Where I spend a few hours a week.

I've talked about this before how I've been working in one of the labs at school doing some paleontology work. A few weeks ago I got mistaken as one of the profs at school by a student (not sure how I should take that). Anyway while I was working today I took out my PS to photo some of my samples (how things were pieced together), while at it I grabbed a few shots of my whole in the wall that I've been working in, at least I have a window (3rd floor).

Oh and get this I'll be actually teaching one of the classes here in two weeks

And yes I use the Dremel for grinding some of the junk away from the fossils.

Fossils?

I hate you.

Sweet!

Appleseed wrote: Fossils? I hate you.

Yep, I sit there picking and grinding away going absolutely crazy removing tiny pieces of broken fossilized bone from the surrounding matrix.

But then again yeah its pretty damn cool working with stuff that is 50+ million years old. Oh and the first time you break one ....Super glue and good ol' Elmers are a paleontologists friend.

That is WAY cool! You rock, dude.

My God- GRM meets PBS!! Really, I love it. You go!

Yeah its funny how I'm going to school to end up digging in the dirt when I'm out of school

I so wanted to be an archeologist until I found out how long they spend in school. Way cool!!

Yeah once I'm out I'll have more degrees than I can shake a stick at, I could be a field biologist, paleontologist or an archaeologist lol. You should see peoples reactions when I tell them all of the degrees that I'm working on.

Cool! I wanted to do palaeo but the program at my uni wasn't that big, so instead I went into geophysics. I did end up doing a summer of fossil hunting with a palaeo PhD candidate which meant I got to go dig around in the mud without all the fiddly stuff afterwards. She managed to find most or all of Southern Ontario's black fly spawning grounds when picking our dig sites. Fun times.

J

I got a practical background in paleontology by digging old 2002s out of fields and backyards...then chipping away the rust...

Jay wrote: Cool! I wanted to do palaeo but the program at my uni wasn't that big,

Yeah my school isn't to big either in fact they have cut our Geo program down to a minor only. However the combination of my Bio major and a Geo minor is a good palentology equivalent especially when I'm doing the lab work.

nice! what's your favorite that you've uncoverd?

jbone wrote: nice! what's your favorite that you've uncoverd?

Well I just recently started doing this lab work in the fall term. So far I have mostly been working with fossilized turtle remains. Kind of interesting, I found a stray mammal bone in the mix and the marrow cavity had crystallized! I thought that was very cool.

Next I'll be working on an oreodont which is a very early mammal.

Oh where I live its not uncommon to find fossilized fish, plants and other sea life up in the hills and the like. I also know where there is a large deposit of fossilized diatoms.

I've been subjected to watching "Friends" because of my girlfriend. Just listening to the show while playing on my laptop makes my head want to explode, but reminds of that character David Schwimmer plays.

DirtyBird222 wrote: I've been subjected to watching "Friends" because of my girlfriend. Just listening to the show while playing on my laptop makes my head want to explode, but reminds of that character David Schwimmer plays.

Take that back any comparison to anyone on that show is an outright insult lol.

you need to cleanup your workspace. Theres dirt and dust and rocks all over...how do you expect to teach anyone anything if you cant even be professional enough to clean up your desk?

BTW, you should visit southern ohio (ohio river valley) pretty sweet trilobites(SP?) early freshwater plants, some freshwater invertebrates (I think) and other fossils all over from when the beginings of the Ohio River had banks 100s of miles wider than it currently does. I used to love that stuff! Used to dig up snails fossils, trilobites, plant fossils and other stuff right out from the backyard gardens as a youngster. It was great.

hehe I remember as a kid I would dig in my back yard just like Calvin and Hobbes looking for fossils, never did find anything there though lol. You are lucky to have been able to find that stuff in your yard!

As for how dirty the office is, yeah the janitorial staff at the school hates the lab because it is always dirty in there. Hey most of the time I'm working under my hood and keeping dust from flying.

rebelgtp wrote:

DirtyBird222 wrote: I've been subjected to watching "Friends" because of my girlfriend. Just listening to the show while playing on my laptop makes my head want to explode, but reminds of that character David Schwimmer plays.

Take that back any comparison to anyone on that show is an outright insult lol.

So if I told a girl that she looked like Jennifer Anniston (sp?) or Courtney Cox that'd be an insult? :) Just givin' you a hard time. Looks like a much cooler workplace than mine. Congrats

I thought this was going to be the answer:

http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/

or

http://www.zcar.com/forums/

or

http://the510realm.com/phpBB3/

Well the plot thickens. I did the initial testing of my research project this last weekend and the results were favorable. Well I reported this to my Prof today and he wants me to write up the abstract for the project so that I can present it at the Spring Symposium at school and to have the paper published .

Second set of trials will more then likely happen during Spring Break up in Gig Harbor. After the second trials show similar results he wants to put me in touch with some of the field Paleontologists to present the project to them.

What are you doing up in Gig Harbor? I used to work there (const. company) a few moons ago. Are there a lot of fossils in the area?

Up in Gig Harbor is where our detection dog facility is and so I'll be going up there to run a test with my more experienced dogs.