Science and Things

Fossil Doctor | Science Educator & Communicator | jenniferebauer.wordpress.com | timescavengers.blog

[phylojennny]

Macropoaster species from the systematic collection at the Univeristy of Michigan Museum of Paleontology! Using food coloring and dyes is how folks used to even color and help bring out features for specimen photography. Now we use materials that do not permanently alter the specimens!

[phylojennny]

#Museum30 Day 15: Museum Hero 

 I chose a physical place as my hero, the Field Museum. I was fortunate to grow up in an area with an amazing #museum campus. Having such immediate access to #NaturalHistory, #science, and #art was a huge benefit and really allowed me to envision myself in many places and roles. This is one of my favorite spaces at the Field Museum & one of my favorite quotes!

[phylojennny]

#Museum30 Day 14: Weather 

I was scrolling through photos and this is a great memory from Ohio University. Adriane and I (Mike, were you with us too??) were out hunting Pennsylvanian fossils and found this huge slab of ripples. We essentially rode the slab down the outcrop and managed to get it into Adriane's Jeep.

You can tell from our outfits that it was a bit cooler out. For invertebrate fossil hunting it’s best to target outcrops just after a good rain or in the winter! The rain helps wash off old material and reveal the hidden treasures. And in the winter there is much less vegetation covering the rock - and also less insects & critters that could harm you.

We proudly displayed this beauty in Alycia's lab space and she promptly said, 'one of you is taking that when you leave.' It now lives at Adriane's mom's house where it is well displayed!

[phylojennny]

#Museum30 Day 11: Postcard⠀ ⠀ I've fallen a bit behind but here is a postcard that I found while cleaning my office. The card is from an opening reception for an exhibition called Illustrating Natural History in 2000. BUT the best part is that beautiful fossil to the right is a BLASTOID! The animal that I study. They have these petal like structures called ambulacra that essentially help them feed but also provide really visually appealing structures.⠀

[phylojennny]

#Museum30 Day 10: Last 12 Months 

 Another big move for us. I left my postdoc position at the Florida Museum and moved on to a collection manager position at the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology. Cross country moves are always a big transition! Also, it's kind of funny we just swapped peninsulas.

[phylojennny]

#Museum30 Day 9: Interpretation

This was hard for me because so much about #paleontology is based on interpretations made by someone at a certain point in time and then when we get more information we can update our interpretations and ideas. So, this #fossil is one of a few we have from the same location and they are labeled as "Scyphozoa?'" For those of you unfamiliar with the taxonomic jargon, this is the group that includes jellyfish!

The other two specimens are more like squished cones, I failed to get an image but they all have this sort of rippled pattern on the outside. I've never seen a fossilized jellyfish that looks like this but certainly I have not seen all the fossil jellies!

Do any of you have another interpretation? I'm very open and wanting to get this mystery solved! We have a smaller one that I will see if we can CT scan but in the mean time... is this a jelly or something else??

[phylojennny]

#Museum30 Day 8: Shadows

I'm a bit late on this one but last night the @ummnh_museum hosted a private event showcasing the new exhibits and labs that are opening to the public on Sunday. Jeb and I went and had a blast. I took several photos there to capture 'shadows'. 

Shadows are a big part of #paleontology and I wanted (but ran out of time) explore how images for publication are created. The primary lighting is to come from a certain direction to allow for shadows to play across the #fossil in a specific way.It's a little bit old school and is changing but some journals are really strict about it! Many #paleontologists are excellent photographers and know tips and tricks to get the best shadows crossing their specimens.

Can you identify the teeth and toes in these images??? 

[phylojennny]

#Museum30 Day 7: LastThis is one of the last specimens that I gave a #UMichPaleo catalog number. We found a box of brachiopods with a note! The note indicated that one of these brachiopods is not like the others. This is very true! There are two large Rafinesquina specimens and one smaller Strophomena. They were all already given the same specimen number so I added a .001 to the end of the Strophomena.

I can now update our database to include this specimen, that was likely found at the same locality but is a different species. The numbers will be 'tied' or linked together in our database but each will have different classification information. Increasing the diversity of our specimens!

[phylojennny]

#Museum30 Day 6: Inclusion⠀ ⠀ I'm relatively new to my position still but am working to bring folks into the #UMichPaleo Collection. I have had about a visitor a week lately - sometimes more! They vary from researchers, interested members of the community, and the press. I have employed two undergraduate students to help me as Museum Techs with some collection management tasks.⠀ ⠀ Pictured here is the current student work station. One of these individuals is a geology major and the other is engineering! When looking for help, I was focused on enthusiastic individuals with experience in a few different areas. The geology major has more experience with paleontology but the engineering student has more experience with databases.⠀ ⠀ Next up is bringing in our local fossil club members to help in other areas where I need help! Hopefully that can get into full swing once the new year starts.⠀

[phylojennny]

#Museum30 Day 5: Mug So this isn’t really a mug but it is mug related... I recently got a donation of #Ordovician fossils from the Cincinnati region and this collector used old coffee containers to store fossils! This is not uncommon to find but it’s silly every time! ~~the best part of waking up are brachiopods in your cup~~ 

Wrong brand for the jingle, don’t @ me. The collector did not drink Folgers. 

[phylojennny]

#Museum30 Day 4: Museum Kit

I work in the invertebrate paleontology collection and am still getting a handle on everything that we have in our holdings. What I do know is that we have an extraordinary collection of Paleozoic (541-252 million years ago) #echinoderms (#ancient sea star relatives) and #arthropods (ancient insect, crab, etc. relatives). 

Every time I explore the drawers I am constantly surprised by the amazing #specimens.These drawers hold some specimens very dear to my heart - blastoids! These #extinct creatures were stationary, usually stuck to the sea floor with root like structures. They had a stem that elevated them above the sea floor, so they could breathe and eat without pieces of sand or mud getting inside them. They had a really tightly connected body that looks sort of like an acorn or flower bud! The collection at #UMichPaleo has been cared for by other generations of blastoid workers, which means we have a great collection!

[phylojennny]

#Museum30 Day 3: Community

So, I thought about this one for a while. Communities take time to build and I have been building personal and professional communities for a long time. I couldn’t fit everyone on here but these are where the major players came from that have and are shaping my future. I’ve hopped around to different institutions along my non-linear career path and at each of these places I’ve been part of smaller communities that have lifted me up and allowed me to flourish.

[phylojennny]

#Museum30 Day 2: Who am I?

What a loaded question! Professionally, I am a collection manager & evolutionary paleobiologist. I care for the invertebrate fossils at the University of Michigan Museum of #Paleontology (part of @ummnh_museum). I also like to think about #ancient #echinoderms in terms of their change, shapes, and distribution through geologic time.

I am also an avid cyclist (I prefer mountain biking but also ride on the road) and love to explore new areas on my bicycle. I am a #CatMom of 3 beautiful girls, Alice (10 years old), Madeline (6 years old), and Ellen (10 weeks). I also LOVE Dolly Parton (thanks for the mug, Jillian!) and think the world of her and her work to provide youth with books. Her voice is a dream and her heart is big.

[phylojennny]

#Museum30 Day 1: Your Museum So, I work at a research museum - not quite as warm and welcoming as the classic natural history museums we all grew up visiting. I work at the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology, a division of the University of Michigan Museum of Natural History. The halls are a bit sterile (for now!) but the collections are rich and so so so extraordinary! Four collections are housed here: Paleontology, anthropology, zoology, and the herbarium. We are off main campus so there isn’t the hustle and bustle of students or visitors. I’m very fortunate to be taking care of so many fossil invertebrates!

[phylojennny]

We had a special visitor (Jade) from Exhibit Museum or the University of Michigan Museum of Natural History that we showed around our collection space. She is going to help us make the work we do at our offsite facility more accessible to the public at large. It's sometimes difficult to understand the importance of collections unless you can visualize and understand the magnitude of a museum's holdings.

Here, Bill - our fossil preparator - was showing Jade some of our ancient whale specimens. Bill has made many casts of specimens and was showing us some of the models and real specimens! One of these specimens is not ours, it belongs to a museum in another country but we are holding it for others to study. It is common for museums to loan each other specimens to cast, study, or put on display. 

[phylojennny]

Today's scienceathon #DayOfScience started with pulling specimen drawers for a visitor coming Monday! We don't often think about what is beyond the museum displays. But something like less than 1% of the specimens in exhibits are what we hold in our research space. So, when researchers are interested in studying something specific, they will contact us and see if we have it. If we do, or we have a lot, they will come visit so they can study our specimens and look at what else we have.

My visitor on Monday is interested in very specific trilobites from Michigan. So, I decided it would be most efficient to pull the specimen drawers from our type and systematic (organized by animal group, such as clams, snails, etc.) collection. So that we could then compact those and have the time period cases open for him to look through while he is here! I have not picked out each case that he may want to go exploring in but he will be busy with what I have pulled so far!

I didn't leave the space like this because it would be a fire hazard. Everything is neatly put away so the main aisle is free of clutter! 

[phylojennny]

Sound on! Here I am looking through a drawer of eurypterid samples. You see they are mostly fragmented. This is a common way we find them in the fossil record. Remember, these animals shed their exoskeletons as they grow and they must ‘shake’ out of their hard exterior before they grow a new one! This means they tend to fall apart.