be looking at a transect along the west coast of North America (Oregon-Mexico) for the duration of the Miocene to see if any trends in body size are apparent. I have two hypotheses to test. First, body size within taxa should increase the further north you go, as has long been observed in extant animals. Second, the mid-Miocene climatic optimum should lead to a decrease of body size, a trend which should reverse once steady cooling sets in later in the Miocene. Of course, I can't look at every Miocene mammal out there, or I would be at this forever. So, I spent a good deal of last week leafing through the literature and playing around on MIOMAP to pick three taxa that represent different ecological categories and body sizes and I wound up opting to look at canids, sciurids, and equids. Yes, after my childhood dreams of working on dinosaurs, I'm now looking to get my PhD by studying dogs, squirrels, and horses. That might have bothered me once, but I've now come around to the point of view that the question is much more important than the taxa you use to answer it, and these three families are ideal for looking at ecological changes in the mid-Miocene, in that they all have very good fossil records and very well resolved phylogenies (plus, by studying horses, I get to add my name as a tiny footnote to a list that includes Huxley, Marsh, and Osborn, among many others). I won't bore you all with the methods; suffice it to say I'll be making a lot of trips to California, which is no great hardship.
That's my plan for the next few years; what have all the rest of you been up to?

my fellow palaeopadwans

2007-10-23T11:05:00.000-07:00

greetings!

i have been terribly lax of late in
1. keeping in contact with you guys and
2. even checking our palaeoblog. terrible i know but i have justifiable cause...um...i will think of one at some point.

to be honest the green eyed monster was still an intermittent companion and my job was extremely hectic, think department so understaffed we were all doing the work of at least two people (rather reminded me of being back in Bristol!) but enough of the past...i have finally FINALLY returned to the field of academia. in a complete departure from all previous research i am now investigating δ13C of particulate organic material in the Southern Ocean.

it is a situation of complete irony i find myself in as one of the main reasons for taking a job at the Guernsey Education Department was to attempt to get the legislation altered so i could apply for a PhD in Britain.....and having successfully accomplished this (in July NERC published their revised guide accepting students from the Channel Islands) i then applied for and accpeted a PhD in Germany!

i finally arrived in Bremerhaven yesterday evening and have spent today, my first day, in a state of permanent bemusement and a creeping fear that somehow i am a terrible fraud and it is only a matter of time before someone figures this out. however on thursday i go to enrole in my German classes and hopefully things will seem less terrifying from that point on.

i will post a short description of my project as soon as i get a chance to catch my breath, stop panicing and start to reaquaint myself with current research.

Tschüß Lys xxx

Miss you guys

2007-09-28T08:16:00.000-07:00

Dear fellow padwans,

It's really been too long, and I'm sorry for not staying in touch. I was caught in the tight grip of the dark side...

It's Friday afternoon, and I'm procrastinating as always (who wouldn't), and I discovered the email (dated somewhere in February) about the palaeoblog. I've been reading all the posts, and thought it is about time I let hear from myself.

You probably all heard I live in 'gemütliches' Bonn now, studying dinosaur bone tissue, and now I can add that my koenosaur (you know, the gliding lizards) paper has been accepted in Palaeontology. Yipeekayay! I have been working my ass off on that one.

Now I can concentrate on cutting up dinosaur bone and grinding it into thin sections. As a matter of fact, I'll be going to SVP in Texas in October to do some more sampling. It would be fab if I could meet any of you guys there. Ben gave away my intention to visit MCZ at Harvard. That wil unfortunately not go trough as they are currently reorganising (new staff) and could not tell me anything better than 'The stuff you are looking for is in South America.' Guess I'll have to go to South America then...
Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be going to Palass this year, as it is turning out a bit expensive (nothing to present, i.e. pay it myself).

Great, the afternoon has turned into an evening, I can go home now... I promise I'll be checking the forum more often from now on (and posting stuff too).

I wish you all the best,

Koenstein

Congratulations Lys :)

2007-09-21T02:45:00.000-07:00

About time I hear you cry?

2007-09-05T02:37:00.000-07:00

Hello ladies and gents and Emma's bag thing

There's been an awful lot of talk of me and those oranges as well as that picture, but it was a split second moment of madness in a year of, well, utter madness. Such a famous moment is a bit of a double-edged sword really. Funny? Maybe, Embarassing? Very (I was borderline crazy at the time with masters work. I'm sure you can appreciate that). Anyway, since this is my first blog on this thing in almost a year (or maybe over a year?) of its existence, it is surely about time I wrote something down!

So Palass is coming up and who's going? Ceri and me are registered, but it would be nice to see some of your pretty faces there too! Here's a link to some Swedish phrases to learn just so the trip goes smoothly:

http://www.listology.com/content_show.cfm/content_id.17825

My personal favourites are:

jävla idioter - damn fools

and

Jag är snyggare naken - I'm better-looking naked

and

...och det spelar ingen roll ändå om hon ser ganska tjock ut, eller hur? - and it doesn't matter anyway if she looks fat, does it?

but I'm not sure how much these will be needed! Take a look anyway.

Miss you all loads. Take care peeps!

Rob

Silica, diatoms, and grasses

2007-08-27T07:52:00.000-07:00

Dear Phinches, Dear All,

I must confess to be astounded (and very pleased) that my little article was noticed, even more so that it was read all the way to the end! I hope this doesn't mean somebody will notice that the latest PalAss newsletter contains pretty much the identical text... Anyhow, I've thought a little bit about the role of plants in general, phytoliths and grasses in particular, in the silica cycle, and am only too happy to take the chance to share my thoughts and ask for your feedback. The short answer is that I think grassland expansion might change the delivery mode of silica to the oceans from a "steady trickle" to a "pulsed" pattern. I am not convinced that grassland expansion could actually increase the steady-state (or time-averaged) supply rate to the ocean. Let me explain why:

Plants can increase silicate weathering locally, and thus the supply of dissolved silica to the oceans, by a number of processes -- mechanical disaggregation of rock by roots, carbon dioxide pumping to the soils, acidity from humic and other organic acids, and so on. This is a pretty well established idea, and Berner used this in his GEOCARB model of carbon dioxide over time to argue for a decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide with the rise of land plants in the Devonian. An important point to note, though, is that the silicate weathering rate over geological timescales is controlled (as far as we know) by the Walker feedback -- the temperature-silicate weathering-carbon dioxide feedback -- and plants can only really affect the weathering rate *constant*, not the rate itself. If you like, the feedback stabilizes pushes and pulls on a steady state -- the rate constant (cue plants) affects the tightness of the spring which couples push or pull to the system. If you haven't read the Walker paper, I highly recommend it (Walker, Hays, and Kasting, 1981, JGR vol. 86, 9776-9782). The key point, though, is that this has nothing to do with grasses and phytoliths -- as far as I know, there is no palpable difference between grasses and other plants in the way they disaggregate rock, produce humic acid, etc. to affect silicate weathering rates.

Now, the part that singles out grasses in the silica cycle is indeed the fact that grasses make phytoliths. Some folks have proposed that the evolutionary rise of grasslands to ecological dominance has thus increased the supply of silicic acid to the oceans; an example is the paper on modern plankton evolution by Falkowski and peeps (2004, Science vol. 305, 354-360). The idea behind it all is that grasses accumulate huge amounts of silica (up to around 10% dry weight) in various tissues, a lot of it as phytoliths (little amorphous silica shapes), much more than most other plants today (although some, like the horsetails, accumulate even more). This is, of course, fascinating for its own reasons from the perspective of vertebrate grazer evolution (or coevolution), which Phil can no doubt confirm, but that's beside the point here. The point that is frequently made regarding the silica cycle is that this phytolith silica is of a more soluble form than the silicate minerals from which silicate weathering supplies silicic acid (in part mediated by the processes listed at the start of the last paragraph). This is true -- amorphous silica is at least an order of magnitude more soluble than most silicates. If plants are producing this more soluble form, the dissolution of phytoliths will supply more silicic acid to the oceans (all the time via rivers, of course). However, I have a problem extrapolating from the solubility observation to the idea that the rate of supply can increase. Consider the following simple depiction of the system we're looking at:

Here, the rate of supply to the oceans is F[out]. You can immediately see that, unless the masses of the soil water or phytolith reservoirs change (i.e. violating steady state), F[out] must equal F[weathering]. Now, the size of the global phytolith reservoir is not known, but my own ball park estimate is that it's on the order of 1000 to 10,000 Tmol. Currently, F[out] is around 5 Tmol per year. I take the scenario in which phytoliths formation increases dissolved silica supply to the oceans to mean that F[out]>>F[Fweathering]. If you imagine, for argument's sake, the extreme case where F[weathering]=0, you would empty the phytolith reservoir in, at most, 2,000 years... Clearly, this can't be a prolonged source of extra silica.

What *could* happen, of course, is that the phytolith reservoir acts to modulate (here's where my word choice in the article comes in!) F[out]. What I mean here is best explained by analogy -- imagine a river with a dam (in this analogy, water=silica!). At steady state, with the sluice gates wide open, the river flux above the dam (F[weathering]) is the same as the flux out of dam(F[out]). Now, if you close the dam, either completely for a short time, or a little bit for a longer time, water will build up behind the dam. Eventually, you'll reach another steady state -- either when the water spills over the top of the dam (if it's all closed up), or if the higher water level is pushing the water out faster. Either way, you'll be back to F[weathering]=F[out]. Now imagine suddenly opening the dam back up: for some time, you will have F[out] >> F[weathering], but only until Lake Meade has run dry. Jumping back from the analogy to the silica world now, you could imagine this sort of thing happening on glacial-interglacial timescales (this is Conley's idea now, from his 2002 paper in GBC vol. 16 section 68). Entering into a glacial, silica held in biomass might be released as the climate cools, resulting in a pulse of silica to the oceans, and a period of direct inputs from F[weathering] without going through the phytolith reservoir. In interglacials, inputs might be more indirect. As a lush, grassy vegetation builds up a large phytolith reservoir, most of the F[out] will be sourced from phytolith dissolution, but F[out] would actually have to be smaller than F[weathering] during the accumulation of the reservoir.

Does any of this make sense? I would love to hear your input, feedback, and ideas, and really appreciate your interest!

Best wishes from sunny Cambridge (MA),
- Ben.

Some palaeo-related discussion

2007-08-23T04:42:00.000-07:00

Hello, my brethren.

Hope you're all well. Sadly I won't be making it out to Denver this year, but I hope anyone who goes has fun.

Now then, to business. John and I spent a few weeks in Santa Barbara doing a palaeobiological analysis course, and I thought it would be useful to let you all know what we actually covered, in case of any questions or discussions that might lead from it. We started with a bit of stuff about the philosophy of stats, and then covered geometric morphometrics, community palaeoecology (with lots of mathematical proofs), diversity curves, quantitative biochronology, phylogenetics (of the maximum likelihood variety), and speciation and extinction (lots of simulations, basically). So there you go.

And now a question for Ben. I read your report on your MSc project in the TMS newletter, and towards the end you mention the expansion of grasslands modulating silica supply to the oceans (presumably because of the phytoliths within the grasses?). Anyway, coming from the point of view of someone who has studied the expansion of grasslands but knows bugger all about the silica cycle, I'm just wondering how important a factor you think this would be in terms of radiolarian evolution, and the amount of silica reaching the oceans in general. The timing is rather interesting (late Eocene-early Oligocene), as this is when grasslands are hypothesised to have developed in South America (evidenced by hypsodonty rather than grass fossils themselves). Anyway, it struck me as being an interesting discussion point.

TTFN.

Calling all of you all (to Denver)

2007-08-20T08:44:00.000-07:00

Dear Palaeoamigos,

I recently found out that an abstract I submitted to this year's GSA was accepted, so I'll be traveling to Denver in October to check out that scene. It was a blast and a half when I went during the MSc year (you may or may not have noticed my absence), so I can highly recommend it -- is anyone else planning to attend? I found Monsieur Bells in the database... Anyone else? It would be fantabulous to see you.

I would also like to renew my invitation to all of you to come and visit me here in Boston. It's a fabulous place, especially in the fall. I am pleased to announce that Monsieur Koenstein has already announced his intention to visit (and, while he's here, look at some dino bones at the museum), so follow his bold lead, good friends, find an excuse to require the Harvard Museum of Natural History for your work, obtain some funding, and let's partay!

Hope you are all well,
Ciao!

- Ben.

The demise of G4

2007-08-06T06:50:00.000-07:00

Do you remember that place we used to go?

You know, that windowless place that had a moss green carpet and seats you'd need a tetanus jab for? Remeber now? With the macs that seldom worked and the rows of old desks. We'd be in there at all hours, sometimes working, sometimes drinking, sometimes bowing our heads in dispair or roaring with laughter. "Ahh, good times!" I hear you sigh. Remember playing your guitars in there, or practicing presentations?
Remember learning about taphonomy and ichnology, remember being handcuffed, or falling off the desks? Or watching Rob stuff oranges up his t-shirt and parading round like he had breasts? Well, all those memories have been ripped out folks. Yes, G4 is no more! The desks have gone, the carpet will probably go (i hope), it's all being binned to make way for a spanking new office that Bristol are going to try and cram 50 MSc and MESci (grrrrrrrrr) students into. (Yes I did type 50. This is paleontology battery-farm style!).

So as you're sitting at your computers, think back for a few moments for all the times that were. Because now, my fellow palaeopadwans, they exist only in memory............

Oh, and also....Rob's MSc paper has been accepted!!! He wouldn't write to tell you but I have no shame. I'm very proud.

That's all for now.

Hello from Boston

2007-07-05T06:18:00.000-07:00

Life is hard here, too.

Now that the semester is finally over, the hectic pace of life has slowed considerably, and (although there's as much to do as before) there's time to gallivant about the country. In the last three weeks I have been to see Kennebunkport, Maine (where the beloved G. W. Bush goes on holiday -- sorry, vacation), Kennebunk, just down the road, where Tom's of Maine toothpaste is made (they sell fabulously cheap seconds in their factory outlet store), Ohio (to see, amongst other things, the world's biggest basket), and to Cape Ann (Massachusetts' other cape, where there are fantastic beaches and very delicious seafood).

On the academic front, things are going as smoothly as dragging a dead dog across a boulder field. I was planning to go on a summer field camp in LA, but it was cancelled, so I'm in Boston for most of the summer. I hope all of you who chose the UK route are rejoicing in the absence of a taught component -- I am still working on an (exceedingly) overdue term paper... Other than that, I still have no idea what I'll be doing for actual research. I've decided to stick with the silica cycle for the time being, and have been looking into using silicon isotopes to reconstruct the palaeo-cycle, but it looks like a very sketchy and unconstrained system to be working with. And who knows about the effects of diagenesis?

Is anybody going to GSA this fall/autumn? I am going to submit an abstract about the radiolarian stuff I did with Dani.

I hope everyone is doing well. Come visit!

Hello from California

2007-06-28T21:35:00.000-07:00

Life is hard. As hinted at by John in a previous post, he, myself, and Graeme are currently residing in Santa Barbara, taking part in the Paleobiology Database summer course. So far, we've been confused by the philosophy of statistics, and befuddled by the basics of programming. Tomorrow, we will blunder headlong into the quagmire of geometric morphometrics.

Anyway, today was a day off, and, amongst other things, we went to have a look at the Santa Barbara mission (as Saint Barbara is the patron saint of geologists, it's of course very appropriate that we're here). Here's a photo of the three of us outside of said mission, with the Santa Ynez mountains in the background.

As I say, life is hard.

Right then, must be off. I dare say either John or I will put in an update when something exciting happens.

P.S. We saw a skunk the other day!

Linneus 300th bash

2007-06-21T05:05:00.000-07:00

Hello all

I trust that you are all well and engaged in interesting activities. I thought I might post a quick update on the most recent conference attended by paleopadwans (myself and Emma), since we're not really using this site for much palaeo talk (owing, of course, to having better sites to vist, like facebook for example). Anyway, the Royal Society held a tercentenary evolution themed extravaganza earlier this week for good old Linneus and these were the main events: Dick Jeffries (whom some of you may know) got arsy with a lot of people, there was a mass debate about whether we should refer to one half of the Protostomia as lophotrochozoans or spiralians (joy!) and I may have inadvertantly let slip that I thought some aspects of the MSc were a load of poo to Paddy Orr, Nic Butterfield and Mat Wills over lunch in Pizza Hut (the pepperoni had really gone to my head). And that was about it. Oh, there were some interesting advances being talked about too but these mainly involved gene expression experiments and loads of pictures of embryos with supernumary limbs etc, there wasn't much talk of fossils. Anyway, for those of you attending Paris in a few weeks, good luck! Who's going to Palass and what are we all doing with our grant money? I am rotting thiomargarita (I got bored of embryos) and contemplating lophotrochozoan (not spiralian) decay paths and planning to make Briggs' mineralization experiments look like kindergarten projects. Them there's fightin' words!
But enough about me......what about you????

Photos

2007-06-13T12:19:00.000-07:00

I was going through my photo collection the other day and came across a bunch of pictures from Bristol. They're mostly from early in the year, and I'm afraid they're not all the most flattering shots in the world, but given that a) it was decided that my photo looked like Beavis and b) that a shot of me gawking at the walls of the Avon Gorge (actually, I'll admit that I'm a bit perversely proud of that), I don't think any of you have anything to complain about. The last shot may not make much sense to most of you, but I'm sure Koen remembers it...

Updates

2007-05-25T22:18:00.000-07:00

In all fairness, I think most of us joined the dark side a long time ago. Still, I don't suppose that should keep us from staying in touch with one another; that is the whole point of this blog, after all. In that spirit, I have a few updates from my end of things. I just submitted an abstract of my proposal to the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in hopes of presenting at their conference the Fall (In Texas! Yeeha!). Any of you all planning on being there, by any chance?
Also, while I imagine that Phil's admirable English reserve kept him from bragging about this, he and I (and Graeme, for that matter) will all be attending the Paleobiology Database's summer course in sunny Southern California. I'm planning on spending the rest of the summer in the deserts of Eastern Oregon looking for a good site to focus on for my PhD project, studying the effect of the mid-Miocene warm spike on mammal communities. Thrilling stuff, I know. At any rate, I hope you all are doing well, and keep those updates coming!

-John

2007-05-25T09:24:00.001-07:00

No one talks about their work anymore...where are the phylogenies, the theories, the papers, the updates??????? Are we palaeo-padwans or have we turned to the dark side...................

2007-04-18T09:38:00.000-07:00

Progressive continued....

Phil's charming modesty has resulted in an incomplete account of the proceedings last Friday: His talk was brilliant too.

Progressive Palaeontology

2007-04-16T01:36:00.000-07:00

Well hello there,

As most of you are probably aware, ProgPal was held in Bristol at the end of last week. Ceri, Jen, and myself made it along, but I thought I'd just write a quick post to let the rest of you know how it went. Most of the talks on Friday were really good, and Ceri's (which opened the day) was predictably excellent. On Saturday we went fossil hunting near the Severn Bridge, although I spent most of the time lazing about in the sun. I did however apply myself to the task in hand for long enough to find a lump of limestone with a shark spine (dorsal), a bit of Pachystropheus vertebrae, and lots of fish scales in it. Given that I am usually a supremely unlucky fossil hunter I was rather pleased!

There were no noteworthy quotes unfortunately, but Jen, first getting herself inebriated so that she could communicate with Simon on his own level, then proceeded to give the luckless fellow some career advice. Well done Jen!

what are we all up to?...well me not much!

2007-04-13T15:04:00.000-07:00

why i hear you ask am i not doing much? why is my life dull and lacking in excitement?
well i shall reveal all my fellow palaeopadwans.
cause i am an accident prone numpty thats why. i decked out badly bouldering and fractured my talus....i was unbeleiveably lucky and unlike 90% of people my fracture didnt dislocate, this is good as it means i don't need surgury..phew
however i am seriously limited in my mobility and so am restricted in my activieties by the fact i may be on crutches for 12weeks completely non weight bearing.
but i am not informing you for sympathy..i have had sooooo many people say bad luck and gosh that must have hurt that i may go mad
NO the reason for this post is simple. i have bullied the doc into giving me permission to keep using the gym, i might as well concnetrate on my upper body strength. this means that i need to get my cast changed more frequently than normal...i.e. every 2 weeks. so i wanna know whay colour scheme to go for next. sarah is lobbying for blue and green but i'm open to suggestions......
lys

Post Graduation Post, 51 days later

2007-04-12T06:21:00.000-07:00

Hello everybody! How are you all?

I hope everyone's doing well. Harvard continues to treat me well; I am currently struggling to get my head around the silicon isotope system, isoprenoid biosynthesis, linear algebra (orthogonality in particular), and the mean value theorem in stats. Waaah!

I did get to take a week off for "spring break" in Portland, OR, and do some fun things like fly an airplane and ski on Mt. Hood. Although I got a nasty stomach bug and spent half of my time there in bed (which is why I ended up not calling, John), it was a good time. Now it's back to the coalface, though. The semester here ends in a few weeks -- incredible to think that the first academic year post-Bristol is almost over.

What is everyone else up to?

Creation Wiki

2007-03-22T07:41:00.000-07:00

Dear all,

I don't normally go in for creationist bashing (it's just an occassional treat), but I found this rather amusing: http://creationwiki.org/Dinosaur.

The whole website is worth having a look round, but I found their suggestion that dinosaurs were driven to extinction by mankind particularly entertaining.

Enjoy!

Hairy Babies!

2007-03-17T21:48:00.000-07:00

Apologies, (Fossil) Phil, for once again dredging up a malaprop that I'm sure you'd just as soon we all forgot about, but I heard this story (http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/623059/description#description) on the news this morning and I really felt I'd be doing you all a disservice by not bringing it to everyone's attention. The long and short of this article is that it's been hypothesized that the reason modern humans are hairless is because Cro-Magnon mothers might have selected their more hirsute offspring for infanticide. As far as I can tell, there's not a scrap of real evidence anywhere, but I suppose that's what you should expect from a journal called "Medical Hypotheses" and an author who's address is some town in New Jersey. At the very least, though, it emphasizes the potential importance of hairy babies in human evolution, a subject left strangely unadderessed by most prior paleoanthropological studies...

2007-03-01T02:20:00.000-08:00

Awww, don't they look adorable?!

mmmm Fossils!

2007-02-27T07:03:00.000-08:00

Hi Guys! This is my sexy Scaphites from the Isle of Wight. Love you all xxx

Cake!

2007-02-26T15:04:00.000-08:00

I just posted this pic on my myspace blog, but since you're not all on myspace, I had to share.

It's my birthday today. This is my birthday cake:

How cool is that?!! And quite tasty too! And it came with dino stickers and everything! It made my day.

Descisions..

2007-02-26T15:03:00.000-08:00

...on where to actually post stuff. My blog, or this one? Well, H. Armstrong emailed me to say that the research committee were meeting tomorrow to decide which four proposals to put forward to the university. Apparently there were eight, with the one I'm going for hidden away in there somewhere. Wish me luck peeps that it gets through! And if it does, then I need even more luck for the University to actually decide to give the funding to me and not some other random person! *fingers crossed*

From morphospace to cyberspace....

2007-02-26T02:12:00.000-08:00

Well it seems we shall all have plenty to keep our fingers from lingering idle by our keyboards now. This blog is a fantastic idea. Ben well done you for setting it up! I really don't want to have to go to the lab now!

So, on to matters palaeo: For everyone who can come to Progpal, I have couch-space and Phil and I are giving talks. Phil is introducing his research and I am demonstrating how efficient use of NERC funding can be effective when planning jollies on the beach. The planners are still considering late submissions so if anyone has a burning desire to wow their peers with pretty pictures, submit an abstract pronto! I can't wait to see you there!
On a final note for now, this is the ultimate geek forum and personally I think it would be great if we really did use it to discuss shop every now and again. I could learn a lot from you people and it would really save on text books.

Olivooides RULES etc etc....

is it rob? is it a bat? or is it a robosaurus?!

2007-02-25T12:33:00.000-08:00

you are the subject of another funny photo upload!

late night pubbing

2007-02-25T11:12:00.000-08:00

Excellent. a good way to spend one's sunday evening i feel. Here is one of the (very few) pics i took at graduation time...enjoy

A virtual home for the palaeobristological diaspora

2007-02-25T08:50:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone!

I've set this up a space for us to keep in touch, post photographs, and generally help our sense of community live on as we spread around the globe in our covert quest for international dominion.

The username and password for this site are in the email I sent out, so you can log on to blogger.com any time and post away. I would suggest we keep access limited to those who were on the course, although I think anyone can use the "comment" feature to add their opinion, should someone from outside the innermost circle find their way to this distant outpost of cyberspace. Put your name in the "labels for this post:" field so we know who you are.

So -- the blog is open! Would anyone like to kick off with some photos from graduation? I've included one of my personal favorites from last year, taken by Lara.

It was fabulous to see you all last week; Lara and Andre, you were sorely missed.

Let the posting begin...

PS: Mac users beware -- Safari is a little moody when it comes to blogger, Firefox does much better...