Off to collect fossils

Tomorrow I leave for several weeks work in my thesis research area. I will be living in a tent and collecting fossils and rock samples across the Paleocene-Eocene boundary. I am attempting to locate the CIE event; a period of rapid global warming that dramatically reshaped the world and was perhaps one of the major factors for the rise of most the modern mammalian groups, including our own order -- Primates.

The vanishing hind limbs during the dolphin's embryonic development

I think we are living in the golden age of developmental biology, when long known trends in the fossil record, can be explained by changes in the expression of genes. Such a study is highlighted in Hans Thewissen and colleagues research on the lost of limbs in dolphins and their close relatives, the whales. To read more...

Travels in Deep Time:

I just returned from a week of Geological Heaven in the Bighorn Basin, where I participated in a Short Field Course with ExxonMobil on Basin Analysis. The geology of the Bighorn Basin, is in many ways similar to western Colorado. Although, going by differing names the formational units match what one sees drive from Vail to Grand Junction. The differences are what surprised me. First, I got to see basement involved folding associated with the Laramide Orogeny. Second, I was amazed at the high rate of sedimentation during the late Paleocene and early Eocene. Third, the wild structural geology associated with the Absaroka volcanic range that blew off during the middle Eocene shoving Paleozoic rocks like the Madison Limestone up over onto Eocene Willwood sediments. Who knew that the edges of the Bighorn Basin were as interesting as all the fossils that come from the interior? I leave again on Monday for my thesis work, but will report my findings when I return. Until then enjoy the summer.