Final Week

Well this is the last week of class, and Monday was my last day on the job!  It was a great summer, I really enjoyed working with Keith and Sharon and making new friends.  I have printed my poster and am all ready to go.  I enjoyed going to class and listening to everyone talk about their internships and summers as well, wish everyone the best, maybe some of us will have UF teach classes together. Other than not, not much else to say...so, this is Shane Thompson...signing off. 

Last full week update of my Internship.

Hi everyone!  The funniest part of my week was yesterday, Keith and I took Sharon to ginnie springs for her birthday.  While there we taught Keith how to swim, that was pretty fun.  I also got Sharon to swim down into the cave entrance after some encouragement.  It is really cool at the springs, as so many of the springs have been great places to discover some great fossils.  I finished all my data collecting for my project finally today, and I am almost done with my poster.  I can't believe summer is almost over, it has been a fun summer.  My last day at the internship will be on Monday probably, then it all focus to finish my lesson plans!

Week 9

Things have been pretty quiet at the museum research and collections building the past week.  The standards procedure was work on Thomas Farm in the first part of the day, that being picking out identifiable fossils from the previous days screen washing.  Then the second half of the day we screen washed.  I chose to do a poster for my presentation, I've done both PowerPoint and posters before, and I like the simplicity of posters.  I pretty much have all my ideas for my lesson plans wrapped up.  Now its just a matter of sitting down and writing them out....which is never the fun part.

Captians Log: Week 8

Nothing out of the ordinary, I have been picking through some sediment bags for Dr. Steadman.  I have to go through and pick out charcoal, that will then be sent to be radiocarbon dated.  This will be used to determine the age of a site from which Dr. Steadman is working on, a site in the Bahamas I believe.  Sounds like a rough site doesn't it? I mean who could complain about having to go to the Bahamas. Other than that, I have been screen washing again.  Also Dr. Steadman gave us some time to work on our projects, so I was able to get some of that done, as had time to figure out a solution to my physics problem.  Before I had only used the length and width of the femur.  Well I also need to get the weight, and also the same data for the humerus as well, and the math comes out beautifully. 

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!

So this week I got to do some other stuff besides screen washing.  For several days, I went through a collections of fossils from the Cedros Site and labeled them.  The labeling consisted of writing on the fossils itself, so to identify its location where it was found.  Also, I began to sort through the stuff that we screen wash, to pick out fossils.  We only keep fossils that are "identifiable" meaning there is enough of the fossil left to be able to identify it to a species.  As homework, Sharon has started to teach me to identify the names and locations of some of the more major bones in mammals.  This internship has been very active, and I enjoy learning new stuff.  I will be absorbing everything, so I can find a way to tie physics, and maybe some other science areas into what I am doing for my project.

Start of Internship!

My name is Shane Thompson, I am a physics major at UF, and this summer I will be doing an internship at the collections department at Dickinson Hall. Today I started my internship and learned  the details of what I will be doing. Basically, I go through bags of deposits and screen them for fossils.  We are working on an area associated with the Miocene Era.  Its mostly small fossils, lizards, snakes, small mammals, but there are larger fossils, like from horses and such, didn't see none today.  I was also told, I will be able to work on a research project involving bats, not sure of the details, will find out about that on Thursday!