Monday, August 3, 2015

A Geologist's Birthday

 What is the best way to surprise a geologist on her birthday?

 Find out her favorite kind of cake (ice cream cake) and add dinosaur bones, with the Jurassic dinosaur in the lower layer and the Cretaceous ones in the upper. Plus, of course, you get bonus points if the bones are glow in the dark and actually can be built in to a little skeleton.

 Score. Happy Birthday, Kaitlyn!

 Yep, we made a stratigraphy cake!

 It was a basic rule of geology put into practice; the oldest deposit will be lower than the younger one. Instead of being weathered in this case, some of them got a little mixed around  by scattering and the ice cream melting and refreezing at some points.

 Our hope is that this won't also be a lesson in the effects of scavenging on the fossil record.

 After all, a couple of hungry young adults can prove to be quite the scavengers.


No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

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.