Victoria’s shipboard role is being a paleomagnetist.
Field work summer of ’22, Central Mongolia. The research team discusses structural geology problems. Victoria joined as a member of the Utah Paleomagnetic Center at the University of Utah.
Tell us a little bit about yourself. Describe your hobbies and interests outside of science. I spend a lot of time outdoors; skiing, hiking, rollerblading or skateboarding. I also read lots of fantasy books and enjoy listening to live music. I try to travel as often as I can and immerse myself in different cultures.
What kind of scientist are you and what do you do? I am a graduate student and I identify as a Rock Magnetist. I analyze the magnetic properties of rocks and minerals to learn more about geological processes, environmental conditions, and the history of Earth’s magnetic field. I am passionate about early geoscience education. I spent a year working with a local middle school, bringing hands-on experiments and facilitating field trips revolving around earth science and geology. I volunteer at outreach events as often as I can.
Field work summer of ’22, Central Mongolia. Another image of the research team discussing geology.Field work summer of ’22, Central Mongolia. I am using a Brunton to take an oriented hand sample for paleomag (to interpret the magnetic signal of the Earth from deep time).
What is your favorite part about being a scientist, and how did you get interested in science? I have a very non-linear path. I took a few years off between high school and college, working at a local bar with no thought about higher education. I decided to go back to school and entered college as an anthropology major, took one geology course and fell in love. Our Geoclub held field trips every long weekend, where I was able to spend time camping outside with friends and learning about rocks. It is those moments that made me want to become a geologist. I also have an undergraduate degree in anthropology. I try to use it as often as possible, with my senior thesis being an archeo-magnetic study on Floridan potsherds. I am also currently involved in geoarchaeology research on roman concrete. I am president of Energy Club (an adaption of AAPG) at the University of Utah. With this club, I coordinate monthly seminars with industry professionals with the aim of teaching undergraduate student’s transferable skills (importance of machine learning in geoscience, adobe Illustrator for figure making, etc) and sharing career trajectories (hosting career panels filled with government, industry, and academics). We also hold a yearly department poster session with monetary awards for both graduate and undergraduate students. This coming year, we hope to hold an “earth science art exhibit” where students and professors can show off their artistic side with paintings of field sites, ‘beautiful’ data sets, and even a ‘bake your thesis’ category.
Field work in the Tetons in Wyoming, we had to get helicoptered in and we camped on the ice!
How did you learn about scientific ocean drilling? I told my advisor I would love to be on a research vessel and he shared with me the call for a paleomagnetist for this expedition.
How does your work contribute to the betterment of society in general? Magneto stratigraphy helps us date sediments. Rock magnetism can tell us about the strength and direction of the magnetic field at a certain time and location. It is also used to better understand tectonic processes.
More field photos from the ice after we helicoptered in. ! I assisted a friend with their work, acting as a geotech as they cored lake sediments for paleoclimate studies.
What advice do you have for prospective scientists? It truly is for anyone! People from all different backgrounds find their way into geoscience.
Have you received a piece of advice from your friends/mentors/advisors that has helped you navigate your career? Don’t be in a rush. Do what makes you excited, doing it fast while stressed out helps no one.
I’m on board a research vessel. We carried out a gravity core during an oceanographic cruise and I’m cutting the core into 1-meter-long subsections.
I’m a marine geologist thus interested in studying of solid Earth. Particularly, my research activity is focused in studying the evolution over time of our submerged Earth system, in this case taking attention on how deep basins, forming at the rear of a mountain chains and named back-arc basins, forms and their relationships with volcanoes or magma upwelling. Over this my interest are toward the various geological risks that can affect our life and that are earthquakes
and related tsunamis, landslides and tectonically- or climate change-controlled sea level changes. I realize these studies integrating the geophysical methods with geological information coming from sampled sediments. Geophysical methods are based on instruments (multibeam swath bathymetry, high-resolution sub-bottom profiles, single and multichannel seismic data) that allow to investigate the seafloor and the sub-seafloor rocks. The seafloor morphology in back-arc basins is more complex than one might imagine: here seafloor can reach depth over 4000 m below seafloor, and there are numerous submerged mountains that can be of volcanic- or tectonic-origin and can have dimensions sometimes huge. Between these mountains several canyons, sometimes hundred km long, flow from the coast to the oceanic deep moving enormous quantities of sediments. Deep basins or back-arc basins are formed as a consequence of the convergence between two plates or block of continents. The force generated by the convergence push the denser and heavier, even if thinner, oceanic crust to sink under the other oceanic crust (see the Mariana system) or continental crust (see the Apennine system) which, being less dense, floats. The subducting oceanic crust, called a slab, retreats as it sinks, forcing the upper continental or oceanic crust to follow it. This means that a block of crust breaks away from the continent and drifts, creating the conditions for magma to rise. The break is realized throughout the formation of discontinuities or faults generating earthquakes and, being
submerged, the energy released is able to trigger tsunamis. Sometimes the fragmentation of rocks creates conditions of gravitational instability that trigger landslides and gas emissions. Furthermore, seismic images of the rocks have revealed particular events associated with the lowering of the sea floor during past ice eras. Identifying and analyzing the frequency, recurrence, intensity of these events in the past, and how the Earth system reacts to these thermal changes will help better constrain modeling of future global changes. All these events and phenomena are recorded within sediments, thus by drilling and sampling it we are able to identify them and date. Combining these information with the seismic images of the subseafloor and with the seabed we can reconstruct the history of submerged continental margins and of deep basins, and also do paleo-climate reconstruction. All these studies improve risk analysis and make the lives of people and animals safer. Knowing our earth system allows us to adequately protect it.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and describe your hobbies and interests outside of science. Outside of science I have a passion for dance. In my life I have practiced different types of dance: modern and jazz dance, southern dance, african dance and recently I started pole dancing. This also inspired me to create a performance that combines pole dancing with science, which speaks to the health of the sea. The pole dancer moves in a volume of air as fishes move in a volume of water. I also like fashion and art.I love cats, I love them like children and I cried a lot and I still cry for the loss of my cat named Tiger. Two years after his death I got another cat, she is female, and I am in love again.
What kind of scientist are you and what do you do?Describe what your role is and your title; this can be on the ship and/or in your current career. I am a first level researcher at the Institute of Marine Sciences – National Research Council. I carry out all the activities ranging from writing a proposal, to participating in the oceanographic cruise in order to collect data, processing, analysis and finally writing an article or presentations of results. On board I often play the role of head of mission, but I also take part in technical operations, such as deployment and recovery of the seismic system, core sampling, morphobathymetric acquisition.
Do you use proxy data for research? What are those proxy data? The paleo-morphology of the seafloor to have evidence for climate change. Foramnifera to date sediment layers and turbidites to date earthquakes. Chemism of magmatic rocks to have information on processes that occur in the earth interior.
I’m working in my office. I am analyzing the high-resolution image of the seabed looking for structures capable of generating earthquakes or evidence of climate changes that occurred in the past (paleoclimatic study).
Do you conduct outreach, and if so, who do you communicate science to? Not systematically. Occasionally, I take part to events and with my dance and science performance, or a geophysical lab we have created (bathymetric maps, map of submerged risks, seismic method)
What is your favorite part about being a scientist, and how did you get interested in science? My favorite part is the beginning. When I was young, before university, I read popular magazines and one day I read about a large oceanographic ship that went out to sea collecting data to explore the depths of the ocean in order to understand the processes that allowed its evolution. I was so fascinated by it that I decided to enroll in the faculty of geology with the idea of going to sea. But I was at the university of a small city in central southern Italy, where the main studies were aimed at the tectonics of mountain systems and the seismogenic faults that had generated large earthquakes destroying several villages in the region. Towards the end of my fourth year of university I had lost hope of going to sea, but one day a professor said “there might be a possibility for some students to join a group on an oceanographic cruise. Are any of you interested?” I immediately said “I’m interested!”. A few months later I was on a ship and that was the beginning of my scientific life. But I had to leave my family and many of my friends and move from south to north Italy.
Discuss other scientific interests. I am interested in astrophysics, knowing how the Universe evolves and whether there are other life forms beyond us. This is just a curiosity and when I have the opportunity, I go to listen seminars or read some more informative articles. My legend is Margherita Hack, a great astrophysicist who loves cats.
How did you learn about scientific ocean drilling? During my work, I used data acquired during the old ODP program and thus I know of this huge and important program.
This figure is a summary of my work. I integrated the analysis of geological data derived from wells drilling with seismic images of the sub-seafloor and the morphology of the seabed.
How does your work contribute to the betterment of society in general? Through the analysis of how the mantle rises, how faults control the exhumation of the mantle, how fluids circulate along fault planes influencing block movements, how faults can rupture generating earthquakes, the recurrence and the sliding of blocks. All this helps us to better understand the evolution of the Earth and evaluate its geological risks.
Are you training the next generation of scientists? I train students through curricular internships, graduate thesis and doctoral students.
What advice do you have for prospective scientists? Be passionate, courageous, opened, positive, build good relations and try to fly to go where your scientific imagination tells you to go, but at the same time be rigorous.
Have you received a piece of advice from your friends/mentors/advisors that has helped you navigate your career? Become an expert in an area and build your skills so that you become strong in your research area.
Tell us a little bit about yourself, describe your hobbies and interests outside of science. I like to hike with friends, mountain bike, climb, football, basically all kind of sports that imply being outdoor in the mountains. In Germany, I trained a football team of international students and we played a European tournament in Athens (Greece).
What kind of scientist are you and what do you do? I am a PostDoc researcher in Marine Geology, especially focusing on i) mud volcanoes, gas- and mud-spewing structures similar to magmatic volcanoes; and ii) paleoseismology, studying the effect of extreme events related to earthquakes on the sedimentary archive of the ocean seafloor. In a sense, I am using i) mud volcanoes as deep boreholes to explore the interior of subduction zones (unreachable through scientific drilling), by analyzing their sediments’ / fluids’ geochemical and mineralogical composition; and ii) event deposits to reconstruct the paleoseismic history of a certain region.
Trying on a thermal immersion suit during a safety drill onboard a research vessel.
Do you conduct outreach, and if so, who do you communicate science to? I am trying to convey my science to the general public through diverse media (radio podcasts, news magazines, conferences/talks), in order to explain the societal application (and relevance) of what can be seen as quite abstract such as scientific research.
What is your favorite part about being a scientist, and how did you get interested in science? I started as and onland geologist as a university student due to my love for the outdoors and evolved into a marine geologist. I did not know anything related to marine geology until my PhD. I like basically everything that has to do with scientific innovation and green-energy, plus I am fascinated by biology.
How did you learn about scientific ocean drilling? If you are a marine geologist you should know the history of DSDP-ODP-IODP by heart 😉 I also participated in a previous IODP expedition.
How does your work contribute to the betterment of society in general? Subduction zones are where all the most destructive earthquakes (Mw>8) happen on earth. Nonetheless, several aspects of these complex geotectonic settings still remain obscure. Through the study of mud volcanism and paleoseismology I am trying to understand fluid and solid cycles in subduction zones, which play a role in their evolution and record past earthquakes. Understanding the seismic hazard coming from subduction zones and informing the population and the stakeholders on the risk implicated is key for an effective risk management.
Securing a gravity corer on the deck of a research vessel after retrieval.
Are you training the next generation of scientists? I am advising several PhD/MSc/BSc students, and I taught university courses/gave seminars to future scientists in the past.
Do you engage in community science? Whenever I discover something new on the seafloor I try to involve the local population in taking part with the naming process of the features.
What advice do you have for prospective scientists? It is above all a vocational path, in particular marine geoscience. I was born in the Italian Alps and could never have imagined that I would love being on a research vessel so much. Nothing will forge you better as a scientist then your motivation and drive for knowledge.
Brandon working on the deck of the R/V Marcus G. Langseth during a marine seismic expedition offshore Mexico. Brandon was helping retrieve seismometer instruments that traveled all the way down to the seafloor and recorded geophysical data to understand earthquake hazards along the Middle America subduction zone. Having the night shift means getting to experience amazing sunrises with nothing but endless ocean.
Tell us a little bit about yourself. I grew up in Colorado along the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. I am passionate about the outdoors and spending time in nature. In my free time, I enjoy skiing, mountain biking, hiking, paddle boarding, disc golf, fitness, and cooking. I recently got into BBQing (smoked meats and veggies), and various fermentation projects (kombucha and fermented hot sauce).
What kind of scientist are you and what do you do? I am a solid-earth geophysicist and my research lies at the intersection of tectonics, geophysics, structural geology, and basin analysis. I am interested in the structure and evolution of the Earth’s lithosphere at tectonic plate boundaries. I primarily use active-source geophysical data to indirectly image the properties of rocks deep in the subsurface that we cannot “see” otherwise. I get excited about using new technology to make stronger connections between tectonic processes and the geologic record. My research studies processes in the Earth’s lithosphere on both geologic time scales and human time scales. Tectonic plates move very slow, so it can be challenging to think about dynamics that take place over millions of years! I am also interested in geology on human time scales, such as earthquakes, volcanic events, and the role of geosciences in providing energy for our society.
What is your favorite part about being a scientist, and how did you get interested in science? I got interested in geology at a young age growing up in Colorado Springs where I was naturally curious about strange rock formations, such as the vertical sedimentary rocks in the Garden of the Gods. I decided to attend Western Colorado University, a small school in Gunnison, Colorado. In the Western geology program, I was exposed to the incredible rock formations and was fascinated by the stories they told about Earth’s past. I also became interested in mathematics and ended up getting a double major in geology and math. After graduation, I wanted to combine geology and math which led me into geophysics and PhD studies at UT Austin. At UT, I was fortunate to participate in several marine field expeditions that got me very excited about sea-going research and all the amazing tectonic processes happening in the Earth’s oceans. What I love most about my work is the feeling of exploration and discovery and contributing to our knowledge about some of the remote areas of our planet.
How did you learn about scientific ocean drilling? I first came across scientific ocean drilling in graduate school where I was learning about the history of Plate Tectonic theory. I was amazed at how much we could learn by sampling rocks in the oceans where we cannot easily “see” them like rocks on land. I am very grateful to participate in a scientific ocean drilling expedition and contribute to the legacy of the program.
How does your work contribute to the betterment of society in general? My research helps us better understand aspects of plate tectonics that we still have outstanding questions: How do continents break apart and form new oceans? How do subduction zones initiate and terminate? Why do some faults break in large earthquakes and others release energy slowly? I am passionate about sharing the joy of geosciences with the public. General knowledge of the geosciences is important for many pressing problems in society: climate change, energy industry, life on earth, and hazards such as earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis. Nearly 40% of the global population lives within 100 km of the coastline where there are many geologic processes that can affect their lives. I hope that my research on geologic hazards at tectonic plate boundaries will help strengthen our societal resilience to these events and better understand the risks and threats to various communities.
Hanging out on folded rocks in Crete, Greece. This outcrop is famous for its beautiful Chevron-style of folds evident in the deformed “zig-zagging” rock layers. The angled fold limbs made for a perfect spot to relax after spending time looking at the rocks in detail.
What advice do you have for prospective scientists? Anyone can do science! I had a non-traditional background into science and was a bad student in high-school. At that time, I would never have thought I would be capable of getting degrees in geology and mathematics and doing science for a living! It turns out that success in academia is really about good mentorship and finding what you are passionate about. Just because you were not good at something does not mean it will always be that way. I am fortunate to have had a lot of amazing mentors and teachers along my journey that were patient, supportive, and gave me unwavering encouragement. Don’t fear the failures (which are inevitable), but instead stay determined and follow your dreams.
This past October, I was able to attend the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology’s (SVP) 83rd annual conference. It is held in different places each year, but this year, it was in Cincinnati, Ohio at the Duke Energy Convention Center. The conference lasts for a few days and is filled with talks, posters, workshops, events (like an awards banquet and auction where some very well-known paleontologists were dressed as Barbies (and Kens) and an assortment of Star Wars characters), and plenty of networking opportunities.
Poster with the 2023 SVP logo on it leading the way to SVP in the Duke Energy Convention Center.
This was my first time attending SVP and it did not disappoint! I was able to attend a plethora of talks and posters throughout the conference. I learned a lot and it even got me thinking about some research questions that relate to my research. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend every talk since there were, of course, overlapping sessions. So, sometimes, I had to pick and choose which talks to go to even if there were two (or three!) happening at the same time that I wanted to attend. Sometimes this required me to walk (sometimes fast-walk) from one end of the conference center to the other and back multiple times to make the presentations I really wanted to see. But it was worth it!
Being the largest conference I have ever attended, it was overwhelming at times. But, thankfully, I attended SVP with a large group of people from the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences that I was able to stick with the majority of the time during SVP. As a group, many of us caravanned up from Raleigh, NC to Cincinnati, OH in a few fully packed cars instead of flying in since it was not too long of a drive. Plus, it was in October, so the leaves were changing and it was a beautiful drive up!
Driving in, as opposed to flying in, was perfectly fine by me especially since I had a poster presentation that I was doing at the conference. I had heard of airlines losing people’s posters before and I was worried about that. Luckily, I had no issues with my poster since we drove in a car to SVP. Not only was this my first SVP, but this was also my first poster presentation ever. I was very nervous to showcase my undergraduate research to professional paleontologists. My mentor made sure I was all set the day I presented my poster, which helped calm my nerves a bit. Once my poster session started, and people started coming up and asking questions about the research, the nerves went away and I just thoroughly enjoyed discussing my research with people who were at least somewhat interested in it. I received a lot of good feedback and people seemed genuinely interested in my work on Falcarius utahensis vertebrae.
Welcome poster at the Hyatt hotel (one of SVP’s host hotels this year).
Beyond the talks and poster sessions, there was plenty of time and opportunities to network with other vertebrate paleontologists between sessions and during some of the events such as the Welcome Reception at the Cincinnati Museum Center and the after party after the Rewards Banquet. I got to meet and talk to a lot of interesting paleontologists that were at different points in their careers from students to professionals.
Outside the Duke Energy Convention Center.
It was a very unique experience where a bunch of people interested in vertebrate paleontology gathered together for a few days to talk about things we all love and to share ideas and research on that very topic. All-in-all, I learned a lot and gained a valuable experience while attending SVP. Now that I have been once, I can’t wait to attend again in the future!
Skeletal mounts of Torvosaurus (left) and Allosaurus (right) at the Cincinnati Museum Center.
Reporting in after a mind-blowing odyssey at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Conference of 2023, held in the heart of Cincinnati, Ohio. Hailing from the golden state of California, I embarked on this thrilling journey with the fervent desire to forge connections and delve into the very essence of paleontology.
Picture this: a transcontinental shift from the West Coast to the Midwest, a seismic change in environment that unfolded into an awe-inspiring adventure. My name echoing through the halls of discovery, I set out with two formidable goals – to weave a tapestry of connections and to plunge headfirst into the mesmerizing world of paleontological wonders.
And did I succeed? Oh, dear reader, I not only met my goals, but I soared past them with the ferocity of a pterosaur in flight! The conference unveiled a tapestry of reunions with comrades from past fieldwork expeditions, a rekindling of old flames in the pursuit of knowledge. But that’s just the beginning.
In the midst of this scientific symphony, I brushed shoulders with the titans of paleontology. Lawrence Witmer, a legend who once graced the halls of my childhood inspiration, became more than a name on a paper. Faces that had been confined to Zoom calls and email signatures materialized into the vibrant personalities of Andre Rowe and Evan Johnsons-Ransom, igniting a flame of inspiration that still roars within me.
But it wasn’t just about the seasoned experts; it was about standing shoulder to shoulder with my peers, fresh faces hungry for discovery, forging a sense of community that resonated through the fossilized corridors of time. Validation surged through me like a thunderous dinosaur grumble.
Amidst this whirlwind of camaraderie, I stumbled upon unexpected treasures. Fate smiled upon me, granting an internship with a paleontological powerhouse, specializing in the very fabric of excavation, preparation, molding, casting, and the digital wizardry of 3D modeling and printing, all dedicated to resurrecting the majesty of fossil fauna, especially dinosaurs.
Yet, the conference was not just a scientific haven; it was a haven for artists, authors, and visionaries who painted the canvas of paleontology with strokes of beauty. Their creativity sparked a fire within me, a burning desire to contribute to this community through the trifecta of research, education, and art.
Recently new material of T.tanneri a Late Jurassic Megalosaurid, maxilla and maxillary teeth with scale bar.
And so, here I stand, my foot firmly planted in the rich soil of hands-on paleontological exploration. The beginning, a mere prologue to a story yet unwritten. The future, an undiscovered landscape awaiting the imprint of my footsteps. What lies ahead, you ask? Stay tuned, fellow enthusiasts, for my FEA project awaits—the Finite Element Analysis of Torvosaurus tanneri. For this is my calling with the assimilation of a new reconstruction of its skull and viewing the new material found for it, it is my calling. The adventure has just begun, and I invite you all to join me on this thrilling expedition into the depths of prehistoric marvels. The saga continues, and the echoes of discovery reverberate through time.
Like every year, the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology annual meeting took place from the 18th of October to the 21st of October in Cincinnati, USA this year. This was their 83rd conference and I got the opportunity to attend and present a poster at the conference. Here is a short recap of my experience at the conference.
The first day when I arrived at the conference was a pleasant, sunny day with golden light falling through the glass windows of the Duke Energy Convention Centre. Although the day seemed to be perfect, as a first-time attendee of an international conference, and being on my own, I was terrified. Therefore, the first few hours of the conference were spent being intimidated. Eventually, this intimidation decreased, but it never went away completely. Although most of the conference may have passed with me being quite nervous, I am still glad that I got the opportunity to attend and present on an international platform such as the SVP at an earlier stage of my career. I got to attend many talks based on various topics, I was able to learn about many types of projects that are ongoing in my field of interest and I got an opportunity to interact with many experts and scholars working in this field. I believe that as a student of Paleontology from India, an opportunity like this was a blessing for me. I am someone who is currently deciding what path to choose next in my academic career after my graduation and attending the conference opened my eyes to many areas of study in the field. I also got to learn about many techniques used for analysis such as stable isotope analysis, spectroscopy, DNA analysis, etc. Looking at many research projects also gave me many ideas about how to proceed and improve my project.
The Organisation of the event was perfect. There were a total of three convention rooms for talks and one big room for presenting posters. The talks and posters were divided into two different halves of the day so that I got the opportunity to attend maximum presentations and interact with many people. All of the sessions were divided based on different fields within the subject of palaeontology. For example, sessions on mammalian palaeoecology, crocodylomorphs and turtles, theropods, synapsids, etc. This organisation made it very easy for me to plan my days and I got to make the best of the given opportunity. The lunch breaks and coffee breaks were a great time to interact with other participants at the conference. For me personally, the poster sessions were the best opportunity to interact with other scholars and understand their work and their study. Activities arranged after the conference, such as the roundtable forum between postdocs and students were again another great opportunity to get to know more about many aspects of a career in paleontology. Many topics such as applications to grad school, applications for funds and grants, etc. were covered in these sessions.
To conclude, getting an opportunity to attend the SVP this year turned out to be a very important experience for my academic career. It exposed me to new ongoing research in the field of palaeontology and allowed me to interact and learn from many experts and scholars in the field. I would like to thank SVP and the Tilly Edinger Travel Grant for giving me an opportunity to attend the conference. I also look forward to attending future SVP annual meetings.
The 2023 annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology was hosted by the Cincinnati Museum Center (CMC) at Duke Convention Center on October 18-211. It was the second physical meeting post-COVID since last year’s meeting in Toronto. It was my fifth SVP meeting (my first being the 2018 Albuquerque meeting), and my third physical meeting.
Figure 1. In the basement of the Cincinnati Museum Center’s Ice Age Gallery, you can pet the dire wolf. His name is Guilday. He likes pets on his head and belly. He is a very good boy. Picture taken during the Welcome Reception.
I arrived in Cincinnati two days before the conference (October 16-17) to visit the Geier Collections and Research Center (Figure 2), the CMC’s offsite storage facility that houses, among other things, its vertebrate paleontology collection. My evaluated a collection of latest Cretaceous-earliest Paleocene mammalian microfossils collected from the Bug Creek Anthills in McCone County, Montana, one of the most prolific fossil sites in the Hell Creek area. While there is Bug Creek material in most natural history museum and university collections in North America, including my workplace at the University of Washington, the Geier Center houses part of the original collections made by the University of Minnesota Bell Museum of Natural History (UM) and the Saint Paul Science Museum (SPSM) in 1961-1964. This material formed the basis of Robert Sloan & Leigh Van Valen’s groundbreaking 1965 Science paper “Cretaceous mammals from Montana”, where they described what was thought to be the oldest “archaic ungulate” placental mammal, Protungulatum donnae. Although the Bug Creek assemblage is now considered a composite of Paleocene and reworked Cretaceous fossils, “archaic ungulates” like Protungulatum are still an important piece of the puzzle of placental origins and evolution following the end-Cretaceous mass extinction.
Figure 2. An early morning view of the infamous wooly mammoth metal statues on the front lawn of the Geier Collections.
The old UM paleontology collections were transferred to the CMC Geier Center in December 2018. Unfortunately, not all of Sloan & Van Valen’s Bug Creek Anthills material made it to the Geier. The missing material included virtually the entire placental collection (353 specimens) from Bug Creek, Harbicht Hill, and Purgatory Hill (Figure 3) including all but one of the fourteen holotypes described by Sloan & Van Valen’s 1965 papers, as well as Van Valen’s 1978 magnus “The beginning of the age of mammals”2. I was warned of this ahead of time by curator Glenn Storrs and collections managers Cameron Schwalbach and Brenda Hunda (also members of the SVP 2023 host committee), who were otherwise exceptionally helpful during my visit. Still, I hoped to find the specimens in the Geier Center, just mislabeled or misplaced in the wrong drawer. But by the second day of my survey (October 17) I realized that wasn’t going to happen. Although my lab has casts of most of Sloan and Van Valen’s UM/CMC “Bugcreekian” placental specimens, which my advisor Gregory Wilson Mantilla inherited from the late Bill Clemens, it is unfortunate the original material studied might be lost3. Still, the CMC visit was far from unproductive, as I identified and photographed 35 “archaic ungulate” specimens (out of the 615 ascension numbers I examined) that I plan to loan in the future for my dissertation research (Figure 4).
Figure 3. Left: In all seriousness, the sight of a half-filled cabinet like this is a collection manager’s best-case scenario, as there is more room for drawers to store specimens. But I needed a metaphor for the missing placental collection. Right: Although I did not examine the Purgatory Hill material in detail, as it is slightly younger than my current localities of interest, I was shocked to see most of the cardboard specimen boxes for mammalian specimens were occupied by casts.
Following my visit to the Geier Center collections, I attended the conference’s opening Special Lecture at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, “The Nature of Hope” by Cincinnati Zoo director Thane Maynard. Maynard’s anecdotes on the zoo’s role in conserving large African mammals and birds, as well as his history of collaboration with Jane Goodall, were moderately entertaining in isolation, but the address still felt disjointed and out of place for a paleontological conference, in comparison to last year’s talk by Riley Black. A highlight was when Maynard brought out a live baby alligator for pets and photos after the talk, which certainly amused the archosaur specialists in the crowd (Figure 5). Afterwards, I spent time with Samantha van Mesdag and Russel Engelman at the Hilton Cincinnati’s Neverland Plaza restaurant bar, which became my favorite place in the city to hang out in the evenings (Figure 6).
Figure 4. Left: CMC VP20091, a partial right maxilla with M2-3 from an “archaic ungulate” placental (likely Protungulatum donnae, though quantitative analyses have yet to be done). Right: One of the few specimens I could associate with an old UM number was CMC VP17714 (= UMVP 1849), a distal humerus tentatively assigned to the dentition-based placental taxon Procerberus formicarum. Many thanks to CMC collections manager Brenda Hunda, who went home to get her Tamron SP AF Macro lens so I could make these provisional focus-stacks, since my Nikkon Micro-Nikkor wasn’t doing the job!
Conference presentations began the next morning (October 18). I warmed up by attending Early Mammals & Carnivora technical session, sitting through talks on the latest research concerning Fruitafossor (Brian Davis), Morganucodon (Simone Hoffman), mesungulatids (Guillermo Rougier), Paleocene metatherians (Jonathan Bloch), and Eurotamandua (Timothy Gaudin). Although I intended to take notes on all talks the mammal sessions, I soon failed to achieve this goal; in the case of the “Early Mammals & Carnivora” session, the only carnivoran talks I listened to were on Plionarctos (Blaine Schubert) and Miracinonyx (Anthony Hotchner), as I had skipped out on the rest. Compared to previous SVP meetings, I spent less time simply listening to talks and reading posters, and more time networking with colleagues in the convention center ballrooms and lobbies, including friends I hadn’t seen or heard from since at least the Toronto meeting. Hence my lack of photos from most conference events, though SVP discourages photography during oral and poster presentations anyway.
After lunch, I attended the Ungulates session, which for me is the highlight of any physical SVP meeting. Unusually, the Paleogene Mammal Working Group (Steve Brusatte and Thomas Williamson’s cohort, a.k.a. PalM) was a no-show this meeting aside from postdoctoral alumnus Greg Funston, who opened the ungulates session with new histological data for the early Paleocene “archaic ungulate” Tetraclaenodon. Following Funston’s talk, I took the podium to discuss my preliminary phylogenetic metastudy of dental morphometric data (especially coordinate-based geometric morphometric data) on earliest Paleocene “archaic ungulate” from Montana and Wyoming, which comprises a launching pad for my dissertation research. I unfortunately had less time to adequately prepare for my talk than usual, and not only because I had logistic and technical issues collecting new data for the geometric morphometric analyses in the months prior. I left my laptop at the Geier Center the evening before the session, and I was unable to perform a last-minute rehearsal! Thankfully, Schwalbach kindly delivered my laptop an hour before the “Ungulates” session, but the final talk was far from polished, and I ultimately had to cut off the presentation at the request of Engelman, who co-moderated the session with Bin Bai. Fortunately, my main points were not lost on the audience, as I received surprisingly warm and positively constructive feedback from attendees, particularly Zhexi Luo (who worked on the exact same problem for his PhD dissertation in 1989, albeit with different techniques), Henry Fulghum, Jessica Theodor, Darrin Croft, Stephen Chester, and Sergio Garcia-Lara. Luo invited me to show him the nuts and bolts of my works in progress, so as with the Early Mammals & Carnivora session, my attendance of the Ungulates session was partial, being limited to talks on South American meridiungulate extinction (Engelman), Chinese Eocene artiodactyls (Bai), ruminant ecological modeling (Alexa Wimberly), and basal camelid phylogeny (Selina Robson).
Figure 5. “I don’t like this adventure at all. Not one bit.”
The Welcome Reception dinner was held at the CMC. For many attendees, this was the opportunity to see the CMC’s paleontology galleries, particularly the recently renovated Ice Age Gallery’s showcase of specimens from Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, widely considered the birthplace of modern American vertebrate paleontology (Figure 7). The gallery also contains an immersive walk-through diorama of the late Pleistocene in southern Ohio and northern Kentucky, complete with life-sized fiberglass models of dire wolves, ground sloths, flat-headed peccaries, stag-moose, and saber-toothed cats. During my exploration of the galleries, I was excited to meet Paul Sereno and Lars Werdelin in person for the first time, as both paleontologists were major inspirations during my youth! Afterwards, van Mesdag and I attended a late-night screening of the documentary short Dinosaurs of Antarctica at the CMC’s OMNIMAX theater, which to my pleasant surprise featured my dissertation committee member Christian Sidor’s work on Antarctic late Permian-early Triassic archosaurs and synapsids. However, I didn’t get to tour the CMC’s non-paleontological offerings.
Figure 6. The Hilton Cincinnati in Carew Tower on W 5th St is the site of the Omni Neverland Plaza, a National Historic constructed in 1931 and part of the Historic Hotels of America program for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The ornate lobbies and ballrooms evoke a 1920s Art Deco take on a “city within a city” mixed-use development.
Having delivered my talk, I could “enjoy the rest of the conference”, to quote another attendee. On the morning of October 19, I perused the lobbies to network and catch up with friends, only occasionally listening in on the Preparators and Romer Prize sessions. Once again, this was unusual because I usually commit to attending the “Preparators” session, as I consider its talks more useful for informing operations within my lab than the Romer Prize talks, which I feel have increasingly strayed away from applied vertebrate paleontology toward generic phylogenetic comparative analyses of predominantly extant taxa. The only Preparators talk I attended was Haviv Avrahami’s evaluation of competing techniques for collecting and visualizing photogrammetric data, which is an urgent priority of my current research. Avrahami’s discussion was a worthy complement to Nick Baird & Ben Slibeck’s poster on the “fast, cheap, or good” methods of 3D modeling techniques in paleontology, and informed conversations I had with Anne Kort on my lab’s Macropod Pro 3D photogrammetry setup. A highlight of “Romer Prize” session was Anessa DeMers’s excellent study of phylogenetic and ecological signals in mammalian tooth root number, in which she advocated the need to “give roots a chance”.
Aside from a talk on the topographic diversity gradient in mammalian evolution (Tara Smiley), I missed the Mammal Paleoecology session. Bizarrely, I had more fun at the Theropod Flight Origins special symposium hosted by Michael Pittman and Hila Chase, where I was enthralled by discussions of the theropod flight stroke (Michael Habib), forearm heterochrony (Pittman, who had previously seen presenting his and Nadia Hadir’s research at the Hennig XL meeting in Ithaca this past July), African pterosaur wing morphology (Stephanie Baumgart), Eocene bat phylogeny (Matthew Jones), and the flight style of Microraptor (Maxime Grosmougin and Matthieu Chotard). In my opinion, the symposium benefit from contributions discussing the evolution of all volant vertebrate clades, rather than being laser-focused on avialian origins. Later that evening, I had dinner with Pittman and Chase, along with several other paleornithologists who participated in the symposium, at the Hilton Cincinatti’s Neverland Plaza restaurant bar. As a result, I missed most of this year’s Student and Postdoc Committee Roundtable Forum, only arriving just in time to express to Jack Tseng and James Napoli my interest in joining one or more SVP committees for future meetings.
Figure 7. Skeletal mounts of an American mastodon (Mammut americanum; left) and long-horned bison (Bison latifrons; right) in the CMC Ice Age Gallery.
On October 20, I mainly did the same things I did the previous day, with less listening and more active networking. Still, I did catch Paul Sereno’s reveal of the upcoming FossilScope app for reconstruction ontology in the Methods & Paleohistology session, before attending the Euarchontoglires & Xenarthra session’s talks on Paleocene plesiadapiform crown types (John Hunter), Eocene New Mexican notharctines (Mary Silcox), Miocene Kenyan hominoids (Kieran McNulty), Eocene Texan omomyids (Edward Kirk), and pilosan basivertebral foramina (Erin Zack). I revisited the Methods & Paleohistology session to catch Nathan Myhrvold’s talk on spinosaurid limb bone compactness, based on work co-authored with Sereno and Baumgart. I was bummed that I didn’t see Myhrvold for the rest of the conference, as he is a major sponsor of the University of Washington’s Hell Creek Project through the Myhrvold and Havranek Charitable Family Fund; and his discussion of statistical assumptions in discriminant clustering methods indirectly tie into issues I’m currently tackling in my research. In afternoon, I attended a series of talks in Actinopterygians section pertaining to issues in the morphological phylogenetics of ray-finned fish, with worked examples from bobasatraniiform “paleoniscoids” (Jack Stack), amphicentrid eurynotiforms (Abigail Caron), Devonian stem-actinopterygians (Tetsuto Miyashita), and paphosiscids (Matt Friedman).
My evening was spent at the Annual Benefit Auction and Social (Figure 8). During the silent auction, I won a large stack of old reprints on ungulate evolution, with the intention of giving them to a colleague in my lab who was focusing on early artiodactyl evolution. For the main event, the SVP auctioneers, who dress in costumes every year, went with a Star Wars theme. But the force was not strong with this auction compared with previous years, as to my knowledge no items were sold for more than $4,500. The advertised star attraction, a cast of a giant Torvosaurus skull, failed to bid higher than $2,800, far less than a smaller Majungasaurus skull cast! Perhaps no one had space to carry it onto their drive or plane ride home!
Figure 8. A view of the Duke ballroom at the start of the Benefits auction.
On the morning of October 21, I once again broke with personal tradition by attending the tyrannosaur talks at the beginning of the Theropods session, if only because the speakers involved were invested in the general problem of identifying species in the fossil record, one of my favorite subjects A mostly qualitative and highly controversial (if attendee reactions were an indication) reintepretation of a previously described Tyrannosaurus rex specimen from Elephant Butte, New Mexico (Nick Longrich, filling in for Sebastian Dalman) was bookmarked by more quantitative analyses of the smaller, earlier taxon Daspletosaurus (Colton Coppock focusing on maxillae, Thomas Carr focusing on the splenial and lacrimal). Following this was a reassessment of the purported theropod taxon “Bagaraatan ostromi” (Justyna Slowiak-Morkovina), a chimera of remains from a caenagnathid oviraptorosaur (Elmisaurus rarus) a juvenile tyrannosaurid (likely Tyrannosaurus/Tarbosaurus bataar). I intermittently visited the Afrotheria & Mammal Macroevolution session to listen to talks on the timing of placental ecological radiation in the late Maastrichtian-early Paleocene (David Grossnickle), the taphonomy of proximal versus distal sedimentary environments in Cretaceous-Paleogene western North American basins (Grace Pizzini), the biostratigraphic placement of a Miocene assemblage at Mission Pit, South Dakota (Gavin Davidson), and a proposal for a project on testing landscape and biotic coevolution in North America before and after the end-Cretaceous mass extinction (Luke Weaver). Later, the Marine Mammals & Bats session had compelling talks on the recent extinction of the sea mink in northeastern North America (Alexis Mychajliw), basilosaurid ontogeny (Abdullah Gohar), Fourier elliptical analyses of cetacean teeth (Nick Brand), squalodontid phylogeny (Margot Nelson), and waipatiid phylogeny (Robert Boessenecker). I only returned to the “Theropod” session twice that day, first to see an interpretation of swim traces from a latest Maastrichtian tracksite in Bolivia (Roger Clawson); and later to see James Napoli’s capstone discussion on the problems of recognizing cryptic species in the non-avian dinosaur record, which recycled susbtantial material from his contentious Romer Prize talk last year on the use of qualitative versus quantitative morphological data in distinguishing ontogenetic trajectories of closely related crocodilian species.
At the awards banquet, I sat with Thomas Carr and his large group of undergraduate students, Melanie During, and Dava Butler. Carr and I had a vibrant discussion on Napoli’s “cryptic species” talk and Alexander Ruebenstahl’s presentation on Velociraptor alpha taxonomy (which I missed, but apparently overlapped in content and style with Napoli’s), as well as specimens his crew found during fieldwork in eastern Montana. Unfortunately, I couldn’t enjoy the late-night conference afterparty, aside from a mandatory group photo with past and current UW paleontologists (Figure 9). My bus ride to Pittsburgh was rescheduled from 9 AM the next morning to 5 AM, and I desperately need to get at least a nap before the day-long journey.
Figure 9. The 2023 annual post-banquet panoply of University of Washington paleontology, with current and former students, postdocs, and faculty. I’m the one in the Sailor Moon costume on the far right. Photo courtesy of Christian Sidor (third from the right): https://twitter.com/ChristianSidor/status/1715928511540494401
I headed to Pittsburgh for a two-day collections visit (October 23-24) at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CM), to see more earliest Paleocene “archaic ungulate” material from Montana (Figure 10). This time, the specimens under study were from the very productive but undescribed Constenius Locality in Garfield County, where I’m conducting fieldwork for my dissertation. The fifteen CM specimens were found in 1993 by John, Leona, and Kurt Constenius, for whom the site is named after. Constenius was then visited in 1996-1997 by the University of California Museum of Paleontology (UCMP), which uncovered over 190 specimens. Don Lofgren and Bill Clemens soon discovered that for two “archaic ungulate” jaw specimens, the CM and UCMP obtained different pieces of the same jaw! Clemens and Mary Dawson worked out a deal inspired by US Treausry “full value” rules for damaged dollar bills, with CM keeping the jaw for which they already had more than 50%, and likewise for the UCMP. For the record, UW has been collecting at Constenius since 2012, and now has a collection of 226 specimens, more than the CM and UCMP collections combined!
I made preliminary notes and photographs of the CM Constenius mammalian material before loaning them long-term to UW for my dissertation research. I also took note of 206 specimens in the CM’s Bug Creek Anthills collection, procured by Sloan & Van Valen’s SPSM/UM expeditions and a later unspecified Texas Tech University crew; these may be of interest as comparative material later in my dissertation’s development. Special thanks to curator Amy Henrici for her hospitality during my visit to the collections.
Figure 10.Right: My workstation in the “little bone room” (the paleomammalogy collection) at the Carnegie Museum. The skull hung on the wall is of a male giant deer (Megaloceros giganteus). Left: CM 96548, an “archaic ungulate” dentary from Constenius provisionally assigned to Mimatuta, though I suspect it and another Constenius specimen in the UW collections represent a new taxon. During my initial examination, I was pleasantly surprised to find this specimen has a unerupted third premolar (P4), meaning it wasn’t fully grown when it died! This is important, as juvenile specimens of early Paleocene placentals are extremely rare.
On the afternoon of October 24, I attended the SVP online business meeting via Zoom, hosted by current society president Margaret Lewis. I was shocked to learn the Cincinnati meeting had at least 1,085 in-person attendees and 702 abstracts, the largest since the 2018 meeting in Albuquerque! By contrast, the 2022 Toronto meeting had only 853 in-person attendees and 658 abstracts. Perhaps my expectations were distorted by the fact that the Toronto meeting was packed into at a smaller venue (the Westin Harbour Castle), was attended by more of my international colleagues (especially those from Europe, such as the student and postdoc body of the PalM working group) and had the novelty of being the first in-person meeting post-COVID. Whereas the Cincinnati meeting frequently felt sparsely attended in the larger venue, which was especially felt during the Benefit Auction; and the conference as a whole felt more North America-centric and particularly USA-centric.
Still, this year’s adventures in vertebrate paleontology before, during, and after the SVP meeting were well worth it. First, the collections visits to the CMC and CM permitted much needed progress in obtaining data and evaluating future goals for dissertation research. Second, attending the conference in-person provided a much-needed social outlet to catch up with my closest acquaintances in the field as well as forge new professional and personal connections. I’m especially thankful for my conversations with Samantha van Mesdag, Russel Engelman, Hayley Orlowski, Anne Kort, Henry Fulghum, Zhexi Luo, Jessica Theodor, Stephen Chester, Anessa DeMers, James Napoli, Akinobu Watanabe, Nick Brand, Thomas Carr, Luke Weaver, Michael Pittman, Hila Chase, Matthew Jones, Natasha Vitek, Allison Nelson, Alexandra Pamfile, Jaelyn Eberle, Owen Goodchild, Guillermo Rougier, Luke Holbrook, and John Scannella. Third, seeing scientific debates play out in real time during Q&A sessions and evening dinners allowed me to track both emerging and persistent trajectories in the field in a more tangible manner than any cursory skim of the most recent peer-reviewed literature. For example, one of the surprises for me this year, which became evident during my conversation with Carr concerning Longrich, Napoli, and Ruebenstahl’s presentations (among other taxonomically minded talks in the theropod session), was seeing a resurgence of philosophical tension between proponents of phenetic (purely similarity-based) and phylogenetic (genealogical) species concepts, decades after the phylogenetic concept supposedly won in both neontology and paleontology. Ironically, issues in the methodology of morphological phylogenetics (for the purposes of constructing original trees, rather than mapping characters onto existing trees as in many a Romer Prize talk) appeared muted outside of the actinopterygian session and the theropod flight origins symposium. 3D imaging, modeling, and reconstruction were another, arguably more pleasantly progressive “hot topic”, as evidenced by Avrahami, Baird, and Sereno’s abstracts on the latest virtual software in the 21st century paleontologist’s toolkit. It is abundantly clear new technologies are mandatory for studying old bones, and that one needs to evolve with the time to keep up with the pace of this field!
Jacqueline Silviria is a PhD student at the Department of Earth & Space Science and the Burke Museum of Natural History & Culture, University of Washington, Seattle. She can be reached at jsilvi@uw.edu.
If you know anything about the whereabouts of misplaced SPSM and UM placental material from Bug Creek Anthills, Harbicht Hill, and Purgatory, please contact the Vertebrate Paleontology Collections staff at the CMC (Glen Storrs, gstorrs@cincymuseum.org; Cameron Schwalbach, cschwalbach@cincymuseum.org).
Footnotes
1. This overview does not cover the virtual component of SVP 2023 hosted by the Sternberg Museum of Natural History on October 26-29; I only briefly tuned in on the first day. See Mickey Mortimer’s article for the weaknesses of this year’s virtual platform compared to the 2020 and 2021 meetings.
2. I had obtained a complete catalog of the specimens from UM professor David Fox, who sent it to me in 2018 while they were supposedly still at the Bell Museum, and I was collecting occurrence data for my Master’s thesis on earliest Paleocene placental biogeography at the University of New Mexico.
3. Apparently, the fate of these specimens and others like them is the subject of lore within the vertebrate paleontological community. During a conference afterparty event, one colleague half-joked to me that UM placental and multituberculate specimens were being kept in Robert Sloan’s house and were accidentally thrown out when he passed away in 2019. Another rumor is that Van Valen loaned and then lost “archaic ungulate” material from the Mantual Lentil Quarry collected by Glenn Jepsen and reposited at Princeton University; however, my communications with current and former University of Chicago and Field Museum faculty, as well as my personal observations back in 2018, indicate any and all Princeton University material Van Valen loaned from Jepsen made it to its current repository at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History.
Hi! My name is Valerie Trinidad and I’m a recent Geology graduate from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez. I like to go for nature walks and collect minerals and rocks (and take the occasional plant home). Although I have yet to visit most, I also like collecting stamps and cards from National Parks.
My favorite subject has always been science and I am particularly interested in pursuing studies related to vertebrate paleontology. I enjoy educating people about the wonderful field of paleontology and the importance of studies in STEM, especially my Puerto Rican community. I engage in outreach activities through talks and exhibitions in collaboration with different associations that promote science communication to the general public.
For my undergraduate research I worked with crocodilians from the Oligocene of southern Puerto Rico. In addition, I also conducted an investigation using osteohistological (study of the bone tissue) analysis from Triassic vertebrate assemblages to explore climate variation across Southern Pangea, with the aim to shed light on the early tolerances of the first dinosaurs and animal groups that originated during this period (i.e., mammals and lepidosaurs). My favorite part is looking at the bones under the microscope (which can be very beautiful), and I find it incredible just how much information is preserved inside these fossils from long, long ago.
My advice for those who are interested in pursuing related studies is the following: It’s not easy, but it definitely isn’t impossible. If you are determined to continue this path, you need to find a way to connect with others and engage in related activities and experiences in whichever way you can. Contacting people can be a bit challenging, but it is key to getting started (there are also mentorship programs out there to help you connect with the right people). In particular, if you identify with underrepresented groups, such as me (a Hispanic woman), it is important to stay and carry on despite any hardships you may encounter. Our persistence is what will further push through the barriers for a more diverse and accepting environment within the scientific community.
Hi folks, I’m Roxanne and I’m currently a PhD candidate over at Yale University in the Earth and Planetary Sciences department. As a vertebrate palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist, I spend a lot of my time wondering “how on earth did snakes get to be so damn weird?” and use tools from various scientific disciplines to answer different aspects of this question.
Apparently you can’t be a snake palaeontologist without having a fancy photo of you holding your study organism, so here’s me with an adorable python.
What research are you doing for your PhD?
My PhD research focuses on the question “why are snake skulls the way they are?”
Most modern snakes feed in a very unusual way – they are able to consume prey items significantly larger than the size of their own heads, and do so without chewing or breaking their food up into smaller pieces. If a human were to do this, it would be like swallowing an entire chocolate cake whole instead of cutting it up into slices first. Modern snakes can also control the left side of their face independently to the right side. This enables them to direct their skull bones in way which produces a tooth-laden conveyer belt motion that drags food into their mouths. Pretty useful when you have no hands to help you eat! These behaviours are only possible due to the unique way modern snake skulls are built – but how these novel anatomical features have arisen over evolutionary time is not yet well understood. When in geological history did these key anatomical changes happen? Were some parts of snake anatomy only able to change once other features had evolved, or been lost? Are there compromises to having a flexible skull, such as limiting the type of prey snakes can eat, or how strong their bite force is?
To answer these questions, I spend a lot of my time examining snake fossils. The snake fossil record is pretty sparse, especially if you are looking for skull material, but through a combination of new fieldwork sites and rummaging around museum collections, we sometimes get lucky! These fossils help us understand what regions of the snake skull have changed over 60(+) million years, when in geological time modern groups of snakes first appeared, and how small changes in anatomy can lead to big differences in an animal’s feeding behaviour.
What is your favorite part about being a scientist, and how did you get interested in science? I grew up in the UK and began my university education there too. When it came to picking a place to conduct PhD research, I was excited about the possibility of working abroad, and being able to explore fieldwork in new landscapes and biomes than I was used to. I love that being a scientist can take you anywhere in the world, and you get to discover new places and cultures, whilst still having geeky conversations with folks from different backgrounds to my own.
As a kid, I was one of those people who was always asking the questions and trying to link together what I knew of the natural world. Learning new things relating to prehistoric life and ancient environments was what brought the most joy. As a first-generation student, the concept of going to university was pretty alien, and at that stage in my life, I don’t think I’d even met a scientist who wasn’t one of my high school teachers. I deliberately picked an undergraduate degree which would let me continue to explore multiple science disciplines which ‘traditionally’ were not considered to compliment each other: geology, developmental biology, and evolution and behaviour. By then I knew I loved science but did not want to give up asking questions from these different perspectives. I never thought I’d actually become a palaeontologist – it was one of those impossible dream professions, no different from the musings of a 5-year-old who wants to grow up and become a princess, or a steam train. Midway through undergrad one of my guidance tutors reassured me that not only was palaeontology ‘a real job’ but something that I could build a career in too. He encouraged me to reach out to palaeontology professors around the UK; some of which offered me summer research positions in their labs. After getting a taste of doing research full-time, I knew I wanted that to be a large part of my vocation.
Rummaging around palaeontology collections, searching for one cranial bone amongst hundreds of snake vertebrae.
Inside a museum herpetology collection: shelves lined with jars of modern snakes preserved in alcohol. These are ideal for comparing modern snake anatomy to that of fossil snakes.
What advice do you have for up and coming scientists? It’s never too early to build yourself a network of scientists. Introduce yourself to researchers whose work you enjoy, respect or are excited to ask questions about. Whilst this can seem daunting, there’s a lot of empathy in the field. For every experienced academic, there was once a shy undergraduate feeling out of their depth – so those scientists worth talking to will be kind to someone new to academia. The vast majority of modern research is not possible without collaborating with others – so find scientists who value you as a researcher and a thinker, irrespective of your ‘academic age’ or academic position. These are the folks you will likely grow the most from, and also have the most fun being a scientist with.
Excavating part of a fossil temnospondyl during fieldwork (not a snake, but equally cool).
