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.