PCP PIRE Fall 2015 Museum Internship Application Now Available!

Spring-Summer museum intern Ariel Guggino examines leaf fossils in the paleobotany collections at FLMNH.

PCP PIRE’s museum internship application for Fall 2015 is now available!  Fall 2015 museum interns will be able to explore questions dealing with the paleobiology of the Neotropics at the Florida Museum of Natural History. Applicants interested in all aspects of paleontology including paleobotany, invertebrate paleontology, and vertebrate paleontology are encouraged to apply.

Spring-Summer museum intern Justy Alicea 3D scanning a fossil turtle skull.

This internship for undergraduates/post-baccalaureate students coincides with the University of Florida Fall Semester (August 24 – December 18). A monthly stipend is provided, as is assistance with locating housing in Gainesville, FL.  Applications are due July 1, 2015. Click here for application instructions.

Digital Paleontology

Diagram of how CT scanning works. (courtesy of Imaginis.com)

I think many people these days are familiar with CT scanning, or its cousin, the MRI, even more so. But many probably don’t know how it works. Using x-rays shot thru an object in successive slices, a layer by layer analysis of a structure can be performed. When stacked together, these images can digitally reconstruct an object and its insides.

First huddle of 2015

PCP PIRE had its first huddle of 2015 yesterday and there are a lot of exciting things in store this month. Several members of PCP PIRE, including the Spring 2015 cohort of field interns, will be headed down to Panama from January 13-17 to attend the Network for Neotropical Biogeography 4 Conference (NNB4). Be sure to check in next week to see what they are doing. The new museum interns will be arriving at FLMNH January 20th and will be taking on a variety of projects including 3-D scanning. In outreach and education news, GABI RET has received many new lessons from their past participants and will be conducting new role model visits as well as picking the teachers for their next cohort (check out their website here to find out more). There’s a lot going on, so check back frequently to see what’s new!

Changes Coming to PCP PIRE

The four Fall 2014 field interns preparing a marlin jacket with Jorge Moreno Bernal. Photo by Daniel Mercado.

PCP PIRE has experienced a lot of change this December. Our Fall 2014 cohort of field interns will be finishing up their work at FLMNH this Thursday and will be leaving on Friday morning. We were happy to have them at the museum and in the field in Panama and wish them luck with their future endeavors. In January, a new batch of field interns will be heading to Panama and the first set of museum interns will be arriving at FLMNH.

A few of the leadership positions in PCP-PIRE have also changed. Our former Project Manager and post-doctoral associate, Aaron Wood, has moved on to a new job with the Department of Geological and Atmospheric Sciences at Iowa State University as the new director of the Carl F. Vondra Geology Field Station. We wish Aaron the best of luck at his new job and thank him for his service with PCP-PIRE. Our new Project Manager and post-doctoral associate is former Project Assistant Cristina Robins and the new Project Assistant is museum intern Dawn Mitchell. We look forward to seeing what these changes and the new year will bring us!

NSF Post-doc Amanda Waite at AGU

Currently Amanda Waite (featured in the September eNewsletter) as well as several other PCP PIRE affiliates are at the American Geophysical Union Annual Meeting in San Francisco.  Amanda is live-tweeting the event, so be sure to follow here on Twitter: @amandajwaite

Great #Panama discussion at #AGU14 PP poster session. Reuniting members of @PCPPIRE team from Colombia, France & US!! pic.twitter.com/tIXr9mz7Gq

— Amanda Waite (@amandajwaite) December 15, 2014

Welcome back, Field Interns!

Intern Lillian Pearson preparing a piece of rhino vertebra with a carbide pick at a prep lab station. (Photograph © Dawn Mitchell)

We would like to welcome the Fall 2014 cohort of PCP-PIRE field interns back to the Florida Museum of Natural History. After over three months of fieldwork, Hannah, Daniel, Adam, and Lillian returned from Panama this week and will be working at FLMNH until December 19th. They will be processing fossils from Panama and doing fossil preparation. The interns have started off by helping prepare a lumbar vertebra of a fossil rhinoceros from the Cucaracha Formation. The vertebra has been broken into several pieces and the interns are cleaning the pieces so that they can be put back together later. It’s quite a change from working out in the field in Panama, but we are happy to have them back and to have their help here at the museum!

Preparing a Fossil Dugong from the Panama Canal

Preparing a fossil requires a variety of tools, some of which are shown here. Top left to bottom right: spray water bottle, lubricating oil for airscribes, acetone, PVA, carbide picks, brushes, a PaleoAro and a microjack (airscribes of different sizes and strengths), dust mask, goggles, and ear muffs for noise protection.

The first project I got started on at FLMNH was preparing a fossil dugong from the Culebra formation of the Panama Canal. My main focus has been on a cluster of vertebrae that are held together by a carbonate and siltstone matrix. The process of preparing this fossil is rather slow going because the matrix is extremely hard and nearly the same color as the bone. To help distinguish them, the fossil is sprayed or brushed with water to remove dust and help bring out the color of the bone. While it is damp, I use carbide picks and airscribes (basically handheld jackhammers) to remove the matrix. The goal at this step of preparation is to remove as much matrix as possible while leaving a thin layer just above the bone and to leave any areas where it is too difficult to distinguish between bone and matrix. Next, a thin layer of PVA, a glue reversible with acetone, is added to protect the bone when it is placed in a diluted formic acid bath. The acid breaks down some matrix but does not damage the bone, although some etching can occur over time. The fossil is then soaked in running water to remove any remaining acid and the PVA is removed to begin the process of manually removing matrix over again. Broken pieces of bone often become loose after the bath and must be secured with glue before continuing.

The fossil lab station where Dawn prepares the dugong vertebrae. She uses a surgical microscope that can easily pivot to get multiple views of the fossil while she uses tools to remove matrix.

Preparing this fossil has taken a lot of time and the effort of many people, and it still requires much more before it is finished. But progress is being made; when I started I couldn’t see through the neural canal of one vertebra, but now I can! Once preparation is completed, this fossil promises to provide us with interesting new information on Miocene dugongs from the Panama Canal area.

To learn more about the dugong fossil, check out this article written by former PCP-PIRE intern Sarah Widlansky: http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/panama-pire/archived-enews/2014/v4i1r/.

Wesley von Dassow at GSA

Summer 2014 PCP PIRE intern Wes von Dassow presents this morning on the field course in the Azuero Peninsula in Panama. He is viewing it from the vantage point of international collaboration, as the bilingual geological field camp was run by Universidad de Los Andes in Colombia and attended by Colombians, Panamanians, and Americans. Former interns Michelle Barboza and Robyn Henderek (who presented on Sunday) were also in attendance.

Michal Kowalewski at GSA 2014 Vancouver

Michal Kowalewski of the FLMNH presents on his research on the Po Plain in Italy. Troy Dexter, former FLMNH Postdoc, is a co author. It’s a full house!

Brendan Anderson and Panamanian turritellid snails

Brendan Anderson, who traveled to Panama with Austin Hendy last spring, is presenting on his research on turritellid snails – high spired, filter feeding mollusks. Anderson is a graduate student at Cornell University, and wrote an eNewsletter article (see flmnh web page) about his research in April of this year.

Austin Hendy and Michal Kowalewski, both of FLMNH, will present their research in the same session (room 219) later this afternoon.