Thursday, August 14, 2014

He's Stinky!

 Jeremy found a piece of turtle in the cemented ash. At first it just looked like a really weird concretion. Then we saw the pattern.

 It turns out that it is part of a turtle shell, and we're waiting to see if there is more of it.
The group of turtles that this is probably from a group lovingly nicknamed "stinkpot" (so no, the title does not refer to a fellow intern), based on the symmetry in the pattern of the shell. The other group of turtles represented here doesn't have this symmetry.

 So the little guy on the right is a painting of one like Jeremy's. Cute, right? He's the first turtle that we've found in the Barn, though others were in the old quarry.

 The votes for a name: Smurtle, Stinky, and Franklin. But Jeremy found it, and so it will be Smurtle.

 I have to admit though, I will forever call this little turtle Stinky in the silliest voice I can muster, just for the purpose of messing with the discoverer.

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My Story (Very briefly...)

Lots of people claim that they wanted to be paleontologists at the age of 3. So did I. The problem is, I never really grew out of it. My third birthday party had dinosaurs. Everywhere. I grew up digging in fossil dirt from Aurora, NC, looking for coral and shark teeth. I practically lived at my local science museums (and still do, only now I get to do research, fossil preparation, and work in collections!) When local paleontologists discovered a dinosaur with a "fossilized heart" (no longer considered such) when I was little, I got to meet the man who led the work. And then, years later a dinosaur bone with soft tissue turned up. I was officially hooked.
No longer was I dreaming about dinosaurs. I was actively pursuing the science behind prehistoric creatures. I didn't want to read about it, I wanted in on the action. So I started working at the museum, and finally going on my own adventures. And thus, I needed a place to share them and maybe inspire others the way I was inspired. I have gone from watching fossils be prepared from one side of the glass at the museum to working on them on the inside of the glass. I am a student working toward my goal. I can finally start to call myself a paleontologist.