Nicole's Blog: A day inside the Paleobiology lab!!

Hello everyone! My name is Nicole O’Keefe and I am a senior at Mercy High School Burlingame. This summer I was chosen to work in the Stanford Earth Science Department for about 9 weeks, working in the Paleobiology lab. Now, you might ask yourself, what in the world is Paleobiology? Well, Paleobiology is the study of fossil animals and plants from millions of years ago. This summer, I studied a marine animal called a brachiopod! These organisms have existed for about 540 million years and some species are still living today. They have survived 5 mass extinctions, even the one that wiped out the dinosaurs! During the summer, I measured pictures of brachiopods from huge books with the help of college students. We measured a total of…. wait for it…4,802 species! It was hard work, but we knew we could do it!

Me holding a brachipod, so cool!

Studying these brachiopods is really important in understanding body size evolution. In other words, I measured them to know more about how big or small they were millions of years ago and how they evolved in their size over the years. This could help us find a pattern between similar animal species that went extinct millions of years ago.

One really cool thing I did this summer was to actually touch many fossils, among those some brachiopods! Looking at the pictures in the book sort of gives you an idea of what a brachiopod looks like. But seeing it and holding the little shell in your hand is a whole different experience! I got to go inside a small room that was surrounded by shelves, which held different types of fossils. I was able to hold real brachiopod fossils that existed millions of years ago! It was a memory I will always remember!

Here is a close-up of a brachiopod. Notice the symmetry along the midline.