Environmental impact on evolution of Crinoid body size

Post date: Jul 29, 2013 8:58:54 PM

I can't believe that there are less than two more weeks left in this internship! These past few weeks have been packed. I still continue to collect ostracod data every morning, and in the afternoons I work on my individual project. For my project, I am interested in seeing the effect of environmental factors (CO2, 02, sea level, latitude) on the evolution of crinoid body size in between mass extinctions. Using the statistical program R, I have made several graphs to see if there is any correlation. I am also using the PaleoTS package to see whether the trends are unbiased random walk, stasis, or a driven trend. Most of the trends seem to be unbiased random walk or stasis, which is a little disappointing, but I guess that's how science is. I hope to get more results as this week goes on. I will also be working on submitting my abstract and getting my poster ready for AGU.

Last Wednesday, we visited UC Berkeley for a field trip, which was really fun. I have never been to the campus, so it was exciting to visit for the first time. Upon arriving, we helped sort and assemble small kits of fossils for educators to use. We then toured the museum, which is simply gigantic. After a long lunch break where I got to explore the area around the campus, we visited the Berkeley stadium, which stands on top of the Hayward fault. We could see cracks along the sides of the stadium, which arose as a result of fault activity. Lastly, we visited a creek bed, and were once again able to see the effects of fault activity on the path of the creek. I'm definitely looking forward to our next field trip, which is going to be at another creek bed!

Here is a T. rex fully assembled with its fossils near the Berkeley museum.