Captians log: Week 7

This week, I have been working on my project a little more while at Dickinson Hall.  I need to revise my research, the numbers don't seem to be coming out right.  I believe I don't enough data to compare and to use in ratios.  So this upcoming week I plan to get some different data and see how it turns out. 

Also, David Steadman, one of the curators, and overseer of Thomas Farm, gave me a project of picking out charcoal from bags of rocks, that can be used for radiocarbon dating to determine the age of the site from where it came.  Also we went to  Thomas Farm again, to bring back some more bags to be screen washed.

Week 6

This past week has been back to normal. At the museum collections I have been labeling fossils from the Cedros site, from Trinidad. We have been labeling through mammals, but have recently started on fish and reptiles. This is the site where the fossils are around 6,000 years old and are collected from an ancient village from what they would cook and eat. It's amazing seeing the things they are on this island. It's also really cool knowing I'm going through what these people long ago were eating. I think about all the advances we have made since these people were alive. It is very enlightening to think about.


My project is coming along good I have one lesson plan pretty much finished. I am still in the process if collecting information for my other two. Hopefully I can get something going with them soon.

This past week has been pretty fun and active.  I started the week off identifying some more fossils from the Cedros site.  On Thursday, Keith, Sharon and myself went to the Florida Natural History Museum.  I have been many times before, but it was interesting going with Sharon this time, as she told me a lot of great information about many of the fossils.  It was also really cool to see the fossil fall, as most of the fossils in that area have came from Thomas farm, the location in which we screen wash for. So it was really cool seeing the full sized, complete fossils. 

Then on Friday, we took a trip out to Thomas Farm.  Thomas Farm is a sinkhole that holds a lot of fossils from the Miocene Era.  We did get to do a little bit of digging in an area where they would dump sediment back from when they were digging from 1950s. I got to collect a few fossils of a species of white rhino that used to live in Florida at a time way before humans. 

At the dig site, we basically moved the bags of sand and fossils back to Dickinson Hall, and it was a pretty physical process, and it didn't help that it was like record humidity that day.  Each bag weights somewhere around 15-20 pounds.  We had to load the Van up with these bags from a shed stationed outside of the sinkhole/dig area.  Then we had to move more bags, from the dig site, up to the shed to replace the ones we just took. Then we left, and drove to a storage location where more bags were kept.  We unloaded the bags from the site, and moved them into the storage unit.  Then we loaded the Van back up with the bags that were already in the storage unit.  Finally, we drove back, and unloaded those bags at Dickinson Hall. Needless to say, it was a work out!

 

Week 4 Internship Update

This past week has been quite interesting.  I have been getting better at identifying bones, their names, location, starting to be able to identify the species it belongs to more quickly.  I have spent most of this past week identifying bones from a site, where the bones where the left overs of what a tribe was eating, from around 5,000 years ago.  This Friday we will be traveling out to the site of Thomas Farm, where will get to see and work at the dig site from which we receive the bags that we are screen washing.  That should be fun!