Data Collection

Post date: Jul 8, 2013 6:37:20 PM

The History of Life internship is in full swing! One of the major things we are working on right now is data collection. We have finished measuring body sizes of echinoderms and have moved on to ostracods, which are arthropods. I am staring my second volume. I can't wait to use all of this data in my individual project, which we should get started on this week.

I can definitely say that Wednesdays are my most favorite day because of the speakers during lunch. During these lectures, I am exposed to a wide variety of topics, such as soil and mineral science, carbon sequestration, and plankton in the arctic. I particularly enjoyed the talk on carbon sequestration, in part because it was a completely new topic to me.

This past Tuesday was very fun because of our field trip to not one but two beaches! We first visited New Brighton beach, where we studied the outcrop, fossils, and rocks. It was amazed to find so many different animal fossils on a single rock. We even found large imprint fossils of a marine mammal. On the outcrop, we noticed a difference in rock layers, suggesting a shift of plates. We also saw large isopods, which scared me! At our second destination, Pebble Beach, we we able to explore the flora and fauna of tide pools. To me, these were pretty similar to the pools at Natural Bridges in Santa Cruz. The small hermit crabs and turban snails were so cute! Here are some pictures from the beaches.