Checking for Drillholes

On Monday, Troy and I looked at a collection of the samples under a microscope. We searched for drillholes in the shells. This was somewhat tedious, and less were found than I actually expected. In a couple of days we will be measuring these shells and possibly the actual size of the drilholes. Pictures will be posted soon.

First Day in Italy

Today is my first official day in Bologna, Italy working with Daniele on our project. I arrived yesterday in the morning, but since most of the day was spent driving from Milan to Bologna (thank you Daniele for picking me up!) I consider today to be my first day of work on the Po Plain Project in Italy.

Today Daniele and I worked on potential parameters/characters we want to focus on for the project. This is probably the most important and hardest part of the project because once we decide on what parameters to look at, we are stuck. We cannot go back and remeasure or reanalyze a shell because its way too difficult. So it is important to make sure we cover everything we can think of, but at the same time make sure we don't cover too much and make processing each core a tedious task.

So when processing the samples, we are going to focus on autoecology, body size, taphonomy, and drill holes. These cores are going to come from core transects parallel and perpendicular to the adriatic coastline to capture the lagoonal setting during the last interglacial. Daniele and I are hoping for me to process at least 2 cores during this visit, but there are many many more left.

Hopefully for my next post, I will show some pictures of Bologna, the lab, my methods, and maybe some fossils.

Some Samples Are In

On Monday, Troy showed me some samples of the shells. I was in amazement. Although the graduate students reminded me constantly they would be small. I was thinking about quarter size or so, but the shells were even smaller! The shells were the size of fingernails. I think learning to name and identify the samples will be interesting.

Website

OK. We have access to the website for this project. The website is www.poplain.geos.vt.edu . I loaded stuff up there including a "webpage" and set it to allow all viewers to read it, but I'm still having problems actually seeing a website. It still says I have to log in to view. Obviuosly we don't want the public to have to log in, so I'm still trying to figure it out. That has been my morning. Once I can see what it looks like, I can start actually putting something together with links and images.

What Exactly is Sequence Stratigraphy ?

I met with Jackie on Monday, Feb 22  to discuss different ideas about developing different 3D Models for the sequence stratigraphy exhibit as well as the website. I am still learning some of the more broad geological terms. I found the way Jackie explained most of the concepts to me very easy to understand. This seemingly may mean that this will get across well to the public. 


Jackie drew a stratigraphy figure on paper, and then related the layers to different fauna. There was also a sea level chart, explaining the sea level in relation to the stratigraphy figure. And she agreed that she would put explanations next to it. I found this very helpful, visually as well as concept-wise. 


I think the point of Sequence Stratigraphy will need to be highly described to the public in detail. Because a person with no background knowledge on this  topic would be lost. So far, I have understood sequence stratigraphy to be the study of the layers of Earth. These layers of the Earth can tell stories. Different fauna found in the different layers can tell a story of age as well as natural events and disasters. These layers could also help people be able to find natural resources as well. I have understood this much so far. I think these are interesting points, and can help the public get interested in the topic, because it's just not about determining different layers, it's much more than that. 

Samples

Yesterday we received samples from Daniele. Thanks Daniele! Troy and I went through the samples and separated the localities from each other and put each sample in its own box. I know this is a small step, but it is better to combat the whole project one step at a time.

When we opened the box, it was a surprise to see how little the shells are, I knew that they were small from what Mike was telling me. But I still did not fully comprehend that till today. Its amazing that Daniele sorted all these shells and I cannot wait to do this in 2 weeks. Troy and I decided on what parts of the project we want to work on, once we saw the shells. Troy has decided to work on drilling predation mainly because he has never done that before. I am trying to decide still on taphonomy and body mass. Both need to be analyzed, but trying to determine which one I want to work on is still hard to determine. I have never done either, but I am leaning towards body mass. I feel the questions we could answer focusing on that sound really interesting to me.

I wrote up the part of the website that we are working on for this portion of the project. The introduction, about the po plain, and sequence stratigraphy. Hopefully Troy will be able to upload it to the website soon. As long as we can access it!

But now we have something for Ceseley to work on and to look at the research side of the project. I hope that someone takes charge in showing her while I'm gone.